The Big Picture has shots of the Tough Guy Challenge 2009:

Billed as “the safest most dangerous taste of physical and mental endurance pain in the world”, the Tough Guy Challenge took place yesterday, February 1st, on South Perton Farm, near Wolverhampton, England. Thousands of challengers (men and women) started the endurance race, with hundreds dropping out along the way due to exhaustion or injury – broken bones, dislocations, and over 600 cases of hypothermia. Even the overall winner, James Appleton, was treated briefly for hypothermia.

Did the guy in the Borat suit finish, you think?

I just noticed this really cool workout that I WON'T be doing anytime soon from the T-Nation Third World Workouts article:

Underwater rock runs

Our boats would be anchored about 100 yards off the beach, in around 18 feet of water. We generally used these as the markers, but the workout can be performed just as easily if you run parallel to a beach. You can also use the deep end of a pool. (Just check with the lifeguards first so you don't cause an incident.)

Each two-man team picks a large rock and races to the boat with it. The first man carries the rock while the second man swims above him on the surface. Then they switch. Once they reach the boat, a mooring line is dropped in the water and the rock must be carried up the line onto the deck of the boat. From here, knock out 50 pushups, throw the rock back into the water (check for swimmers first), and return it to the beach.

18 feet deep!? I think by the time I got down there I'd have to come right back up. I also get water up my nose no matter what I do, so I can't imagine this is the workout for me, but man it sounds like fun if you can swim. How the heck one climbs a mooring line while carrying a heavy rock though, I have no idea.

I just found, via the Crossfit forums, an Outside article from 2003 on Juliet Draper, a monster competitor at the Firefighter's Combat Challenge. Here's the deal with the course:

Today's racers--some 100 men and two women, all wearing 75 pounds of firefighting gear--will have to lug a 45-pound hose pack up five flights of stairs; hoist another 45-pound hose pack, by a rope, to the top of a stair platform; drive a 165-pound steel I-beam with a sledgehammer; run through orange traffic cones to reach a water-charged hose, which they'll drag 75 feet; and walk 100 feet backward, pulling a 175-pound dummy named Rescue Randy. All this while wearing masks and breathing from the bulky scuba-type air tanks firefighters carry on their backs.

Since then, she absolutely crushed the previous women's world record for the course, at the same time becoming the first woman to break 2:00 (by a significant margin, I might add).

I love Mark Sisson's blog, and really enjoyed this thought-provoking piece of his: Training is No Guarantee of Health. It's anecdote and opinion, but Mr. Sisson is a very smart guy, and a lot of it simply rings true for me. Not surprisingly, some members of the Triathlon Forum were quick to object.

Talk about putting your body to the test... As chronicled in his two part piece One Mile to Ripped (here's Part II), Warren Scott Smith tests his theory that intense intervals are great for fat loss by running sprints wearing TWO weighted vests (to simulate the near-death agony that workouts induced back when he weighted 297 pounds). Funny and interesting, but this paragraph in particular struck me:

...I've discovered the biggest difference between those of us in the weight training game and those who are in endurance sports: endurance athletes equate getting better based on how much easier it is to do more work. We associate getting stronger with a willingness to make work even more difficult. I believe this is the root cause of the average Joe's failed attempts at fat loss.

I hope this joints forgive him for the pounding.