With only 2 weeks between GORUCK Toughs, it was important that I recover. I usually feel pretty wrecked after rucking events, and maybe I'm an inch shorter, too. I decided to not touch the ruck during the 2 weeks. My reasoning was that in the first week, I'd be recovering. The second week was the week leading up to the next event, and I didn't want to go in not 100%.
The day after the GORUCK Independence Day event, I went on a walk at McAlpine Creek Park with my mom and dad. I wasn't even sure that I could walk normally, but that ended up being ok. I'd normally ruck when I'm on walks with them, but I gingerly just took my nearly empty daypack.
It was a beautiful park, with two ponds, plus greenway that goes for miles. It even has a permanent XC course with a starting line archway. Totally legit. Since it's flat and beautiful and shaded in parts, I decided that it would be a good place to do marathon training in the future.
Monday, the top of my ankle felt used, and didn't feel like it had good integrity.
Tuesday, Jul 10:
I didn't go to the gym at work after work because I was too tired and hungry, but I made it out to my subdivision's fitness room later. My heart was craving some cardio, like my blood was stagnant in my body, so it was good to get it flowing.
8.0 in 1:06:00, 8:15 ave, 2 degrees of incline.
Watched the Tour de France while running. It's suprisingly good motiviation and good for making the miles go by, even though it's just a bunch of people pedalling.
Saturday, Jul 14:
I made it out to McAlpine Creek Park, to fulfill my vision of doing long runs here. I went early in the morning, to avoid the sun and heat. I wanted to cover as many different trails and offshoots as possible, to get to know the place and scout out my options for future runs. I first headed straight out on the greenway, towards the end that I didn't go to with my parents. I got to the end of the paved portion and went for another 1 mile on singletrack that would become more paved greenway in the future. When I went as far as I could, I headed back, and took a detour into James Bryce Park, which has a bunch of dirt trails of its own, single and double track. I wound through the single track as much as I could to extend distance in the shaded area. When I exhausted that, I headed back to where I parked, crammed down a PB sandwhich and gulped water, then continued on trails that I had explored during my previous visit.
15.1 in 2:42:36, 10:44 ave. Slow, but the single track would've slowed things down, as did a little route finding on the future greenway area, as did waiting for a big snake to cross the road. I need a better pace than that, so I'm looking forward to seeing a better number next time. I'll probably stick with laps on the greenway.
Monday, Jul 16:
Body weight strength session, to make sure my infrastructure is maintained for GORUCK.
- Crunches: 450/side
- Plank: 3.5 min
- Squats: 100
- Abductor/Adductor Leg Lifts: 100/135
- Pullups: 5 + 10 Toes to bars, 5 + 10 Toes to Bars
- Pushups: 25 + 20
- Single Leg Squats: 65, 75
- 6 in: 60s
- Russian Twists with 8lb wt: 30
- Lower Leg Extensions: 110
- Assorted bumbells
Wanted some kind of run this week, even if it's the week before a big event, to help my body remember what it's like to run normal, after last weekend's long run and Monday's strength session. Felt decent. The faster medium run pace felt easy for the first time in a while.
5.0 in 39:14, 7:51 ave, 2 degrees of incline.
Thursday & Friday, Jul 19-20:
This weekend was the last weekend of Geocaching's Hidden Creatures virtual souvenirs hunt, so I took the opportunity to hit a couple of patches of geocaches.
The first patch was on Thursday at a business park near where I work. It had one hidden little park with a waterfall and stream that was just gorgeous. It's in the middle of the business park, and I work so close to it, but I never knew it was there.
Friday also wasn't a workout, but it ended up being surprisingly strenuous. I didn't measure it ahead of time, but one way ended up being about 2.5 miles, for 5 total miles of walking. No ruck or anything, but I'm not used to walking long-ish distances, so my feet were tired by the end! How do I expect to do long distance rucking, if 5 miles is a challenge? It's funny how running 5 miles is no big deal, but walking it makes your legs much more tired. I guess it's the additional time on your feet, and slightly different muscles. I got lots of caches and discovered many hidden treasures in our city. It was fun to do something like this during the week. I run along this trail every couple of weeks, but there are things that I discovered that I hadn't noticed during the runs.
GORUCK TOUGH - ORW
Cadre Montreal decided to host this event at Crowder's Mountain, so that we could experience ORW in terrain more similar to what the soldiers experienced in the real ORW. That was pretty cool, since most GORUCK events involve rucking through city streets in the middle of the night. This would be legit mountain, with not even street lights to keep us company.
It was an HTL, too, so it didn't occur to me until Wednesday that the Tough would start at 10pm on Saturday, not Friday. Extra time to rest! That was nice. For Friday events, I'd be driving straight from a full day of work and go right in. With a Saturday event, I could nap during the first part of the day and come in rested.
When I got to the start point in the dark, the HTLers were already there, recovering from their 24 hr ordeal and gearing up for the next challenge. There were many people I didn't know. It was a big class, with 40 in all. This ended up being perfect for our welcome party, where we did modified Murph in a group. Suitable to be honoring the 4-man team, and Murph, in this way. We split the Murph reps among us.
After that, it was time to head out. We carried the coupons up the mountain, swapping coupons with each other. The most challenging part was the terrain. I don't remember the name of the trail, but it took us way up high above the city, on giant boulders that you had to skip across. Imagine doing this with coupons, by headlamp.
The far point of our ruck was a lake, where we were to pick up more coupons... a whole bunch of sandbags, plus weight for the ammo cans. Fortunately, we had a 0.8 mi run challenge, where all 40 of us had to make it in 10 minutes. We pushed, and made it by 8 seconds. That's quite a feat, for such a big group, including tired HTLers, going along a rooty and narrow trail in the dark with headlamps. There was a guy who did 50 burpees in 2 min, too.
At this point, we traded off Cadres and were joined by Pike. We had to do "stretches" (pushups), haha. Then, away we rucked. It was tougher this time with all of the weight, but GORUCK Tough D-day Charleston had showed me that I could endure miles of coupons without a break.
When the sun started coming up, Pike taught us about Stand-to, short for Stand-to-Arms, where everyone is absolutely silent during the sunset and sunrise period when the enemy is most likely to attack. You listen for oncoming people. We tested it, by having 2 from our group go out and walk back to us on a trail. From the time we first heard them, to when they were next to where we were in the woods, there was about a 30s period.
This was my fourth Tough, and I had been able to avoid being a Team Leader up until now. But I got assigned this time. Fortunately, I've had the opportunity to learn from past TLs, so I wasn't as terrified as I would've been, had I been asked to do this in one of my earlier challenges. I walked the line, shared the instructions from the Cadre, communicated with my ATL, tried to count to make sure everyone was still with us, made sure everyone was ok, made sure we were handling coupons ok.
We didn't do explicit TL feedback sessions this time, but there were some things I realized I could've done better.
1) Not good at making decisions under pressure - we were carrying a casualty, and I had a chance to pick a new one, but with the 5-second countdown, I picked a guy next to me, rather than someone who would've been lighter. I'm not sure about how to improve this skill, yet. I'll have to think about it some more... haha... that's my problem... being more comfortable with analyzing stuff first, than making decisions fast.
2) Not being good at counting. I counted the group about 6 different times, and I never got all 40 people, until someone suggested that I walk down the middle of the line of pairs. It's crazy to get to the end, only to find out that you're short 1-2. I have no idea how I missed it so many times. Everyone was there. I just can't count. I was the last TL, so it was like 11 hours into it, but man... you'd think that I can count.
3) Encouraging as a second thought. At the beginning of my term as TL, I was all about keeping everyone in order. About halfway through, though, I remembered that my job is just as much to keep everyone motivated. That's like me... being task-oriented as my primary mode. Less people-oriented. I realized it, though, and started encouraging them, too.
After 4 Toughs, I continue to learn stuff. You'd think that at some point, it becomes another ruck in the night through city streets, but it hasn't gotten old yet. Especially with this TL twist, I got even more out of it than I expected. I had been dreading the day when I'd be TL, but it wasn't so bad. The Cadre want to see you learn, and the teammates you're with are normally the kind of people who are willing to put in the work and are team players.
