UK Challenger Trophy, Aviemore

See it on Channel 4 “The Brain Cell”, 18th July 07:30AM

I've just come back from 5 days in the Cairngorms on business. Not quite my usual day job designing new aircraft, but as I was representing Airbus in the UK championships of Intelligent sport it counts. The Challenger Trophy or "UK Championships of Intelligent Sport" is closest cousin to the multi day adventure racing stage race (think MSOQ or Hebridean Challenge), but with a massive dose of extra strategy, team work, and problem solving.

The stages this year included night orienteering (using compass and pacing), a 2 hour team duathlon, 3 hour canoe stage, 5 hour mountain bike stage, a 2 hour stage based on "Cluedo" (Professor Plumb and all that) and perhaps the most tiring of all - a 3 hour chess game.

The problem with representing Airbus in Challenger is that we have a pretty much unbroken record of winning the things, when fielding anything like our top team. Including all the Challenger World Championships (unfortunately not taking place in 2010). This year we had a male performance team (including me), an all female team for he first time, and a male "Development" team of new guys.

In athletic terms we had a great team: Captain Martin Warren, uber experienced mountain biker, navigator and Challengerer; Jon "Forest" Price, veteran of all the Worlds competitions I’ve done, and a member of Qinetiq's team in the past; Matt the Machine, stepping in as last minute replacement for Broughton based Dave Bignell; Max "Power" Bachmann, a tall, quiet, ripped ex Swiss military pentathlon team member who never ever showed signs of tiring and Chris "Simon" Elsey, speedy runner and swimmer. In problem solving terms we also had a great team. In strategy terms...we weren't quite there as a team and it cost us. We did "okay" in almost all the stages, but never quite hit back at the leaders despite our best efforts. Except in the final stage…

Back to the board game: we knew that there would be a chess theme, but nobody knew beforehand that we would be playing two chess Grand Masters for 3 hours! Picture a hall containing 80 plus chess boards laid out in a big ring with dramatic lighting and the grand masters in the centre. Put fear into my heart. We were relieved to find out that our team "Exec" Mark had actually been in his school chess club, which raised our standard considerably, and he did a great job despite a shaky start losing a pawn almost straight away as none of us knew about the "en passant" move... One hour in we were in deep trouble, but we fought our way out. Two hours in we were in really deep trouble with our pieces decimated and constantly on the run from our alternating opponents. At this point most of the teams were still in. After two and a half hours the ranks were thinning, but we were still hanging in and eventually succumbed after around 2 hours and fifty minutes. Just another 2 or 3 moves and it would have been a "Draw"!

After the Cluedo we came to the last and certainly not least stage: the televised Grand Prix. This was introduced by Challenger as (despite awesome coverage from experienced AR film makers Dream Team TV) Channel 4 had decided that the main event was just too confusing for the average tv punter. To be fair it was always going to be a challenge to get it across in 25 minutes. Or longer. The “Brain Cell” Grand Prix stage was the answer to this dilemma. First past the post wins. Nice and simple? Except for the fact that failing to solve any of the puzzles around the course results in a multi-minute stay in a "Brain Cell" cage watching the brighter team fly by. Fancy a bit of problem solving under pressure?

After a disappointing main event we were on a mission. The stage started with one team member (Matt) sprinting about 200 metres along a sandy loch shore to retrieve our first puzzle. Heavily in oxygen debt, Matt was gutted not to be in shape to solve the Rubik’s cube, but Mark stepped in and saved the team with a speedy performance. Handing this in to the we were onto our bikes with another puzzle to solve en route to our first "Brain Cell". Finding that we had two different answers to the maths problem posed, we took the time to check through and get it right - giving the lead to some of other teams, but confident we could ride them down. I should have said that it's four team members out of the team to do each stage, and for this one it was me, "Forrest", Max Power and Simon.

Riding along the bike course I realised that the strong Norwegian team "Telenor" were sitting on our wheel. So dropping to the rear of team I slipped into the gap...and slowed my pace bit by bit. Once the gap between me and our other riders had opened I stood on the pedals and hammered ahead leaving Telenor with some more work to do.

Back in the transition area we were on foot towards the canoe section. Telenor took advantage of a better position on the racks and made a good transition to take the lead again. Running in tight formation Team Airbus pulled them in and cruised past.

Arriving at the canoes we made our worst mistake of the Stage: it was only after getting our canoe in the water we realised that we had it the wrong way round! After a quick rotation and with Telenor back in the lead again we continued on the canoe course reading two algebraic equations on the course buoys and getting Simon to solve them while the rest paddled. There wasn't more than a minute or two available but Simon nailed it, and we exited the water first, leaving Telenor to do another loop after submitting an incorrect answer.

On foot again for a lap of the Loch we solved the next puzzle (a Dingbat) without stopping, and put the hammer down to gain 3 minutes lead on the chasing teams with Simon and Max taking it in turn to tow.

The last Brain Cell was a tantalisingly 200 metres from the finish line, but it was easily the toughest. A tv screen was set up to show an animation of 20+ logos spinning and moving around the screen. We had to count how many were going anti-clockwise. Oh, and the animation changed every time. After 3 minutes we had converged on an answer of 8, but decided to give it "a couple of more goes" as nobody else had arrived. I was still getting 8, but Max announced that he now made it 9. At this point the next team (AWE) arrived. Reasoning that it would be easier to under-estimate we submitted Max's answer. An incorrect choice here would mean a tortuous 9 minutes in the Brain Cell, watching AWE or any other team that arrived and solved the problem to run past us to victory.

Find out what happened on Channel 4 (or see Dream Team TV site for streaming after 18th July).