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By Root 732 0

rat races takes place during the frisky English summer, offering the perfect urban background of abandoned factories, meandering canals, and railway sideways to challenge the most agile of athletes. The race kicks off at 7pm on a Saturday evening when black clad runners outfitted with climbing harnesses, compasses, head torches, and whistles fan across the city for a 3km run (nearly 19 miles), passing checkpoints on the way where their electronic wristbands are passed under scanners to collect points. Extra points can be gained if competitors stop to try their hand at karaoke, boxing, or speed cycling without brakes. Organizers don’t make it any easier by pelting runners with eggs and smearing the finishing line with banana skins and butter.

Yet the Rat Race is a masterpiece of organization with the entire course meticulously planned, right down to the event village from which the race starts. It offers food stalls, outfit shops, and impromptu classes in rock climbing, kayaking, and abseiling for the uninitiated. Competitors do not have to be uber-athletes (though the event does attract its fair share of ultra marathon runners) as the race is split into three ability levels with the super elite having extra challenges to perform.

The lesser elite can just sit back and enjoy the ride, especially on the second day, which is a 60km (37-mile) cycle around the city, broken up with a round of paintball or potholing. Despite the urban backdrop, the circuit takes in everything that is beautiful about these four British cities with open parks, canal paths, and woodlands all on the itinerary. It is certainly a better way to see a city than from the back of an open top bus. Anybody can enter and entrance fees vary from 30 to 80 (approx. $50–$125) depending on the level you choose. Teams of two or three people complete the course and the variety of activities and their often tongue-in-cheek manner means that if the climbing, ducking, and jumping don’t make you breathless, the laughter surely will.—CO’M

www.ratraceadventure.com.

When to Go: Throughout the summer in different U.K. locations.

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Tough Guy Race

The Macho Masochists

Perton, Wolverhampton, England

Belly crawl beneath a 12m (40-ft.) pit of barbed wire before climbing a pole to assail a netted tower woven with electrified wire charged enough to knock out a bull. Below is a field of nettles for those unfortunate enough to fall. Then run, leaping across some bales of burning hay before wading chest deep through a freezing mud pond criss-crossed with hidden telegraph poles. You must then creep through 10 dirty narrow sewage pipes, one of which is a dead end. There is not enough room to turn around so you must crawl backwards shouting to your fellow participants right behind you that the way is blocked. Then you must swim through an underground tunnel filled with pitch black muddy water that has only two small air pockets if you run out of breath. If you happen to collapse and drown, other participants must trod over you before emerging to warn a team of scuba divers that a man is down. They have 3 minutes to fish you out before your brain dies from lack of oxygen.

One tough guy helps another at the Tough Guy Race.

The Tough Guy Race certainly lives up to its title. This 13km (8-mile) sadistic exercise in extreme endurance will test the phobias of the most hardened Rambos. Beforehand, all participants must sign a health risk waiver reassuringly called a “death warrant.” Major sponsors avoid putting their name to the event, terrified they will be liable to “blame and claim.” One year, seven competitors broke their legs, and hundreds suffer regularly from hypothermia. The winner gets no prize and not even a shower at the end. Participants must bathe in filthy troughs of water before drying off and going home to nurse their wounds. Yet this event, held just outside the old industrial city of Wolverhampton, is always oversubscribed and the 4,000 places always filled. Organizers now hold a summer, autumn, and winter edition to satisfy the demand for this exercise in