• Cat 1 - go ahead and apply for the Main AOSB, we think you're ready


• Cat 2 - usually accompanied by a 6, 12, 18 or 24 - you have potential but you're not ready yet. Go away for 6, 12, 18 or 24 months and get better prepared before the Main AOSB
  
• Cat 3 - we don't think you should go for the Main AOSB for whatever reason, however we aren't going to stop you


• Cat 4 - you can't apply for the main board. Go home and think about a different career

• You work approximately 18 - 20 hours a day unless you are slow at ironing in which case you can add a couple of hours on to that


• Whilst no one thing you do is particularly challenging, the sheer quantity of things that are happening each day is what is hard work and what tires you out.


• There is not that much physical training (PT), but you get more than enough exercise from marching around all the time at high speeds, and usually carrying a good few kilos with you


• Unless you are very lucky and have feet made of Tungsten, you get blisters. This can be a real pain as if they get to bad there are some activities you can't take part in so you can drop begind. Also if you don't look after them they can get infected and you end up in hospital (as has happened to a couple of cadets). Main thing is to keep them dry and padded, and change your socks as often as possible.


• You eat. A lot. A standard breakfast (bearing in mind that I used to skip breakfast) consists of a glass of OJ, a sausage, a rasher of bacon, 3-4 hash browns, a fried egg, a poached egg, a couple of tomatoes, a couple of fried breads, a spoonfull or two of baked beans, a shredded wheat, a bowl of cocoa pops, two slices of toast, and a yoghurt and a cup of tea if there is any and if you have time. Average consumption time is about 8 minutes. The trick seems to be put as much food on your plate as you can and keep eating until you have to be somewhere else. If there isn't gravy / custard on your boots your plate isn't full enough.


• Any 'free time' isn't free. It is when you shine your boots, iron your uniform, learn some drills, make your bed, clean your room / platoon area, stuff more food down your neck, or sleep (if you are very lucky and have someone to make sure you get up).

This was very hard. Difficult to say exactly how far we went, probably about 65km, and it took us exactly 35hrs. Less than 4hrs of this was spent sleeping. For the hill geeks among you, there were approximately 5kms of contours, and I would guess about a million inches of rainfall / hailfall. Wind wasn't too bad but certainly made its presence known. Bags weighed 20lbs (44lbs) when they were dry and it wasn't your turn to carry the radio which is at least a couple of kgs.

Started last Wednesday. Up at 6am as usual, a normal day until 2pm when we got on a coach from RMAS to the Black Mountains (black like their soul) arriving at about 5.45pm. A quick container meal which tasted of nothing, then started walking at 6.35pm. 1st checkpoint (CP) ok, then had a horrible uphill climb (47 contours I think) with numerous fake crests, all over heather and baby-heads. Morale lifted slightly with \\"Did you hear the one about the Officer Cadets that climbed a hill that never f***ing ended?\\".

Made really good time from then up to about 12hrs. There was some awesome navigation through the night when there was about 10m viz through the mist, and the tracks were barely distiguishable. At this point we were ahead of all the cadre teams (experienced soldiers who were also doing the exercise as they want to become instructors at RMAS). However, on the way up to CP V, one of the team had a bit of a wobble as he'd forgotten to eat or drink anything for a while, then after that was sorted, we got in the direction of the CP when the heavens opened, the mist came down, and we missed the CP by about 50m because we couldn't see it. After a lot of back and forth, we ended up at the next CP round, very wet, sore, and 1000 points worse off because we needed to change our route to pick up the missed CP on the way back round.

For me, from here until CP 3 (about 8hrs later) was the hardest stint - very sore feet, everything wet and dirty, shoulders and waist rubbing on bergan, chaffing in unmentionable places, and knowing you still have a whole night of walking ahead of you. CP X is renouned as the mother of all hills, and whilst it wasn't hardest peak we did (that privaledge probably went to CP V), it wasn't far off. As usually, the second we got over 700m (literally - we were at a spot height of 701m!), it started hailing etc again. Our plan had been to take some comedy photos at CP X, but by the time we got there, there was only enough energy for some moans of \\"lets get off this b*****d mountain\\" so we set off down into the valley again.

On the way down, we were treated to a few moments of sunshine (\\"What the hell is that big hot thing in the sky?\\"), and arrived at CP3 very drained. So much so that the command task was a bit of a disaster, and the directing staff let us move our bivi site (place where you sleep) from CP 3 (about 4hrs away) to our current spot.

After some food and slightly less that 4hrs sleep, we packed up again, and set off. Quite bizarre as when we woke up it was 10.15pm and looked a lot like dawn. It wasn't for about half an hour that we realised it was getting dark and was actually night time! At this point I had a second wind, and assisted with the navigation up at the front of the group. After a couple of hours going up hill and through fog and confused sheep, we got to CP Z, then all the way down again to CP 2, then all the way up to CP Y. It is now light again and just before 6am (and raining of course - we are on the top of a hill). The rules of the exercise stated that after 35hrs you would start losing points. As we started at 6.35pm, that gave us 45mins to get back to the drop-off point we had started at 34hrs and 15mins ago. Not surprisingly, we were flagging somewhat, and ended up running the last 1500m in about 15mins, but did manage to get back at exactly 35hrs (to the minute).

After that, an uncomfortable Bedford ride back to Crickhowell camp, shower, change, breakfast, then on a coach back to RMAS (of which no one remembers any).

This was undoubtable one of, if not the most, challenging thing I have done in my life so far. People say it will be one of those things you look back on and think how fun it was at the end of it all, but I'm really not convinced...