Meeting in the middle of the woods, at a secure location in Bristol on a mild October evening, a group of spies/competitors prepared to invade and (possibly) destroy.
HQrecon events are a strategic reconnaissance event linked with cross country endurance running to create a new and exciting challenge. The aim here is invasion – you’ll start off at HQ and have to travel about 1 mile into one of three hidden bases, download and memorise a code before heading back to HQ to input your gained information and score points. Sounds simple enough, right? Well also thrown into the mix are guards on patrol. Upon arrival we were treated to a briefing and tactic-talk, talking through a few ideas;
- Either complete a zone then log your points before taking on the next, or try to tackle more than one zone, accumulate points but risk losing them all if you’re caught (I took the safer option which would prove to requiring a lot of running!)
- Listen to guards for their codes – if you can enter a code you’ve heard them say when you’re at the base you can gain extra points and deactivate the guard for 15 minutes.
- If you get caught, it’s back to HQ for a 5-10 minute workout (time is precious) and you forfeit that zone.
We were advised to head to different zones to avoid overcrowding - so for me it was off to Zone Bravo to get started!
Zone Bravo
After an approximately 1km jog (uphill) we logged in to Zone Bravo and were ready to go. Immediately feeling on edge, I started very slowly moving through the woods – over-cautious to anything around me. I noticed some spotlights in the distance and ensured I cut a wide berth to avoid them, doing my best to stay well hidden and quiet. Almost straight away my team-mate and I separated more due to not being able to see each other rather than any tactic – he seemed to favour charging straight down the middle, I wanted to sneak around the edges. After a good amount of time of avoiding lights and not seeing any guard I realised I would actually need to get towards the middle of the woods to avoid missing the 45 minute time limit – here’s where it started getting exciting. Suddenly guards were around and it was a case of choosing to stay on a quiet footpath and risk being on part of their patrol route or crawl through bushes and risk making too much noise. I mixed between the two and ended up extremely close to guards a few times – even jumping down into a dark ditch to hide under a bank while they scanned the area.
Eventually I stumbled on to the base - a small, hidden tent next to a red light attached to a tree! How foolish I’d been for avoiding the lights I could see! I downloaded my code, did my best to remember it and it was an adrenaline-fuelled sprint back (in a much shorter route than I took to get there) to check out of the zone and back to HQ to register my points where a few unlucky soles who had been caught were being subjected to a beasting from a guard.
Zone Alpha
I was buzzing now so it was straight into Zone Alpha (after another 1km uphill run). After checking in here I seemed to immediately come across a patrol guard, I dived onto the floor to hide behind a thin tree (brilliant tactics from a panicking mind) and was incredibly relieved to see him walk right by me. Three questions popped up then – was a actually a guard or another competitor who must now think I’m quite odd? Was he a guard who did not call me out because I stayed hidden? Am I actually incredibly stealthy and an amazing hider? Assuming it was the third option I remembered to head towards any red lights I could see and was rewarded by quickly coming across the base in this zone down a steep slope. Getting back was harder this time as I seemed to come across more guards, however I picked up the realisation than if you make a bit of noise that startles them, as long as you drop to the ground or stay hidden out of plain sight, guards tend to do a quick area scan and move on.
To add to my cockiness here – at one point the black headscarf I was wearing got snagged on a bush and pulled off my head as a guard was scanning the area, I could have moved on and left it, but luckily another competitor made some noise which allowed me to jump back over a log, grab my headscarf and sprint back to HQ. I am just like Indian Jones.
Punishment
My team-mate was caught during his attempt on Zone Alpha. As soon as he was caught the guards radioed his race-number back into HQ and sent him on his way back down, hanging his head in shame. The workout he was subjected to included a lot of static holds, jumps, crawls and squat walks – basically anything to sap energy – while a guard shouted at him to ‘give up his code’ – but he never got the code so the workout continued! While only lasting 5 minutes or so, time, energy and every point you can get is precious, highlighting how careful you need to be to avoid getting caught.
Zone Charlie
When I began to take on Zone Charlie I was running out of time (I had arrived a bit late to the event) so I knew that time was of the essence. Typically, it took a 1km (steeper) uphill run to get there and check in, but when inside I decided to throw tactics out of the window, this would be a sprint to the base which I quickly found, only having to avoid one guard on the way. After downloading my code I was told I had 5 minutes to get back – it’s on. I got up and every bit of my obstacle racing history came into use from jumping over logs, climbing over gates and crawling along the ground. Any guard who I alerted didn’t get the pleasure of my company for too long (one apparently was curious if it was a deer making all the noise).
I got back to HQ within the time limit, buzzing and full of cockiness about my performance when disaster struck! After all that I had forgotten my code!! I made a half-hearted guess but got it wrong so forfeited the points on the zone, I was devastated! That would be why they recommended taking a pen & paper, they even gave us a map I could have written the codes on!
I finished the evening with 225 points, no codes heard from guards but also no capture. I was shattered at the end, I had used every muscle in my body to jump, crawl, climb and run and discovered my memory was not up to task like the rest of my body was! I took a headtorch along with me but kept it in my hand, using it only briefly and intermittently to avoid detection. The whole event was incredible and so much fun, the problem is that now I can see my name on a leaderboard I’m not going to be satisfied until it’s at the top! Luckily HQRecon put on regular event on weekdays and weekends!
Find out more about HQRecon from our preview or on their website.