"He never, ever, ever complains," said Steven Seaton, the editor of Runner's World magazine in Britain, who has competed with Sir Ranulph in a number of rugged multisport races that lasted several days in various forbidding wildernesses.
"Don't forget to drink chocolate milk after the run!" The voice of my high school cross-country coach echoed in my head as I crawled through the muddy water at the Rugged Maniac Obstacle Race in Brooklyn.
AM General had been exploring production of a civilian HumVee, entering the military truck in some rugged off-road races to build its reputation among hard-core off-roaders.
This mixture of race pride, rugged individualism and realpolitik has made for unpredictable political standpoints over the past 20 years.
He started in television producing "Eco-Challenge," essentially a race through rugged, uncivilized territory, then hit the jackpot with "Survivor," which puts ordinary people at the mercy of the environment (and their own egos).
Interspersed with the action-packed footage of young people having a blast is a whiz through different roles in the army, an occasional glimpse of tanks racing over rugged terrain and the odd gun barrel shooting a round into a clear blue sky.
Although I am somewhat of a "veteran racer" and have participated and won numerous obstacle races, including Rugged Maniac, RAID New York, and City Challenge, the idea of running without any hurdles to jump over, nets to crawl under, or tires to lift absolutely bored me.
I became an aficionado of alternative races (i.e. obstacle races like Urban RAID, mud runs like Rugged Maniac, and scavenger hunts like Great Urban Race) when I ran my first race last summer.
Adrien had never seen a great modern city before Cape Town; he had never seen the ocean; and he had never imagined a competition like the Epic, an eight-stage racrossross the rugged, shifting terrain of the Western Cape, in which more than a thousand bikers, riding in teams of two, covered as many as eighty off-road miles a day.
That was in the winter of 2008, when a steel rod was inserted in a leg smashed when he collided with a car while competing in his own charity event, a multi-day 1,000km mountain bike race across the rugged and remote terrain of Tasmania.
