RACE REPORT: South End Shuffle 5K & GORUCK 9/11 Light Charlotte

TRAINING LEAD-UP

After the overnight 20 mile ruck and before the 5K, I only did one workout.

Tuesday, Sep 4:
"Six is Sexy" ruck workout.

6 rounds of

• 6 burpees
• 6 pushups
• 6 squats
• 6 lunges
• 6 thrusters
• 6 overhead squats

6 rounds of

• 6 situps (ruck on chest)
• 6 4-ct flutter kicks (ruck overhead)
• 6 leg lifts (ruck overhead)
• 6 crunches (ruck overhead)
• 6 6"then knees to chest (ruck overhead)
• 60s hold at 6"

6 rounds of

• 6 ruck curls
• 6 ruck ground to overhead
• 6 overhead tricep extensions
• 6 overhead ruck presses
• 6 ruck swings
• 6 upright rows

Then a 6 mile ruck.

The workout took me 43 min, and th eruck took me 114 min (18:59 pace).  It was a well-designed workout, with each group of exercises focusing on a different area.  The difficulty level was perfect, too, since my form would start to deteriorate during the last round of each group.  

During the ruck, I stayed on asphalt and off sidewalks, having learned how hard the sidewalks can be on your legs during the 20 miler.

SOUTH END SHUFFLE

I don't do many 5Ks these days, but when I do, it's usually sponsored by breweries!

I don't think I realized that I had double-booked this 5K with the GORUCK 9/11 Light, but fortunately, the Light started at 2pm, and it was more important for me to be fresh for the 5K, so it worked out.

The start was at 9:30am, at Wooden Robot brewery.  They had street parking, and choices between unisex and tank shirts, which was nice.  It was a little bit of the walk to the car to put away my packet, but not bad.  They also had sunscreen, sponsored by a family who was honoring their daughter who had passed away from melanoma.  I waited out the time before the race.  When I tried to do my warmup 15 min before the race, my legs felt heavy.  However, after I finished the warmup, they started to loosen up a bit.

At the start, a bunch of people streamed forward, and I couldn't even tell how many females were in front of me.  It's normally not too hard to count, but either I wasn't paying as much attention, or the crowds were dense.  

The course went through South End, which I have some familiarity with from the South End Pub Runs sponsored by the Ultra Running Company, and from previous races in the area.  I caught some of the racers, up through about mile 1.5.  I was maintaining pace, while they seemed to be fading.  After that, I didn't really see any more women ahead, so I figured whatever place I had was pretty secure, since I wouldn't fade.  

It did get really hot in the second half of the course.  I don't remember the last time I did a road race in heat like that.  The Fayetteville Spartan open on Sunday was super hot, but that wasn't a road race.  

Near the end, a spectator told me that I was in third.   A nice surprise!  2nd was nowhere to be seen.  Made the final kick into the finish line.

After the race, we got "Overachiever Pale Ale" from the brewery, plus bananas.  The prize was a gift card to a clothing store, plus a nice beer glass.  Score!  The finishers' medals were also cool - a bottle opener, with a neat design on it.

GORUCK 9/11 LIGHT

9/11 is a special event in the GORUCK community.  9/11 is a big deal in general, but it set off a series of events that led to the company's founding.  NYC is the best place to do a 9/11 event, of course, but you can't pass up an opportunity to do it in your town if it comes by.

After the race, I drove to a parking garage by the start point, and met up with some friends.  A few of them had done the Tough the night before, and a number of us were joining them for the Light.  The crew from the 20 miler was there, which made for a nice reunion.

We had 80+ people!  I think that's the biggest event I've been a part of.  The closest I've come to that is maybe the 60+ person Tough that I did, my first Tough in 2016.  The normal number is like 30, and some smaller events are half or even a third of that.  I suppose the turnout was in support of the memory of 9/11.  

Admin took a little while longer because of the big group, as did a parking situation that was slightly more challenging than normal.  Some people turned up late, but it's usually less of a big deal in Lights.  Once it was time to start moving, though, the Cadre imposed mass casualties.  A portion of our class no longer got to move themselves, so we had to carry them and their rucks.  It mimics the chaos that occurred that day, on a small scale.  

It was a big group, with lots of moving groups teaming up to 3-man-carry the casualties, so it was slow going.  People helped each other as they could and traded off, though.  Even before the end of our first movement, there was a poor guy whose non-GORUCK bag had already broken one of its shoulder straps.  At that moment, you really appreciate GORUCK quality.  Must've been a tough rest of the event for him.  Eventually, we got to a park with a baseball field, our first stop.

There, we did a 9/11 memorial WOD, with 9 types of exercises with a certain number of reps, and then 11 sets of box jumps to the top of the amphitheater.  We had a time hack, too.  It was challenging, but we made it through.  After we finished, we gathered around to hear the first of the memorials to those who lost their lives as a result of 9/11, either that day, or in the war to come.

Then, we did some more PT to honor the Port Authority police where were KIA.  It was a pretty hot day, despite the cloud cover that started to form to give us shade.

After that, it was time to set off for our next evolution.  We had to link up all of our rucks to form a giant log-like thing.  It was my first time doing this in an event (with rucks, at least... we have had to link sandbags before), but I had seen some video of this being done the previous night during the Tough, so it wasn't a complete surprise.  I was glad that I chose to grab a carabiner and attach it to my ruck, before the event.  Hip belts worked well and gave some extra wiggle room, but carabiners were useful to those who didn't have hip belts to use.

With 10lb plus water, it wasn't that bad... maybe a little awkward to keep on your shoulder, but that's it.  I saw my Pathfinder Course Advisor go through with a sand-filled beer keg on her back, though, running like it was nothing.  I would partner carry that thing a little bit later on, though, and I don't know how she did it.

Because of the heat, people called out for medics numerous times during the event.  It was nothing serious, I think... maybe cramping... but it shows you how hot it was.

Our next stopping point was in front of a parking garage. We got to unlink our rucks, but we had casualties again, along with a time hack for getting to the top of the parking garage.  It was chaotic as different groups formed to do the 3-man carry and make the push up with spiraling ramps up the garage.  When most of us got to the top, Cadre asked us where our TL was.  The TL and like 7 others were still down below, and we had left them behind, so we had to do some PT.  

Next, we did suicides (called "tributes") along parking lanes, followed by a bear crawl back.  Then, we heard about some more of the fallen.

We had a time hack to get back down, and then we started out next movement.  We got in two columns, and we'd pass back a full jerry can plus either the team weight or the keg, then take turns Indian running it back to the front.  I was in the back, and the Indian run part never got to me.

During the event, we always had to stay within arms' reach (within 4 seconds) of each other.  "Reach" is a phrase we'd often hear and have to react to.

We went onto the Greenway, and made our way to a nice grassy park where we had to do buddy carry bear crawls.  Some people got some severe grass burns right below their necks, from being dragged like that.  Fortunately, my shirt took it instead of my skin, but I could feel the heat from the friction.

After that, we walked to a fountain, where we did some Monkey Humpers, followed by another little workout where we did 2 laps to a smaller fountain, followed by 20 sets of Burpees, Pushups, and Squats, followed by 2 more laps to the fountain.

We made our way to another park.  This one was more rocky, and the grass was really sharp and rough for some reason.  We did the Tunnel of Love.  I had time to either put on gloves or put on my arm sleeves, and I went for the arm sleeves, for the crawling.  Just having to put my hands on the rocky sharp grass was not pleasant at all.  I can't imagine crawling through that stuff without protection.  Somehow, I avoided having to crawl, too.  I did have to hold the tunnel for a while, but that's much better than crawling through the rough ground.  People helped to hold up the tunnel, too, once they finished crawling.  I didn't know it, but people were being patched as they finished the tunnel.  At the end, the final part of the tunnel just got to stand up and get patched.

This event was very well planned and executed.  The Cadre were well-prepared, and had thought through what they wanted us to learn and do.  I feel like we didn't cover a lot of mileage, but we did get 5.5mi, which is more than it felt like we did.  There weren't any extra coupons like at Fagan's events, but they made good use of the ruck log, and of casualties, in the place of coupons.  That was a good idea. 

There was also more PT than I've seen at my past 3 lights (small sample size, especially because 2 of them were run by the same Cadre, on consecutive weekends), with 3 workouts.  Maybe it was due to the large class size.  It would be hard to get such a large group to cover a lot of mileage through the streets of Charlotte, so PT was a good alternative, for helping to keep everyone together.