The day after the Extortion Light, my right knee was a little iffy. I figured that I might've tweaked it a bit the previous day. I didn't recall doing so, but it was enough for me to not be able to get in a long run that I had planned.
Monday, Aug 13:
My knee was good enough to try an easy run on. I didn't feel like I could do a trail run, since that throws odd angles at your legs, but I could handle something on the treadmill. The run felt harder than it should've, but the second half was a little better, once I got used to the feeling of pushing through. I realized that the difficulty was maybe from warm temps.
Tuesday, Aug 14:
For Pathfinder, I did ruck workout #2 (for a stand-alone workout, not counting Lights). I found one that seemed less intense than the first one that I had tried (11s & Penalty Holds), called JARVI. It was an AMRAP of the following series:
- 20 flutter kicks
- 20ft bear crawls
- 20 lunges (ruck front)
- 20 pushups
- 20 squats (ruck overhead)
- 10 burpees (not sure why this is the only exercise that's not 20 reps)
- 20ft crab walk
- 20 monkey fers (yes, that's a real thing, which I first encountered at the July 4th Tough in Chapel Hill)
I followed this up with rucking around work. I got in 4 mi in 82 min, 20:32/mi.
My mom's been visiting this week. We tried to go to the Apple Store to get her iPad fixed, but it was closed for rennovations, but we went out to dinner at Cowfish Burger. Good portions, good food, and decent prices.
I did go on a GORUCK shopping spree at lunch that day, to get in some last purchases before a big, unprecedented price incrase announced by the company.
Thursday, I felt sore from Tuesday's activities.
Friday, Aug 17:
This day got super interesting. GORUCK has been having "ruck club callouts" to help build ruck club communities by encouraging some friendly competition between clubs for a chance at a patch, and to get people going out to do exciting things with each other. I had recently joined the Team Spearhead facebook group, which is one of the main groups in my area. They posted about a Rain Ruck, where you cover at least 5 miles with at least 5 people. They announced it Wednesday, maybe. We met at 5am, 13 people strong. My mom thought I was crazy for going out that early to "go on a walk with my backpack", as I told her.
We stepped out, and found some sprinklers to do PT in. Of the 13, there was one other girl, plus a dog (unofficial member #14). We started out gentle, then a fast group went out at a blazing speed. I kept up with them, before we merged back with the other group during an out-and-back.
It was cool to get in some miles with some strangers (plus one guy who I had done an event before) on an impromptu event, so early in the day. No guarantee of a patch, which I'm competitive about wanting to get, but it didn't even matter so much to me, since the experience in itself was a treasure in itself.
Since we started so early, I had plenty of time to drive to work, shower at work, and get dressed. I normally try to taper before events, and I was doing the Winston-Salem light the next day, but this was worth it. Lights are less intense than Toughs, anyways (or at least shorter, even if the intensity is the same).
WINSTON-SALEM LIGHT
We had Cadre Fagan, with a second cadre in training (don't remember his name, maybe Brett, but he was a good guy). It was my second weekend in a row with Fagan... fun with Fagan. Maybe he can make a patch out of that. I knew from last week that his lights were like short Toughs... all of the coupons, half of the time. It's a good way to get in some good training without totally destroying yourself physically.
Just as we were finishing the welcome party (ruckless PT, tunnel of love, conveyor belt of people, I'm up / I'm down, running laps plus some casualties because the group was split), it began to pour down rain, heavier than a shower.
For coupons, we had 1 wooden stretcher, 2 ammo cans, 1 jerry can, 2x60lb, 1x80lb, 2 flags (he adds a state flag), fire hose team weight. We had 9 people at the start, but one had to drop for medical reasons part way into the first movement. He had wanted to do it to honor his fallen friend, and we all could tell how much he wanted it, and he was doing what he could to push through the pain, but his body wasn't going to cooperate that day. It was sad to see him go.
As we were going out, swapping on the stretcher, with others on the sandbags, we had just gotten to the top of a hill (worst place to be) when there was lightning and thunder really close by. We sought shelter under a church awning. It was my first time having a weather-induced break during an event. We took the opportunity to introduce ourselves and also talk a bit about events that we like.
The rain was no longer pouring, but the stretcher was still wet, which made it hard to grip for long periods of time, for me. Before we got all the way to the first destination, we made a stop at a gas station to refuel, and called it good, since the traffic lights were not conducive to crossing in any reasonable time.
We set off towards our next target. We tried doing 1 person per corner of the stretcher for a couple of miles, rotating on that and the flags. We swapped between stretcher rotation duty and sandbag duty. After a while, people were getting tired on the stretcher, so we started doing 2-man stretcher. I much preferred that to 4-man stretcher, since your body could at least be even. Each of your arms would be holding the same amount of weight whether or not the other arm had something, so you might as well be even.
We went through Salem College, which was kind of fun. We had the cops called on us, too, from someone reporting people with a stretcher and flags going through their campus. The cops were nice, though... just wanted to do their duty and check it out to make sure nothing crazy was happening. We tried to convince them to ruck with us, even.
There was a guy on the team named Ben who is a total GORUCK beast. He's not ex-military, but looks like it. He had done the Tough, but was still pulling all of his weight in the heavy Light. We got to the far point of our journey, which was Winston-Salem State University. No ceremony once we got there... a quick shoving of food into our mouths while we were standing, a couple of people went to the restroom, a change in TL, then we were off again.
On the way back, Fagan played Baby Shark on his phone. And the two Cadres took turns asking trivia questions about the US (mostly military-themed). Looking back, I wonder if it was them trying to help our small team psychologically, since it kept your mind off of the suck. It was a nice distraction, in any case. The new Cadre also helped us out with the 80lb sandbag a couple of times, which was good, because that was the worst. He must've seen us struggling despite doing our best.
I even took a turn on the 80lb. It was my first time with that. You put that thing on, and you immediately start sweating just from trying to hold it up. I went maybe 50m, up a hill, before Ben offered to take it over again. That thing is no joke. It's no fun standing around with that. All you want to do it get moving, because the more progress you make with it, the sooner you'll be able to get closer to the next point or swap it off.
We pushed on to our next pit stop, which was the park where we had started from. When we were a tenth of a mile away, we were told that if we hustled there within a certain amount of time, we'd get to drop weight on our next leg. We made it! We switched TLs, then we were told that we had to set off again, and that we had X amount of time to get moving. We didn't make it. We were all very tired, and getting started again after pretty much no break was hard. We were going to be punished with PT. We all got in position, getting ready for a beat-down, and then surprise - it was the end! We had made it!
It was my first time getting a surprise finish. I've had a false finish before, where we thought we were done, but we had to do more after that (Charleston D-Day Tough), but I never expected a surprise finish. It was great ;)
Another "tough" Light in the books! Take a moment to admire our unplanned color coordination, too. 6 mi in 4 hrs, 45:30/mi.
My first standard event patch!
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