Ridgeway School teachers take part in Rat Race Dirty Weekend

Three teachers from Ridgeway School took part in the gruelling Rat Race Dirty Weekend recently.

Craig Follett (Assistant Principal / Head of Maths); Ian Hartley (Head of Personal Development & Religious Studies) and Martin Tinkler (Head of Care & Services) completed the world’s largest obstacle course as part of the school’s Staff Resilience Challenge.

“Some of the obstacles were quite difficult, especially the ones in the water and making your way up the final furlong’s climbing wall and cargo net,” said Ian Hartley.

Whilst other members of staff have set themselves challenges that include learning to play the guitar or successfully baking a cake, these three members of staff decided to tackle something more physical.

Set in the grounds of Burghley House, Lincolnshire, the course involved jumping off a 20ft platform into a lake, sliding into a reservoir, climbing over numerous wooden obstacles, tackling the world’s longest set of monkey bars (130 metres long), swinging on pendulums, leaping onto airbags from the top of a container lorry and crawling through tunnels. And if that wasn’t tough enough the ‘final furlong’ consisted of a climbing wall and cargo nets attached to shipping containers stacked taller than the height of two double decker buses.

There is the opportunity to ‘bail out’ of the course at 13 miles, but despite aching knees and feet, they were determined to complete the whole course. Out of 4000 ‘racers’, they finished in the 1800s and beat both the average time of their wave and the average time overall.’

“It was a real challenge to complete but a great sense of accomplishment was felt by all of us when we finished. Plans are already being made to enter next year’s competition in order to beat our time and other members of staff have expressed an interest in joining us,” said Ian Hartley.