Microsoft Challenge

Over the last week I’ve been in Scotland participating in the Microsoft Challenge and raising money for the NSPCC. It was hard work :P

There’s going to be a full video coming in due course, but here’s a little report I wrote for work:

Results: http://www.challengerworldresults.com/results.php?viewevent=37&chall=Microsoft%20UK%20Challenge&year=2008

Sophos were teams 70 (Sophos Eng – Pareem, Tomek, Rich, Mike, Ian and myself) and 118 (Sophos ELIT – Boris, Stuart, Pawel, Ross, Paul, Rhys)

Stage 1 was a night stage set around Stirling University, where you had to solve a jigsaw, by running to points that had the pieces, and then figuring out where each piece fitted in the jigsaw, however you weren’t allowed to take a piece with you, so you had to sketch and remember the pieces, and as the pairs were separated, you only saw half of the pieces for each jigsaw. We (Team 70) did pretty well on this one, finishing in the higher part of the mid-table section

5 hours of sleep later…

Stage 2 was a gruelling, 6 hour physical challenge, themed after James Bond, you did “missions” going from a start point to an end point, but there were certain points you had to visit in the process. The first 3 hours were on foot only, but the second 3 hours we were allowed to use the bikes. We were doing pretty well, until we underestimated the time to return to base and got some penalty points for getting back 11 minutes late…

Stage 3 was a night engineering stage, where we had to build a chariot that gets around a track, or optionally one that holds two people and fires limes at targets. Our original plan was to build a two man, but the wood snapped during test, and with about an hour to go, we scrapped that design and came up with something much simpler that only held one person (and even then, only just – it was basically a stick connected to some wheels, with a handle to hold on to) to complete the stage. Somehow, we did it with the second design without the chariot passenger falling off and finished respectably mid-table again.

4 hours of sleep later (they loved to sleep deprive us) we had another challenge, a biking stage where we had to reach certain points which represented mountain summits, getting bonuses for getting all the points on a mountain range – the gotcha here being that the peaks had “fair weather windows”, and if you arrived at a point outside of those windows it wouldn’t count. Despite a very valiant effort, we missed the window for one of the peaks by 2 seconds, which meant we missed out on a 30 minute bonus, so the stage didn’t go as well as it should have done.

The second challenge of the day was a canoeing challenge on a Loch, which involved 4 people in a boat, 2 paddling between points and 2 working on a spot the difference type puzzle, making notes about the pictures and the differences between them, getting a different picture at every point. Answer sheets only became available 85 minutes into the stage, and our amazing paddlers (Tomek and Ian) got us difference spotters (Pareem and myself) back to the answer sheet point just as the 10 second countdown for the sheets to become available started, after visiting every point on the Loch. We did very well on this stage, getting 36 of the 55 differences onto the answer sheet, and also a good bonus for our speedy finish.

In the evening, Steve Munford and Andy Bradshaw arrived for teams 70 and 118 respectively. Last year, on the third night there was a mental challenge, so our more physical guys were expecting a good nights sleep whilst the guys whose strengths were with the intelligence puzzles would go out, however, these hopes were to be dashed when at 8.45, we found out there was a night biking stage, leaving at 9. With hardly any time to plan, the physical guys headed out leaving the less physical people to get the good nights sleep (which was good, as both of us had done all the other night stages).

Stage 7 was a highly tactical stage, with some physical activities, but not as physical as the other ones (running from point to point). The exec for each team was due to strategise for the team (there was a lot of things to consider to get something that closely resembled an optimal strategy), however they could delegate this task, so Steve delegated this to me. However, the event organisers made a mistake that cost us dearly – at the stage start point, after collecting information from two of the points, you were then to return to the start for a number which was then taken to an “event point”, so our guys went out with the first number and came back telling us it was wrong – the organisers must have shown us the wrong piece of paper with the number on. This threw the entire (carefully planned, I must add!) strategy, as well as costing us a lot of time. We then had to create a new strategy very quickly, however due to the speed the new strategy was planned at, we didn’t double check it, so we ended up going to a wrong point, got another penalty (a whole 60 minutes of time added) and with the time lost, we also got another penalty for not completing the minimum number of events, sending us hurtling down the table and losing our lead over team 118.

However, there was only one event to go, and the organisers promised us that it would be “spectacular” due to being televised by Channel 4. It was basically a 1.5 mile run round the Loch at University of Stirling, followed by a climb up a mountain, ~6k on bike, and then ~3k on foot, and then ~5k downhill on foot to a finish point, with puzzles on the way that had to be solved, otherwise there’s a greater penalty. With Tomek’s knee out of action, and Steve’s fresh legs (and also the fact he had to catch a plane to Columbus, which he couldn’t miss – extra motivation to get him running, we thought ;) we sent Steve, Richard (who I’m sure is now regretting it – on Sunday his knee was twice the size it was at the start of the week), Ian and Mike up the hill whilst we waited at the bottom, so we could cross the finish line as a team. Our guys did exceptionally well, considering their sleep deprived, exhausted state – we achieved just over 2 hours (arriving back at 5.28, with Steve saying the very latest he could leave was 5.30, so we just made it!)

Then the bar opened, and we all made our way over for some much needed relaxation…

Overall, it was a fantastic experience, and I’d like to thank my team for being fantastic, the company as a whole for giving me the opportunity to take part, and of course, all of you guys who helped us raise £1800 for the NSPCC.