What is it?
Challenger World is an annual competition that aims to build great corporate teams by testing the many entrants over a few days of arduous physical and mental stages. Find out all about it. We put a few teams in each year and generally do pretty well.
This year, we did a little bit bettter than normally.
Challenger 05
Challenger Worlds 2005
This years event took place at Crystal river in Florida, USA.
There were only 5 stages over 3 days, so the endurance aspects were much less serious than UK Challenger. The quality of the competition had gone up as expected. Stage 1 was a timed-gate orienteering stage through forest land and the guys did a great job keeping us in contention (I sat this one out). Stage 2 was an engineering stage and for once we did pretty well. Stage 3 was a night stage with orienteering and logic problems, Again we did well to leave ourselves in second place with more than half the contest behind us.
Day 2 turned out far less well. The penultimate stage had harsh penalties for not coming in the first few teams. Despite a big physical effort, we finished well out of the places. This put us out of the contest and the last stage was something of a blur. It was a sad end to a great year in Challenger, but such is the nature of contests. A better team won on the day.
The contest closed with a party on the Saturday night. For some, the exertions had clearly been too much ;o)
Challenger Ball 2005
In order to raise cash for the Worlds charity (Dreamflight), we organised a Charity Ball, held at the Daffodil in Cheltenham. It was a sparkling affair, with a great band, brilliant setting and successful auction of promises. Garan laid on the Jersey Cow, I blagged some auction prizes, Chris got way over the odds for them and Ali organised it all.
It wouldn't be fair on lots of drunk people to bring you all the pictures, but here are a few. A bunch of us met up at Clare Mews, then headed round to The Daffodil. Everyone was looking very smart, even the boys. Everyone seemed to have a good time and it all got a bit lairy on the dance floor. We even left them smiling at the end.
8 - 12 June
The time had finally come for the event. Chris turned up bang on time ;o) and we all headed west. The event was taking place in the hills east of Aberystwyth and it didn't take long to get going with the first event being a night run through the woods on the Wednesday evening.
The details of the various stages can be found on the Challenger site so I won't go into all that. Suffice to say, we started well and didn't look back. The three HQ teams were co-located, so we were able to give each other moral support throughout. One of the best stages was a whole day event and these pic's were of 007 and 008 heading down there.
We moved steadily up the table until the last evening when we moved into first place. We were always pretty serious about it, but we were full on for this night stage.
That night, we were all surprised by the news that Usama bin Bob had been tracked down to his mountain hideout above Devil's Bridge!!
Charlie and Garan did great work coming up with a winning strategy for 'Off the Board' the next day and we beat all our closest rivals. This put us in a virtually unassailable position going into the last stage.
At the end of the event, 007 crossed the line in 1st place. 008 did an amazing job coming 12th as a novice team and with a reduced number of fit team members and 009 hit their target of getting into the top 100.
It was a brilliant competition with a lot of very competitive teams who pushed us hard thoughout. There's masses of enthusiasm for getting involved next year. There's lots of talk of multi-ability, mixed and a girls team. We've got a trophy to defend and it just doesn't get much better than this.
Needless to say, training for next year has already begun. So watch this space!!
May
Towards the end of the month we got down on the Wye for some canoe training. Everyone had a good day and the weather was kind. Garan seemed keen to get off on a regular basis, Rachael made sure she did her fair share and Rhiannon steered their craft away from troubled waters.
Another great Challenger day out in the FoD. Ian and Andy came along and made sure everyone had a good time. Once again we all got some air ...
At start of month, went on training weekend in Cambrian Mountains in Wales. There's no easy explanation for some of these pictures, and it's not always clear what the link to Challenger is, but everyone seemed to be having a good time :o) And despite appearances, it wasn't taken too seriously.
April
Great Challenger day out in the FoD. Ian and Crispin came along to make sure we didn't lose anyone (cheers guys!). Chris made sure we all got there on time, the rental folk could tell not everyone had done this before, "This, is a bike", but we all stuck together, we all got some air and we all got very, very muddy :o)