Nicola Craig, Donna Mitchell, Monica McKay, Michael Tomlin, Adam Duffy, Louise Mahaffey, Vicki Wright, Chris Briggs, Crispin Balmer, Michael Darlington, Anthony Waddington

Sport Relief 2008

For this year’s BBC Sport Relief, staff from the Manchester office took part in an army style assault course on Saturday 15th March to help raise money.

Eleven staff members travelled to Skelmersdale, just outside Wigan, to take on the Maps Challenge assault course. After a rigorous warm-up the group split into two teams and, with each carrying a 12 foot long wooden pole, had to duck, scramble and climb over the various obstacles as a team. Racing through the Lancashire woodland, they also had to contend with ten foot high walls, mountains of tyres, scramble nets and tunnels.

The course, which is used by Wigan Warriors rugby league team to get match fit, tested everyone to their limits and by the end all were absolutely exhausted. Before tackling the assault course, the day began with a warm-up which, by the end of it, left many people questioning whether they would be in any state to even do the assault course, it was so tiring. But after a short rest it came time to take on the course.

Having been split into two teams, competitors had to follow the course as it winded through the wood, carry their pole through every obstacle with the last member signifying how far through the course the team had completed. The record for a full lap of the course is around seven and a half minutes and a team of scaffolders had recently completed three laps in 30 minutes. As each team fought through mud filled tunnels and thousands of tyres to reach the finish it was clear this was the kind of thing you couldn’t really train for and it certainly took its toll. The first coleman’s team to complete a circuit of the course did so in a little over 24 minutes.

Following the assault course, staff now have their sights set on the Manchester 10k run in May, with 19 set to take part.