Together with a few people from my class i organised a big event, pitching people from Cios against the dutch army. ( Cios is my school, wich teaches you to become a sports teacher, ranging from drill instructor (Cios:SCUB) to outdoors sports instructor (Buitensport, outdoor sports, wich im going to do) to physical trainer on elementary schools, to 'movement co-ordinator' for old people, dunno what its called, and lots more.)
Somehow though, not one person from SCUB wanted to compete in our event. Saying, 'we know what walks around there, we arent going to win anyway', while this event is something that should really appeal to them.
It was really hard to organise this, and it took us over 6 weeks with 5 people in organisation.
We had to hold pre-selections to select the best people from our school to stand a chance, setting out a course in a nearby forest, arranging materials, timeplanning, informing everyone about our project, etc etc.
we were in the forest at 6 in the morning, setting everything up so we could start at 8:45.
Overall it took something around 20 minutes to complete in a normal jogging speed, the fastest time that day accomplished was 11:20 minutes.
In the end, we selected 20 people, of wich 9 people could not make it that day ( but informed us of their problems way to late, leaving us to make last minute arrangements on the army barracks on the day the event was going down ).
Then for the day itself on the army base, we ofcourse had to make arrangements and reach an agreement to be able to organise this thing.
later on, in this past week, we went to the base 3 times, one day to see what ideas we could use on the assault course, and wich idea's we could not use. in the end of that day, we had new and good ideas for it.
On thursday we went there again, setting up all the ideas we thought up.
For this, we took the basic assault course, but we altered it in such a way even a soldier who has been in the army for 6 years had never seen our way of dealing with obstacles the way we wanted them to do.
And then came THE day, friday. The day our selected people came to the base, together with a 5man team of the army, to compete for the best time.
We had to make sure everyone had insurrance, wich we had to take care of ourselves, everyone had to have ID cards with them, the daywatch had to knew who were coming, we had to reserve tables in the base restaurant so everyone could eat, we had to make sure everybody arrived at the base (we got an army bus to pick them up at a trainstation ) and a whole lot more.
At around 11 hours our people arrived, a few minutes later so did the soldiers who were to compete.
we held introductions, went over rules on the base, and took everybody with us to explain the workings of our obstacle course.
after that, we went to the restaurant to eat, and we then brought them back to the course, giving them some time to think of strategies to tackle obstacles.
Then, at 1 o'clock, the army team started the course and set the time to beat, 12:41.
After that, came 3 of Cios teams, (wich were reduced to 4 men per team, instead of the planned 5 because not everybody who got through pre-selection could make it that day), all not beating the time set by the army. Times ranged from 14, to 15, to 20 minutes.
Motivation that day, was for all teams more then we could have asked for.
The army, ofcourse, did not want to lose and went as fast as they could, leaving most people in awe at their speed.
Our teams gave all they had to beat the set time, resulting in collapsing people at the end of the course
There were some girls there too, who had to really give all they had and wich still wouldnt be enough, ( for example on the rope course, catcrawling ). One girl really impressed me, she was so tired and beat she cried silently, but without complaining she carried on, completed our course, then at the end, completely broke down, but very happy she didnt give up and carried on. Our army guys were there the whole time, trying to motivate her, taking obstacles with her etc. After everybody was done, the 5 people from the organisation including me took our course as well, but since we were running along all day with every team, we were pretty tired allready and we set a time of 15:something.
(as for the day before, we set a time of 13:30 while testing ).
In the end, the army was the ultimate winner, but not one team felt they had lost, because it was a very hard course and yet still they completed it, gaining a personal victory.
Then, a drill instructor noted that the Cios students could finish a great day by bellydiving into the mud at one of the obstacles, jokingly.
Within a few seconds, the first of our crazies was allready laying facedown in the mud, followed by me shortly after, followed by pretty much everybody else shortly after that
It was really funny looking at the soldiers faces because we could clearly see they laughed their asses of at our crazyness, but loved us for doing it
One guy really got in and got himself dirty, he was pretty much all black from the mud, except for his eyes and teeth, walking around with a smile like this: . Overall, the day could not have been any better. Our time planning this whole thing over the past six weeks really paid off, everybody was very happy, dirty and exhausted, motivation was high (especially considering we actually had a week free from school, so they this project didnt get them a day free of it, but sacrificed their own time. Same went for most of the army dudes, they were free but came to our project anyway and give us all their best).
The best compliment we had, and possibly could have had, was that the drill instructors wanted to leave our course standing for other soldiers to train on
. That really made us, as organisation, really really happy.In the end, to me, it was not about winning, but comparing yourself to the people that defend our country, and gaining new respect for what our soldiers do. ( of wich i heard quite a few remarks, saying 'respect for the people who do this every day' and stuff like that )
Ive made a few pictures of the course, and video footage of our army guys taking the obstacle course, but i'm waiting for more footage and pictures made by other guys so i can make a great video out of this whole project.
When i get it, and the video is done, i'll upload it to Youtube and post a link
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