Dave Mc's Blog

In the last two parts of my Microsoft UK Challenger Story I’ve described the first two training weekends.  Now we started coming into the real stuff.  First off though we had news that due to family commitments Ray Booyson, decided that he would pull out to let somebody else have a chance and that somebody was Steve Smith of the UK SharePoint User Group.  Now Steve is a biking man through and through, and at the fair age of 41 he again boosted the average age of the team to over 38, so we thought there might be a chance that we could get one of the over 35 trophies in the final event!

Spurred on by that thought, everybody in the team got right down to some serious training.  David also set up a Friday conference call and sent out puzzles by email each Friday for us all to have a go at.  These were great fun and it was good to chat with the other team members at least by phone since we were all so scattered around the country.  Pretty soon however the final training weekend came around and was in fact a Mini Competition to give us all experience of the real thing.

Mini Competition

So in mid May we all met up at Ilam in the southern Peak District and what a beautiful place it was too.  We were staying in Dovedale House, an old vicarage in a wonderful location.  David unfortunately could not make the weekend, so yours truly was nominated as stand in team captain.  I arrived first at the location and was soon joined by our newest team member Steve Smith.  More people arrived but the remainder of the Tutti Fruttis didn’t turn up until right before the evening Quiz night was due to start.  With the team together at last, we set about the Quiz with a vengeance and managed to finish 2nd!  A great start to the weekend, unfortunately that was the highest we ever went …

The next morning we were up and off to Carsington Water for Stage 1.  This naturally turned out to be a combined water/biking stage.  We had to visit 6 Check Points with a code.  The code could only be gotten by visiting 6 buoys one at a time  which were placed out on the lake, buoy No 1 was closest, buoy No 6 on the other side of the lake.  OK … simple enough you think.  The problem was you could only have one boat on the water per team, the Check Points we up to 4 miles away by road and you had to visit in a pair and we only had about 3 hours to do it all in. Oh … and you only had one oar to start with, the other was at Check Point 1.  There were Bonus Points available too.  It was a fastest to finish. 

We decided that we’d get the Check Point 1 code first and fetch the oar back when we got there.  The only problem was, there was a heck of a wind blowing on the lake which made rowing and steering the boat really hard.  Anyhow, Steve Loader and Gavin headed out first and after about 30 mins managed to get back with the code for CP1.  Off went Steve Smith and Tim to get the oar and to visit the CP.  Gavin and me then went out again with still one oar to get CP2.  The wind was getting up again at this point, but we were getting the hang of this and we managed to get back in 20 mins with the code.  Steve and Tim hadn’t returned from CP1 at this point, so we decided to go for buoy no 3 with CP3 code.  This was our first mistake ….  We should have been checking our strategy at this point and actually gone for CP4 which was the closer CP by road. CP3 was miles away.  Still buoy No 3 was closer than Buoy No 4 and we still only had one oar.  So off went Steve Loader and me and boy did we struggle.  The wind was up still further and though eventually we got to buoy 3, getting back proved a real pain in the ass.  We visited the bank a few times including some willow trees and rocks, I was heard to utter several colourful expletives but somehow we got back just as Steve and Tim pitched up with the second oar ready for the second CP. 

I volunteered to get back in the boat with Gavin to this time go for Buoy No 6 and out we headed.  What ensued next can only be described as a mini version of Captain Bligh and Mr Christian trying to go around the Horn.  By now the wind was really up and I kind of thought we should row up the lake and let the wind blow us into the buoy.  Good plan apart from the fact that we weren’t allowed to carry it through as the safety boat said we had to move down the lake to get out of the way of the Windsurfers.  At that moment we saw a blur of this geezer zipping through the water like nobody’s business.  We saw his point and headed down the lake.  So thereafter for the next 30 minutes Captain Bligh and Mr Christian paddled like lunatics getting nowhere fast and eventually we had to row backwards for 10 mins just to get within viewing distance of the buoy.  At last  we spotted the code and we started back.  By now the kayak had a fair amount of water sloshing around in the bottom and a couple of of near misses on capsizing made for a tense row back.  But … we got there just as the lake’s management decided to close the lake to rowers as it was too windy!!!

So we got back to the start point and met up with the rest of the team and we decided to get to a couple of other points, but by this time we realised we weren’t going to have time to get all the CPs, so Gav and  Steve Loader headed off on Bikes to get a third CP and Tim and me went for a BP.  After a gargantuan effort by Steve and Gav which included scything through a crowd of fun-runners, we checked in but were hit with a bunch of penalty points for not getting all the CPs.  We weren’t too downhearted as not many other teams had either, but we realised we could have gotten another CP with a little extra thought.

We had a break after that and got ready for the evening stage which was a running stage. It was a fairly easy stage a number of points to find on foot.  So Gav and Steve Loader set off on the longer section, Steve Smith, Tim and me did the shorter but steeper section, we found our CP and headed back to the Rendezvous point having decided to ‘Do No More!’ i.e do the minimum required.  We waited and waited but no Gav or Steve.  Then we got a text from Gav saying Steve had injured himself getting over a wall and sure enough after some anxious waiting, along can Steve L hobbling and hopping but still going – a sight to make you proud to be English!  We lost time, but hey, we still got in ahead of Stage Close.  However, we’d lost Steve one of our key team members  …

Next morning, Steve’s ankle was pretty swollen and painful, the room didn’t smell too sweet after a night with 5 Tutti Frutti’s snorting away either, still the weather was good and we had a build stage next so Steve could still do that.  The aim was to get water out of a well (represented by a paddling pool) and take it to a village, using only a few bits of wood, bolts, pulleys etc and a bucket.  We won’t dwell on the build stage except to say – if you ever do one of these – read the instructions!!  We did OK, had a good design, but we could have got loads more points if … we’d read the instructions!!!

The afternoon was a biking/running stage which was down to Steve Smith, Gav, Tim and me, poor old Steve had to sit out and I know he was gutted about not taking part.  Still he could help with Strategy.  We had a gooden, “Do No More!” that is get to the Check Points, then make sure we got a few Bonus Points then beat back to finish before Stage Close.  We started off running in the pouring rain. Within a few minutes we were drenched through – but hey – water won’t kill you.  We went at a good pace, me navigating initially.  We got to the 4 checkpoints despite going out of bounds (marshals missed that one!) and then split up with Steve and me heading back to the bikes to get 2 or 3 BPs and Gav and Tim heading out for two BPs on foot.

Steve and me pounded it back to the bikes, hopped on and then mullered it to 3 BPs. An everlasting image I have is of Steve careering down this rubble-strewn , muddy, water logged track at an unfeasible speed disappearing into the hazy distance …, whilst I tootled along behind a bit chicken like … still I beat him UP the hills heh heh.   We got back with about 10 mins to spare unfortunately to find that Gav and Tim had unfortunately strayed out of bounds and this time the marshals did see them … doh!  Never mind everybody had worked their socks off, we’d learnt some lessons and more importantly we’d started to really gel as a team. We felt ready for the main competition and were excited and couldn't wait for June.  How did we do? That’s in part 4 …

Cheers

Dave Mc

Injury Problems

Having returned from the first weekend training session with UPH and a bunch of of the other Challenger potentials I fully intended to knuckle down and start piling on the training. Only trouble was, I found that I’d picked up a back injury and my dreaded left knee was starting to play up.  Over the next few days I found myself unable even to my own socks on, being unable to bend even a little without serious pain.

So rather than try any running I decided to maintain my cycling to work as that didn’t cause too much hassle and to go swimming as that is totally non-weight bearing and good for overall body toning.  This regime worked a treat.  In between times I got treatment for my back from my Osteopath Nigel Kavanaugh who is absolutely excellent with any types of sports injury.  So come March my back whilst still not right was sufficiently OK for me to opt to go on the second week training but I had already decided I was not going to do any running, just cycling and maybe a bit of water work.

Second Weekend Training

Come the second weekend training we had been allocated into our teams and we were off to Centre Parcs again this time in Thetford.  I had been put into the Microsoft Tutti Frutti Team which consisted of David Hobbs-Mallyon the Microsoft UK SQL Server Product Manager, Steve Loader Microsoft UK User Experience Team, Tim Leung from VBUG, Ray Booyson and Gavin Osborn from the Vista Squad.   The last three guys I knew from my UK Community work, particularly Tim who I’ve known for several years.  By the way, if you ever take Tim out for a meal, make sure it’s a ‘eat all you can’ as I’ve never seen anybody put away so much tucker for one so small.  He may not be the fastest eater but he sure makes up for it in quantity!!  Nice one Tim!

Unfortunately Ray couldn’t make the training weekend due to his wife giving birth and whilst Gavin came along, he was out of action due to overdoing it a bit in training earlier in the week!  So David, Steve, Tim and myself did most of the training, though Gavin did join in for the Kayaking bit which was fun.   So the weekend was of similar format as before starting with a ‘beep’ test which is a fitness test.  I had scored 9.8 on the previous weekend which is a good score for a chap of my fair age of 47, and now this time I scored 11.5 which I was very pleased with.  Most other people also had raised their level which was great to see.

David was nominated as our team captain and was a veteran of 2 previous Challenger events and Steve had done the previous years event in Stirling in Scotland, so it was really great to get some feel for what the actual competition would be like.  Over the weekend we did a few test ‘stages’ run along similar lines to what the actual competition is like and again we had a great time though tiring.

One particularly great event was a night time navigation event which saw us dashing around the forests of Thetford on our bikes trying to answer puzzles and picking up bonuses etc along the way.  I did a chunk of the navigation which I enjoy (when it goes right!) and gained a good deal of confidence from keeping the team going in the right direction whilst pedalling furiously.  We did pretty well in that event and we started to see the core of a good team coming together.

The following day was a combined running, cycling event called ‘Reverse Casino’ in which we were given a fictitious million pounds which we had to loose as quickly as possible.  We had to go to gaming points, do a puzzle and depending on whether we got it right or not we were given debit or credit notes to take to the bank.  Here’s the rub though.  There were 2 banking points which we had to visit or we would pick up huge penalties.  Those banking points were only open between certain times and as the day wore on the exchange rate went down.  Not only did we cock-up on our appreciation of the ground, we set ourselves too high a target to get again and ran out of time AND missed the banking points, so all in all it was a bit of a disaster …. but … it was only training and so no big loss and a good lesson learnt!

After this training weekend we only had a Mini-Competition weekend left prior to the real event, and luckily I picked up no injuries from this  second weekend.  My back hadn’t got worse so it was on with the individual training which I had got into a good rhythm of, cycling each day and swimming 3 times a week, and also eating a good balanced diet, things were going great and the Mini-Comp was looming ….  you’ll find out how the Tutti Fruttis  did on that weekend  in the next post!

Cheers

Dave Mc

Introduction

Some of you who I know are already aware that I recently took part in the Microsoft UK Challenger event, and it was such an amazing experience that I felt inclined to write a longer than usual blog post.

Just to explain to those who are not aware of the Challenger events; they take place around the world in about 12 countries and are run by a company called Intelligent Sport and the clue is in the name.  It is not just a case of doing something sporty you also have to use your noddle.  A typical event will involve some running, some cycling, some water based activity such as kayaking and also problem solving, construction and strategy.  For the last 9 years Microsoft have sponsored the UK Challenger Event and at the same time raised millions of pounds for the NSPCC through the participants obtaining sponsorship.

I was invited to be part of a part Microsoft/part Community team back in December 2008 provided I undertook to be part of a training programme for the event which was held from 10-14 June 2009.  The training took the form of weekend long sessions in January, March and May and also a personal programme.  Now, I‘ve always been able to maintain a reasonable level of fitness. However, in the past any running has generally caused me to have severe amounts of pain and swelling in my left knee due to an injury sustained when I was 22 through not wearing suitable footwear whist running a half marathon.  This was my main concern on entering the event but as it happens my fears were unfounded.

First Training – Centre Parcs Longleat

So in January I went along with some slight trepidation to Centre Parcs in Longleat to take part in the first weekend training which was run by the training partner of Intelligent Sport UPH (now Monkey Business).  UPH stands for Underwood, Peters, Helliwell as in Rory Underwood (of England Rugby fame), John Peters (of 1st Gulf War fame) and Martin Helliwell (of SAS, survival, mountaineering fame).  It was a great weekend and I got my first taste of Adventure eventing.  We had some typical ‘stages’ to do by way of practice as well as some open training sessions.  So for example we had a Kayaking event which went so:

To start answer a puzzle:  “If I have 10 black socks and 10 white socks in a draw.  If I pull out socks one at a time, how many do I have to pull out to guarantee getting a proper pair of socks?”  (Answer is below)

Once you’ve solved the puzzle, then you have to get your team around a course on the lake marked by 4 buoys as many times as possible in a hour using 3 possible modes of transport.  Single Kayak, Double Kayak or 4 Man/Woman Pedalo.  You can only have 2 boats out at once and every team member should use each type of boat at least once.  You need to click in with the Marshals each time you complete a circuit.  You get bonuses for solving puzzles at each buoy, you get penalties for having too may people out or not clicking in etc.

You get the idea.  It’s not a case of tearing around the lake as quickly as possible, it’s about thinking who in your team is good at what, who is fit enough to row fast by themselves, who is good at puzzles.  How can we keep the required number of boats out with the most team members out.  I’m not sure if I’ve remembered all the details totally correctly, but as I say you get the idea.

Another stage was a classic Estimation stage over a total of 4 hours.  First off, we were given a 2 maps with the location of letters of the alphabet.  Based on the terrain and the distances involved we had to estimate how many words we could spell with numbers we could collect (we collected by visiting the letters).  The team I was in estimated we could spell 70 words.  What we had failed to realise was the following though.  Firstly letters collected from one map in the morning did NOT count towards words collected from the second map in the afternoon.  Also we did not correctly estimate times in travelling.  We also failed to really note the penalties for not living up to our estimates!! As a consequence we ended up with such a massive penalty for firstly being late in as we overestimated our travelling times and secondly for not getting the letters we wanted in order to spell the 70 words.  I think we were 20 mins late and had collected CBIZTL … hmmm.  My everlasting memory of that stage is Myles from Rackspace trying to convince the rest of the team that “There’s the next point by that Mansion House, let’s just GO FOR IT!” when cool-headed Matt Dunstan, Challenger veteran from Microsoft steps in and says, “Myles, firstly, we don’t have time, secondly, we have to go down a cliff to get there and thirdly … it’s the WRONG Mansion House!”, it looses a bit in translation, but I tell you, we laughed and laughed about that afterwards, the first of many fond memories gathered during my Challenger experience.

After the first weekend, I felt I had a better idea of what it was all about, I was also pleasantly surprised by my level of fitness, being one of the fittest in my relevant teams, though running was still a bit of a struggle.  It got me motivated too and excited about the whole weekend and also as a side issue allowed me to get back in touch with John Peters a friend of mine from my RAF basic training days at RAF College Cranwell.  All in all a great start.  I’ll cover the second weekend training in Part 2 next time.

Cheers

Dave Mc

Answer to puzzle : Three (pull out a white, maybe a black then if I pull out a white or a black I’ll get a pair …simple!)

It’s a good job the internet is around and it’s a good job there are people who are committed and altruistically minded such that they take time to write useful stuff down for us to use.  Personally however, I dislike blogs which simple reproduce what somebody else has done, but there is something to be said for providing multiple links to a site in order that search engines rank the target site higher, so this blog entry simply links to a really useful site I found today.

After spending the last year doing SharePoint installations it is forgiveable I suppose to become somewhat blase and think you’ve seen it all, but in the last couple of days I’ve been dealing with the move of a small SharePoint Farm from one environment to another.  The Farm has been rather cobbled together and there are loads of missing/broken lists/features and I was repeatedly getting the following error when I tried to export the farm:

FatalError: Failed to compare two elements in the array.
   at System.Collections.Generic.ArraySortHelper`1.QuickSort[TValue](T[] keys, TValue[] values, Int32 left, Int32 right, IComparer`1 comparer)

Steven Van de Craen’s Blog provided the solution nicely, with a really useful article complete with a cracking little downloadable tool which solved the issue, the article in question is here . The whole site looks to be a good source of information, I’ll certainly be visiting it again I’m sure.

Cheers

Dave Mc

Check out this article I picked up via Slashdot. Once again the whole story is not being painted.  Yes, Western Antarctica is loosing ice, but Eastern is gaining and cooling and overall the ice volume around the continent is expanding and deepening. 

Does this mean Global Warming is a lie? Of course not, Global Warming is a reality, which started many years ago but I firmly believe it was not started by Man.  What it does mean, yet again is that there are so many imponderables when it comes to the climate that you should be wary when you hear either scientists or more specifically politicians claiming that such and such a thing WILL happen.

I also hear that there is 33% more ice in the Arctic this year, not hearing much about that in the news either. However, a good deal of the ice is new not stable old ice which is worrying. Nevertheless, the Arctic has been warm before and it’s still there now, thank goodness it’s not too big, otherwise the UK would be like bloomin’ Siberia!

Just in case you think I’m poo-pooing any concern over the environment, I most certainly am not!  What I worry about is the obsession with carbon and Global Warming.  We can’t do much about the climate if anything.  We CAN however stop people chopping down rainforests, we can stop them unnecessarily building dams, we can stop over-fishing, waste dumping, making poisonous emissions, dropping fag ends, throwing litter, let’s concentrate on what we can influence here and now and deal with what the planet serves us up on the climate front.

Cheers

Dave Mc