An evolution team competed in the Shelterbox Dartmoor Challenge in April, came fifteenth and raised enough money for Shelterbox to send two boxes full of equipment to Sri Lanka to help displaced families.
After the successful completion of the Three Peaks Challenge last September, I was looking for a challenge for 2009.
A chance discussion with a client at a networking breakfast led a team of us to join the Shelterbox Dartmoor Challenge in April this year.
The Challenge is a 30 mile race for teams of four across Dartmoor over 2 days – carrying a Shelterbox.
The Shelterbox is a large plastic box containing a tent, stove, cooking utensils and everything needed to supply shelter for displaced people in disaster areas across the world (it weighs 40kg).
We did manage some training, but the full team only managed to get together at the start of the Challenge.
The Evolution team was Martin Crump, Associates Nik Green and James Hampton, and Client Robert Green.
The teams had to decide how to carry the box and it’s contents and navigate over Dartmoor following a pre-defined route.
We managed to get lost in the first field, eventually getting back on track where we made good progress overtaking a number of teams to finish 11th at the end of the first day out of field of 48 teams.
Dawn of the second day saw the Evolution team stumbling around with various aches and pains but raring to go.
We took the tent down cooked our breakfast and packed everything away and set off with the rest of the field.
Getting lost again, we lost some places but fought back slowly to eventually finish 15th.
The general consensus within the team was that we really enjoyed it and it was tougher than the Three Peaks Challenge.
We raised £1,000 which paid for 2 ShelterBoxes to be sent out to Sri Lanka to accommodate people made homeless by conflict.
Next year, we are thinking about entering 4 teams with each one of us leading a group of people who would like to undertake a difficult but rewarding challenge. Let us know if you are interested.
More information about the Challenge can be found at:
http://www.shelterbox.org/events.htm
