A day and a half. 36 hours. Not a long period of time. However, when you’re busy rolling around in your own vomit, being abducted, and climbing over a dead sheep’s carcass it seems to last forever. Welcome to the Unknown.
The Unknown: A Delve into the world of Ultra-Endurance Sports
The Unknown. It could be loosely categorised as an ultra endurance event: not a triathlon, not an ultramarathon, nor an obstacle race. Something out of the playbook of special forces training that is sold as an experience, a challenge of a lifetime, to civilians. Basically the precursor to the TV show “SAS: Who Dares Wins”, but without the TV cameras, and before it was cool.
It’s not unique either. The Agoge from Spartan Race, Peak Death Race, The Endurance Society: the list is long. They all appear to be, at a high level, a torturous mix of brutal physical challenges, and constant mind-games. But it’s a form of torture where entrants pay a sizeable sum of money for the privelege, with no prizes. Which begs the question: why?
Why is a question that could be applied to most types of endurance sport. Over the last decade, there has been a huge increase in the popularity of such activities. The drive for this is, partly, people learning the value of pushing themselves to the limit of what they are capable of: both in a physical sense, but also mentally. It puts into perspective how comfortable the average lifestyle is, it teaches you to deal with adversity, it teaches resilience.
The Unknown, and similar events, are built to cater for exactly this niche. Every single minute of your time there is carefully planned to keep you on an emotional rollercoaster: every activity, every instruction, from the instant you sign up. It seems like pointless suffering, but when you reflect on it, there are a lot of valuable lessons woven into its fabric.
Into the Unknown…
As an intrepid 20yr old, I decided to toss my hat into the ring for the Unknown’s third chapter to see how I’d fare. For me, it was the next rung in the ladder after obstacle racing and ultramarathons. You can never know what you are truly capable of, until you find something that defeats you. I felt The Unknown could do exactly that.
With sparse information available, I tried to figure out a generic training plan that would help me survive for as long as possible. The problem is, true to its name, you know nothing about the event: only dates. Each year it changes format, theme and location. Your only clues are the kit lists that trickle out over time. Empty sandbags? One sock? Two raw eggs? Yeah… good luck.
So hiking, navigation, survival skills, weighted exercises, general fitness. I covered as many bases as possible. The weekend neared. Anxiety was building. I often overestimate my abilities when I sign up to these things, then underestimate them as race day approaches. Tie this in with the constant trickle of misinformation from the organisers (“Staff“) and the tension really builds. A 90% failure rate target, amongst other things were promised ahead of the event. True? False? Nobody knew.
Eventually we were given a location, just weeks before: the Lake District, England. A good choice: opportunities to throw us into the sea, over sand dunes, or up the many steep hills in the area.
The propaganda kept on rolling.
My thoughts in the final week were to turn up and do all that I could manage: my main target was to make it through the first night of hell, and see the sun rise. Anything beyond that would be a bonus – a sadistic bonus.
Finally the day of reckoning arrived: final checking of kit and an anxious train journey.
We assembled at a place near to the starting location. We had a thirty minute window to arrive in the evening, and decided to meet and go in convoy. We met in a family pub, in ex-military overalls, freely handing out smoke grenades: the atmosphere closer to a military barracks than a bar. Last minute advice, nervous faces, cramming in calories. Small talk. Big rucksacks littering the floor. But the time had come. Anxious talk was over. We would now drive, like a funeral cortege, to the location: in the dark, in silence. It was time to face our fate.
Cover Image: Tony Jarvis