In March 2011 as part of 45 commando Royal Marines, I was deployed to Afghanistan to a small checkpoint called Tanoor in the south of the country. I was stationed there with 16 other marines and patrolled daily to help secure the area .After hearing about the conquer the world lucky2bhere challenge we had the opportunity to get Afghan ticked off the map and had to decide what challenge or event we could hold in our checkpoint. With no space to run or no exercise machines we decided to hold a strongest marine challenge.  The event would take place in our state of the art gym and consisted of pull ups, press ups, bench press, dips and shoulder press.

The week before we decided to hold it the banter between the lads started and it was getting competitive and there was a week of last minute training. The competition started with 7 competitors, one of which was our afghan interpreter. With a points system in place for the amount of reps done we got started the first exercise was the bench press (don’t know what weight it was because it was empty ammo containers filled with sand) then press-ups and shoulder press, there was plenty banter and abuse between the lads as thing were getting more and more competitive. After the first 3 events Big Smudge, Scouse Dave and Stevie were in the lead but “pea head” Rory from Dornoch reckoned his events were still to come, the pull ups and dips, but he was wrong even with his dodgy reps on the dips it wasn’t enough. Dave banged out 32 pull ups and 50 dips which no one could compete with and was already in the lead, so was crowned the winner of Tanoor strong man competition much to his delight and we didn’t hear the end of this for the rest of the tour as Dave strutted about in his new lucky2bhere vest! 

Cpl Iain Urquhart

Mortar troop

45 commando

Royal Marines  (also Skeabost Bridge, Skye)

Thanks To Iain and the boys from 45 Commando for their support.

Where next?, that's up to you. If you have and event planned, get in touch. We’ll send you a t-shirt, take a picture doing your event.You then get your pin placed on the conquer the world map.