The other weekend a few friends and I headed up to Fort William to take part in the Relentless 24 mountain bike endurance race. We chucked all our stuff into the hire van, with the intention of using it as a base during the race.
I volunteered to do the run at the start (always a sucker for a bit of additional pain), and after the first lap (~9 miles) I was about the 10th person back, but was first in the category we were in (Trios). We did a few more laps each, trying to beat each others fastest lap times and generally not treating the event seriously. Night time came (this race is a 24 hour relay) and we decided to do double laps, which was such a bad idea as it was cold and I didn’t have enough clothes. I cracked about half way round my second of the two laps, and crawled back to the start. The others on the team fared about the same, the cold was bitter and we had all just gone off too fast. We gave up and went to bed because the thought of doing any more double laps was just agony! In hindsight we should have went back to single laps at that point, but it was cold, dark and I’m just going to put it down to experience.
The morning came, we hadn’t set an alarm and it was 9am. At this point were last in our category (everyone else had continued through the night), so we worked hard for the remaining 3 hours and finished second last. At the end there were people falling over everywhere totally exhausted - it was kinda weird as I still felt fresh after only doing 7 laps and having 8 hours in bed, bit disappointing but have learned some lessons for sure. Since the race I have bought some winter clothes so won’t make the same mistake.
In general it was all really good fun, there were so many people there that I knew and the craic was awesome. The organisers were handing out ‘Relentless’ energy drink which was just mental stuff (made by Coca Cola, like red bull but in 500ml cans). One guy was sick in the changeover area, and he got a prize for it!
We smashed the rear light of the hire van by mistake, so a bit of glue and a few minutes with a hair drier sorted that out. The damage was still very obvious but the staff at the hire company didn’t notice when I took it back - bonus!
Last week my friends from Edinburgh University Gamesoc were raving about a new computer game/nuclear war simulator that had become available via an online content distribution system called steam. Now I used to play a game called Nuclear War for the amiga back when I was about 12, which I loved, and always wanted the facility of multiplayer (which back then was generally a turn based affair).
So anyway, after debating whether I had enough free time to play such a game, $10 from my credit card later and I am sitting in front of a spinning globe with some nasty facts about nuclear holocaust scrolling up the left hand side. The first evening I play a duel against Al, which I lose by about 20 points (20 Million more people dead on my continent than his!).
On Tuesday we had a 4 player game, which ended up being 2v2 as Al and Bruce teamed up right at the start which left myself and Oscar on the back foot (as we had geared ourselves up to fight each other). We allied quick sharp and Oscar had to take a fair amount of damage in the Atlantic before I could get there and help him.
Luckily I was also providing entertainment in the Pacific for Bruce, and I eventually overpowered his naval resources and pretty much wiped out the west coast of America. Sweet.
They then pretty much launched about 50% of their nukes at us (probably about 100 bombs in total). Oscar took the brunt of the damage. We were losing by a fair margin as Al still had his entire population tucked up in South America.
After their birds had either landed or got shot down, it was our turn to launch. I launched mainly at Al to reduce his score a bit, but also fired a few towards Bruce. Quite a number of nukes got through, South America and Eastern America got decimated. However Mexico was really well defended and I just couldn’t get a bomb in there. Then they launched again, and while their defences were down I managed to sneak a bomber from an aircraft carrier into Mexico and kill 8.4 Million people. Awesome.
In the end, we actually won. Bruce was really stupid and forgot about a fleet of submarines he had until the last minute, and by that point it was too late to use them. The game itself is a bit linear really but its good for a laugh. If you want a shot you can download a demo from the game’s site.
