ESL Blogs

Last Saturday, on 5th November 2016, I took another event to challenge myself. It was a 20km trail with 20 obstacles challenge called the Viper Challenge. Though I've entered a few trail runs and on the road runs, this is the first time that I ever tried an obstacle event. This event was also a team challenge, thus, I was quietly confident that we can go through all the obstacles with team effort though none of us had any experience participating in the event.

On the morning of the event, due to the fact that our challenge was slotted at 10 am, we decided to have our breakfast first before proceeding to the event venue. This was the first for our team because normally we didn't take any breakfast. Later, we would be very thankful for taking the breakfast.

We encountered the first obstacles after about 1km into our trail run. Due to the monsoon season, it was raining quite heavily at night time, and the it was drizzling in the morning too. The obstacle was basically jumping into terrains that had turned into muddy pits, and we had to crawl our way up out of the terrains.

In the next obstacle, we had to basically swing our hand from one rope to another to reach the end point. Though I tried it, but I failed miserably in this task. I ended up jumping into another muddy pit when I can't hold the rope, let alone trying to swing my body. Hahaha. Though I have no issue with running, but I didn't do any gym training to condition my hand and shoulder for such strenuous activities.

I managed to do some of the obstacles with little difficulty, and some of the obstacles were more difficult to perform. One of the most 'fun' obstacles was crawling through a muddy pit with barb wires on top and some wires with electrical current running through them. Even though I managed not to touch any of my body parts at the electrical wires, but when even someone else accidentally touched the wires, you still can feel the electrical jolts because of the water in the pit. It was terrifying yet electrifying experience. 

Some of the obstacles were so tough that strangers were helping strangers. Throughout the day, we walked, we ran, we went through various obstacles while it was drizzling. I was thankful for that because it was not so hot. We managed to finish the event in 6 hours and 40 minutes. Throughout the day, we only drank water and some energy drinks. Though my body was not conditioned to do some of the obstacles, I was lucky that I didn't cramp or incur any injury. One of my team members had to be assisted a few times when he started to cramp, though he too managed to finish the event.

The Viper Challenge motto is "Forget Fear, Worry About Addiction" truly resonate to my team. Though I was aching all over the next day with some body parts were black and blue, now I am looking forward for next year's challenge. It is really addicting event.