Back in November Microsoft reached out to those of us in the UK community to join forces with them in taking part in the Microsoft UK Challenge (Challenger for short) event in June. UK Challenge is part of a global series of "Intelligent Sport" events that are aimed at measuring and developing "everything that makes us effective as business people" plus it raises plenty of money for the NSPCC.

The event itself comprises of 4 days out in the Welsh countryside competing against teams from other corporate bodies in a series of multi-discipline events that include: Running, Mountain Biking, Kayaking, Puzzle Solving, Construction and most importantly - strategy. Whilst you have to be physically fit to take part success in this event also requires your team to have equal levels of mental fitness and problem solving skills. Neither David nor Goliath alone could win this event, but if they worked together they would stand a chance!

As soon as I heard about this event I knew I had to be involved, not only is it a great opportunity to raise money for such an important charity but to me it represents the perfect test of both physical ability and team work.

Team Tutti Frutti (don't ask) includes other well known community types:

• Steve Smith of Combined Knowledge and SharePoint User Group fame.
• Tim Lung - VBUG big cheese.
• Dave McMahon - Dave runs the NxtGen user group in Birmingham

The final two members of the team are from Microsoft who (thankfully) have experience from past events to help guide us through both the preparation and the event itself.

• David Hobbs-Mallyon - SQL Server Product Manager at Microsoft
• Steve Loader - User Experience Product Manager in Microsoft Services

Whilst I live a fairly healthy lifestyle I certainly wouldn't consider myself to be an athlete and so the prospect of running 15 miles or cycling 30 miles is quite daunting - I have lots of training to do! You can keep in touch with (amongst other things) my training progress by following me on Twitter, stay tuned for more information! In the coming weeks I hope to provide details of how you could help sponsor our team it would be great to raise as much money as possible for such a worthy cause.