Welcome to the Extreme Endurance wing of Commando 999.

Pause for just one second and ask yourself when was the last time you pushed yourself to what you thought were your absolute limits of mental and physical endurance, when you thought you couldn’t bear any more pain only to find that when you thought you could go no further, you somehow managed to tap into an unknown source of determination and guts which bordered on sheer bloody mindedness and an explicit refusal to give in.

What is it that makes you realise just how special it is to share a single cup of tea amongst five or six mates. What a fine thing it is to share true comradeship in the face of adversity and to somehow still raise a smile. Whilst many if not all of the great challenges on earth have been conquered there are still challenges within oneself to conquer.

Amazon Jungle 2009

‘Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat’ – Theodore Roosevelt

At a time when Royal Marines, soldiers and airmen are once again sacrificing their lives or suffering terrible injuries I am reminded of an inscription I read in respect of the 39th Battalion Australian Army in WWII.

‘Courage, mateship, endurance, sacrifice’ - Inscription from the Kokoda Isurava Memorial Pillars

It was these values which I shared with other Royal Marines that I found amongst those ultra-marathon and extreme endurance runners whom I have had the privilege to come to know. Somehow they seemed to intrinsically understand what it was we were in search of, even though many would have difficulty expressing what it was they were looking for if asked the question – why?

So it is to that end that the Commando 999 Extreme Endurance Wing was formed in 2010 in order to ‘dare mighty things’ and to raise funds in order that we may look after our injured mates.

‘There are lots of good things in the world, but I’m not sure that comradeship is not the best of them all – to know that you can do something big for another chap’ – Sir Ernest Shackleton

If we fail somewhere along the way, we will still have won. We have made some life-long mates on our journey so far and we look forward to making new ones in the future.

We hope you can join us in spirit, if not in body.

Paddy Craig – Extreme Endurance Wing