At about the 4K, it's hard to know for sure, the line of wet, filthy, groaning lunatics reaches a wall of near vertical rocky bluffs, greasy with rain and soaking moss. There is an element of danger. The field bunches as people climb. A marshal, belayed to a tree, watches in satisfaction as we totter past. The survivors descend the line of flags then sprint along a stream bed, up to our knees in freezing, brown water.
Ominous howls echo through the forest.
The stream veers to the right and now Brian Mulroney's missing clause is revealed. Before me is not a puddle, not even a pond. It is the deepest, dirtiest, and certainly the coldest water hazard I've even seen. For the next forty yards, I put my arms up into the rain and try not to get swept away by the current. The water reaches my chin.