Trojan Squadron break the ice in a bid for CO's Shield points at the Newcastle Stampede!
Trojan Squadron spent an afternoon breaking through 2 inch thick ice sheets, shoulder deep mud pools and tyre mountains in an Inter-Troop competition for CO's Shield points.
Newcastle Stampede 08 Feb 12- OCdt Bannon
Newcastle Stampede, as always, was a date marked in all our diaries. The recce 24hr before proved to heighten anticipation for the event, with reports of a few inches of ice covering all water features. The day didn’t disappoint with its promise of being a colder, harder and longer physical challenge compared with the previous year.
The course covered 9km, several ice-covered water based obstacles and the added component of having burdens to carry through. Each team was released with a 3 min gap between starts. However, this proved to be too small an interval, as by midway through there ended up with a backlog of about 3 or 4 troops, in a water filled trench. 6 Troops instruction to overtake all slower Troops was met by a tactical obstruction from Captain Hennis and OCdt Braithwaite. This nonetheless proved futile when Captain Bedford used the log she was carrying as a battering ram to force the way through for her Troop. OCdt Braithwaite was soon barged out the way by our super competitive Troop Commander who stated at the beginning of the event that losing was "simply not an option".
The ice covered obstacles proved to make the whole course that bit more challenging and comical. Throughout the event there were countless slips and falls; the best fall goes to OCdt Tindle and OCdt Bannon for an excellent display of synchronised acrobatics, resulting in them both ending up flat on their backs on the ice which wasn’t as broken up as they initially thought.
Thankfully, it was not all freezing ditches to wade through; a few tunnels and leopard crawls over sheets of ice (with little to grip to or push off) were thrown in for good measure. The chilliest part of the course was a particularly waterlogged tunnel. On this particular obstacle, if you were not blessed with the tallest of statures, it was difficult to keep knees on the ground and your head above the water. The best method it seemed, was to just swim through as quickly as possible.
As the event came to a finish the standard Maralibo was passed around for those who had enough feeling in their fingers to grasp a sweet. All Troops gave an excellent performance, some were stretched to bare manning and 6 Section (Troop) made it round in a super quick time with only 11 members. Smash!