A WEE COUNTY company recently scooped two accolades at a Scottish awards ceremony.

Alloa-based Brass Monkey Events, organisers of the McTough Guy obstacle course race at Knockhill, were delighted to receive not just one, but two trophies at the OCR Scotland Awards 2016 ceremony in Edinburgh two weeks ago.

The race, based on the renowned original, “hardest and toughest” Tough Guy event near Wolverhampton, won the awards for Toughest Obstacle with its Sandbag Hill and was also the winner of the all-important Best Race category.

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It's been a real team effort according to Alex, one of the lead organisers with a passion for obstacle course races (OCR), who explained: “Because we were a brand new event, we didn't actually expect to get anything.

“When we received the first one, which was the Toughest Obstacle – that came as a surprise and I thought: 'Right, that's us, we are happy'.

“And then, when Scotland's Best Race was announced and we had won it – that was just massive, because it is voted for by the people who actually run in these types of events throughout Scotland and it beat the likes of Tough Mudder and Spartan.

“We've got a good team behind us, just a big group of friends who came together to put these events on and it's a testament to them.”

The event, which saw around 450 participants test their endurance, stamina and willpower over a 15km race full of fiendish obstacles in the Scottish winter, took place this January around Knockhill Racing Circuit.

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Alex and his team are already organising next winter's event; it's going to be even bigger and tougher as they are adding more challenges. He hopes to double the amount of entries this year.

But first, by popular demand, they are hosting a family event in the summer.

McTough Kids will be a 3km event for children along with their parents with 17 obstacles on July 30. There will be mud, climbing, crawling and more, before a big drop into the foam pool for the finish.

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Alex said: “We had a lot of requests from people, saying their kids would love something like this so we decided to bring out McTough Kids.

“It's a 3km route around the McTough Guy course, where parents and children go around together. It's all about parents and kids getting active together.”