Ashley Farrel, one of our wonderful Student Fundraising Managers, leads by example. One of Childreach International's top athletes, he's been pushing himself to his very limits while fundraising for our projects around the globe. Follow Ashley's blog to find out more from a keen fundraiser and for plenty of amusing stories.

If you dare to venture deep into the bowels of Staffordshire, down to the dark forests on the outskirts of Wolverhampton, you’re in for a big surprise. You’ll find a god-forsaken land; a world of smoldering fire and brimstone, ice-cold rivers, and make-shift wooden structures that leer menacingly through corrugated iron mesh.

Welcome to the TOUGH GUY competition. Your idea of ‘tough’ will never be the same again.

For the uninitiated, Tough Guy is an 8 mile race specially designed to make you wish you had never been born. And it was all for charity.

It begins with a relatively gentle jog through the countryside…and then you hit the ditches, filled with waist-high, icy-cold water, and then there’s…THE KILLING FIELDS.

To use the vernacular, this is the point where the “muck” really hits the fan. Think of 27 obstacles designed to grind the competitor down into a state of hypothermia, shock and pain. We’re talking crawling under barb-wire as a welcome relief. No, Seriously.

It began with a succession of muddy trenches filled with freezing cold water. You would simply jump into one then climb out. Then jump into the
next. Over and over again. As you enter into double figures there is a certain mud fatigue that sets in at the sight of yet another deep pit.

By this point certain parts of your body have shrunk to the size of peanuts and you start to wonder why on earth you paid to do this.

You then have to run through rows of dangling wires (some of which are attached to the electricity mains and send an extremely unpleasant shock to the system). One such wire caught me straight on the knee-cap. Shrieking like a wounded animal, I recoiled in shock at the feeling of the current rushing up my leg. It was at this point I knew I was in for a really horrible afternoon.

Next came the complete darkness of a deeply disorientating watery cavern. Pitch black and crawling face-down in the mud you had to follow the curses and squeals which led inexorably into the dangling electric wires catching your face and hands. With only one way out and people pushing from behind I remember feeling that there was no option but to keep moving, keep dragging yourself up. Finally you emerge after pulling yourself out of a long, dark tunnel, squinting in the Staffordshire sunlight and steaming from the electric shocks. But your ordeal is far from over.

You still have to tackle the rope course where you attempt to jump from island to island surrounded by a sea of freezing water. You swing like tarzan across this muddy archipelago of slippery plastic stations attempting to avoid the watery grave below.

The final tests was the river walk in neck-deep water, where you had to dunk your head under a series of logs. The human body, I am told, can survive in freezing cold water for up to three minutes. The average amount of time that a Tough Guy participant is in water is 22 minutes.

You know that your body is suffering when running through fire is a welcome relief from the cold.

However battered and bruised I felt, I made it to the finish line. That moment of being wrapped in a shiny aluminium blanket and given a sugary cup of tea was sheer bliss.

I had endured 3 hours and 32 minutes of suffering, pain and anguish. Raised over £250 for Childreach International and could officially call myself a ‘TOUGH GUY.’

If you want to get involved in your own challenge to support Childreach International, just get in contact with me by emailing fundraising@childreach.org.uk