This training is not related to the GORUCK Firearms Day events at all, of course, but these are the workouts leading up to it.
Saturday, Feb 9:
To get in more training for the Myrtle Beach Marathon, I went out to Latta Plantation to take advantage of its flatter, less technical trails. However, when I got there, I found out that they were doing a prescribed fire burn just outside the entrance. The park was still open, but there was heavy smoke in the air. That's not something I needed to be breathing in heavily during 3 hours of exercise. I changed plans and drove to the Whitewater Center, where I got in 13.4 in 2:35:35, 11:36 average. There were fewer bikers out there today since it was colder - about 50. I didn't need food or water during the run, but I did take a pre-workout drink beforehand. I felt pretty good, although I stopped after 2.5 hours, not feeling the need to overdo it with 3 weeks left. Maybe I should've pushed for another 30 minutes, though. I'd normally be doing a 20 miler on flat ground 3 weeks out.
Sunday, Feb 10:
The Spartan Workout Tour is back this year as a free event. They started trying to charge for it last year, which was odd to me. It was my first time doing one of these at an indoor venue. It was wonderful, since it was bitterly cold outside. It was held at Lifetime Fitness, which is a massive complex in a wealthy part of town, with indoor tennis courts, pools, a basketball courts, and endless rows of all the kinds of cardio and strength and functional fitness equipment that you can imagine. It was incredible. Anyway, I was excited that I wouldn't have to get muddy, dirty, and wet for today's SWT.
My friends were leading the workout. The warmup consisted of jogging in place, doing high knees, butt kicks, crab walks, inch worms, planks with alternating low vs. high, and 4-directional lunges. We covered the 5 fundamental movements, like we have in past SWT's (push-ups, squats, lunges, burpees, and pull-ups... I'm not certain about the lunges, but something like that). We did sit-downs and get-ups, which is ironic, since that move is pretty new to me as a form of exercise, but something similar has just been introduced into the PT test for the GORUCK Heavy, as part of the Robbie Miller WOD. We did some partner circuit exercises, variations of squats, side-to-side shuttles, broad jumps, and more burpees. For the team component at the end to get you in the mood for Hurricane Heats, we had crab walk and bear crawl hungry hungry hippo competitions to retrieve wristbands from the center of an arena, competing against other teams. It was a fun workout, and it's great to see a bunch of people excited for Spartan races. It's interesting to see how the event evolves over time. This might be year 4 since I've participated in the SWT. I feel like this variation was more accessible than the ones in the past. Less intimidating, less pounding you, more encouraging you to do what you can and either scale up or down to make the workout effective for you. I think that's a good more for an event like this, where the goal is to bring more people into the fold. I've always enjoyed them, regardless of their form, for sure.
Afterwards, Lifetime Fitness invited us to stick around and try out their facilities. I was in gym heaven. First, I tried Jacob's Ladder, which is like a 45* infinite ladder-mill. I think it's driven partially by the amount of weight on it. At first, I was having to squat out more than my body weight to move the thing. Then, my friend encouraged me to try it again with the ruck, and the added 28# of dry weight certainly did the trick, and that thing was moving quickly. I only managed to stay on it for like 10-15s before I was done. The next order of business was getting in my mile-a-day for the GORUCK February challenge, so I did that. Then, I did box jumps on a rectangular box that had different dimensions for L/W/H, so that you could orient it 3 different ways to get 3 different heights. I wasn't sure that I could do the tallest one, but a guy nearby encouraged me, and I mustered up the courage to try, and it ended up being just fine. I played with a few other things and explored a bit more before I was getting pretty hungry and called it a day. Between the SWT and the equipment that I tried afterwards, my upper arms, hamstrings, and glutes were super sore the next day. Shaking things up at workouts is always nice, because it makes you use different muscles than usual. I rarely get sore anymore, since I typically do the same kinds of workouts, so the soreness is a good sign that I'm growing or improving in some way.
Wednesday, Feb 13:
5.0 in 38:56, 7:47 ave on a 2 degree incline treadmill. It was pretty decent, and I was surprised to pull that out following a couple of days of soreness.
Later in the week, my mom and her cousin came to visit. I rucked around the neighborhood with them (they weren't rucking), and we went to the airport overlook - one of my favorite places in CLT.
Sunday, Feb 17:
Having company over does make it a bit harder to fit in workout plans. I guess it's just a tiny taste of what people with families deal with as a normal part of life. I didn't get a typical outdoor long run in, so I went to the gym at 11pm on Sunday night to get in 12 miles. My schedule on Sunday was actually kind of crazy, since I've been tired lately. I was awake from 4am-7am, slept from 7am-11am, was awake 11am-5pm, napped 5pm-9pm, and then did this run at 11pm.
12.0 in 1:45:21, 8:47 ave. I didn't know how long the treadmill would let me go continuously before any kind of auto-shutoff timer kicked in, so I was tempted to reset the treadmill after 6 miles and take the opportunity to grab a quick break, but that would've mostly been an excuse to take a break when my legs got uncomfortable. I'm glad I decided to push through and test how long the treadmill would go without resetting, since I ended up doing the remaining miles just fine, and got in a good run. This particular treadmill went from 99:59 minutes back to 0 and started cycling the time back up immediately, so no need to slow down and speed it back up and reset the mileage tracker.
Tuesday, Feb 19:
55 min strength session
- Pull-ups: 8 + 5 + 5
- Plank: 2.5 + 3 min
- Adductor/Abductor Leg Lifts: 70/100
- Single-leg Squats: 65 + 95 + 95
- Lower Leg Extensiosn: 100
- Arm dumbell exercises (10# felt harder than normal today for some reason)
- 6 in: 60s
- Squats: 60
- Russian Twists: 25 with 16#
- Crunches: 400/side
- Pushups: 25
- Wtd Dead Bug: 60 w/ 20#
- Rifle PT: 30 w/ 9#
Wednesday, Feb 20:
6.0 in 48:38, 8:06 ave. My body was still stiff, but runnable, so I attempted the run.
My body has been feeling worn during the daily mile-a-day rucks, though. My back is feeling it. I'm normally not phased by it. I'm not sure what's going on. It's not more overall mileage than usual. The weight is heavier than my normal training weight, but it's not nearly as much as what I do with coupons at challenges. My feet have been feeling it, too.
PISTOL ASI
I had only been to a range once before, as part of The Biggest Fox event, where we shot a couple of rounds of different kinds of weapons. This would be a full 8 hours of it. I'm expanding my GORUCK repertoire. I had heard good things about their Firearms Day events, so I wanted to see what it was all about, and learn more about firearms.
I woke up at 3am and drove out to nearly Myrtle Beach/Wilmington. The event was actually in Tabor City, NC (even though it's officially a Myrtle Beach event), at Low Country Preserve, a shooting range. It was a cloudy day, slightly chilly, but that was perfect for me.
Cadres Machine and Heath were there. I had one prior event with Heath, at the D-day Tough in Charleston. This class was so professionally executed. Machine has a gift for teaching this stuff. You start with the fundamentals, which are always good to re-enforce even if you're a pro. From there, the modules and evolutions ramp up quickly, with a wide range of topics and exercises covered.
I'm not well-versed in all of the terminology, and this is all still new to me, but I'll try to list out the kinds of topics that we covered and practiced:
- Safety
- Dismantling the weapon
- Stance
- Drawing
- Reloading
- Holstering
- Multiple shots in succession
- Movements to get in position to counter active shooters in a crowded place
- Alternating among multiple targets
- Effective takedowns
- Quick-step then stomp stops to get into position after sprinting somewhere
- Draw times and shot timers
- Addressing suspicious people
- Handling hostage situations
- Covering fire in pairs
It was well-paced and fast-paced, so you had to pay close attention to everything. Whether you were new or experienced, there was a lot to be gained from the course. The Cadres provide continuous feedback, and help to work through whatever you need to work on the most, based on your level. Especially for a new person who doesn't have muscle memory and experience with doing all the needed little things in the right sequence, it can be a lot to take in, but the Cadre try to get you to focus on the one thing to improve on at a time, so that you can master it and move on to the next thing you should focus on improving.
I did struggle with not getting too stressed, and being able to calmly remember and execute each of the basics. I'm hoping that practice with the basics will help. The amount of content that we covered was amazing, though, and it really helped me get a better understanding of all kinds of things to consider with active shooter intervention. It's really interesting. There are all kinds of things to consider that I hadn't really thought about before, and there's a mindset for the kinds of people who do protect others in this way, that's new to me. Anyway, great class. It was quite an experience, and one that I'd like to try again, after I have some to process and hopefully practice the fundamentals some more.
Oh, and I wasn't a very good shot. I might've gotten worse as the day progressed, too. I think as I got more tired, it became more difficult to focus. I hated to disappoint the Cadre, but it was what it was. Opportunities for improvement.
ASI F.I.G.H.T
The FIGHT is kind of an add-on event, where you get to learn hand-to-hand techniques for disarming bad guys in a variety of scenarios, from a variety of positions. I was fortunate that there was another girl there who was similar in size, but we did get to work with a variety of partners throughout the event, too, since you don't normally get faced with someone the same size. We learned deception, getting out of the line of fire and entrapping the weapon, inflicting pain to mentally reset the adversary, and controlling the weapon. There's also quite a bit to think about here, and it's an interesting mixture of psychology and physics (where you position your body, for optimal effectiveness and protection) to consider.
We also mocked up a room, and talked about how active shooter scenarios can go down, and the best positions for those scenarios.
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