The Man in the White Suit_ The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me - Ben Collins [45]
We stripped down to the bare basics: DPM trousers and Helly Hansen T-shirt under a Gore-Tex outer liner. Staying warm wouldn’t be a problem.
Kojak was a bald regular Army veteran with a mysterious past, who met every challenge by ripping its face off. He had opted for a black knee-brace contraption that was fresh out of Mad Max. He dropped his trousers in front of everyone to reveal his retro Y-front skivvies before diving in with a fistful of Vaseline. He swallowed some super-sized Ibuprofens, clapped his hands together and yelled, ‘Come on then, ladies, let’s fuckin’ do this.’
We were issued mini flares and lined up alphabetically, which meant I started near the front.
The training OC was a ginger whippet and led off like someone had just set off the hare from the starting gate. He must have been forty-odd, but was a mosquito on the hills. Dirck, the uber-keen South African, was glued to his shoulder, as always, but the furious pace was too much for me. My chest was wheezing and rattling ‘like a whale giving birth to triplets’ according to Ninja, our resident martial arts guru, as he sauntered past me. Next to overtake was Flash who puffed, ‘Stick with the pack.’
I couldn’t, and sank further back.
A DS with an unusually large head saw I needed some encouragement. ‘Bloody hell, mate, this is just the start. In through yer nose, out through yer mouth. Not exactly match fit, are yer?’
I’d always struggled running uphill. It was utterly demoralising being unable to summon the energy to keep up. The Lord of War, a guy I disliked intensely, was the next to catch me up. He thought he was some kind of military genius, had a grade one haircut, frowned on those outside the club and blew his nose repeatedly into his sleeve.
Our speeds were matched the way trucks are when they block motor-ways by overtaking each other with an infinitesimally small speed differential.
I went to pass him on his right and he blocked me. I ushered him aside with my rifle and we traded a few blows, swapping places another five times on the way up the mountain. A bit of venom went a long way to helping us get within 40 metres of the lead group as fog descended on to the open ground.
The wind kicked up, driving the cold rain hard and sideways. Fog clagged in like pea soup, engulfing the leaders and the mass of blokes behind, which meant we had no clue where we were going. The Lord of War turned right to follow the fence-line. I went straight over.
I checked my map on the run and fell through a bog right up to my tits. Bernie came to my rescue and dragged me out. We exchanged the same look. It said, ‘Where the hell are we?’ The DS at the last checkpoint had said to follow the fence-line, but we’d crossed two of the bastards since and lost sign of the footprints in the long grass.
We ran off in what turned out to be the right direction. Not everyone would be so lucky.
My beanie hat had swollen to the size of a turban, so I ditched it and jogged after Bernie, stuffing frozen chocolate into my mouth. The weather pounded in, the rain slashing so hard you had to make slits of your eyes to peer through. At the top of the hill we found a tent.
Laughing Corporal popped out with his arms outstretched like the messiah. ‘All right there, lads, give us your numbers … crack on, boys, there’s a brew at the bottom, get your skates on.’
We bounced off rocks, tripped over clumps of grass and shimmied in the wind under the weight of a bouncing bergen, jolting belt kit, tired legs struggling to control our trajectory. I slipped on the wet grass, my head snapped back against the top of my pack and I found myself sliding like an upended tortoise 25 metres down the hill.
We caught one of the DSs, an officer, and followed him down a steep slope to the top of a waterfall, whereupon he produced a map … Not a good sign. The turnaround checkpoint was just 200 metres below us. I could