Friday, Oct 11:
I hadn't planned on rucking or exercising for another few days, since I had done the HTL over the weekend. Monday at work had been less productive than usual. I remember staring at the computer screen but not processing anything that I was looking at.
The car inspector had a lunch break to go to, though, so I had about an hour and a half to kill before I could get it inspected. Driving back home and going back out again would've taken a decent chunk of time, and I happened to have a ruck with 20# worth of plates that I could group together, so I rucked. I even forgot to transfer my arch supports to the shoes that I wore, and suprisingly, the left foot was ok, and it was the right one that complained, if anything. I rucked to Belmont Abbey College. It was fun to explore the campus a little bit, and I even blended into the crowd, since there were a bunch of students around who also happened to be wearing red shirts around their gym that day. It must be their school colors.
4.0 in 83 min.
Saturday, Oct 12:
My body was ready to start getting back into the groove of training, so I went on a trail run at Latta Plantation. The limiting factor for the run was actually little blisters starting to form on my pinky toe and heel, which was really odd. It was nice running there, though, with less technical terrain than the USNWC, and no bikers to have to worry about, and it's something other than the USNWC trails for a change.
Sunday, Oct 13:
Now that I had started getting back into cardio, I felt like I was ready to get back into strength training. I tested out two of the Horizon workouts that I hadn't tried before - a full body one and a core one. It started out with a 1 mi ruck in 15:16, and then about 55 min of strength work between the two workouts.
Tuesday, Oct 15:
To prepare for the Hard Hitter HTL, I wanted more practice with the Robbie Miller WOD. I had done half of the full Robbie Miller WOD with Cabarrus Ruck Club slick, as part of a larger workout that included half a deck of cards. This time, I wanted to do the full thing, with ruck (except for pull-ups), so that I could be prepared for the worst.
3 mi in 46:32 (15:27)
12 x [6 pullups, 6 burpees with squats, 6 4-ct mountain climbers, 6 ruck getups] - in 44 min.
3 mi in 46:05 (15:21)
It was nice to do a negative split on the 3 miles. The workout wasn't terrible, even with the ruck, which was good to realize.
Thursday, Oct 17:
I had signed up for a Women's Networking Event hosted by work at a brewery. I was excited about it when I signed up, but when the day actually came, I was dreading it a little, because I didn't feel like I had the energy and courage for it. But I convinced myself to go anyways, telling myself that I'd treat myself to a ruck afterwards in South End. It ended up being not as difficult as I was fearing, and I even won a beer-related raffle prize at the end.
That flowed nicely into the ruck, since I needed to work off the abv's anyways. I rucked to uptown along the rail trail, covering 6.5 mi in 98 min, 15:04 average. Not bad for a post-beers ruck!
Friday...
Went to a conference in uptown (my first conference?). Ran into a GRT (he spotted me first), who I had done an event with before. I had planned on rucking in uptown afterwards, but I was tired and done by the end of the day, so I just went home.
Saturday, Oct 19:
CLT is an awesome city for anyone who's into rucking. The quantity and quality of the GRTs here is something special. I joined LNK Ruck Club for the GORUCK monthly ruck club callout for October, which was for the pumpkin ruck. I went in a Gryffindor Robe, met some great ruckers that I didn't know before, including a visitor from NYC. It's wonderful to come together with people of all ages and backgrounds for a little walk around the neighborhood.
2.5 mi in 48 min, 19:33 average. Since I was in a part of town that I hadn't visited before, and I was at a nice park by the YMCA, I decided to stick around and do a ruck workout. This was Selection Weekend, so I was inspired to do sandbag bear crawls with a 40# SB and 20# ruck for 5 min, followed by a 15 min HDT AMRAP with a 20# ruck and 30# SB (5 rounds), followed by 5 more min of SB Bear Crawls, followed by 5 min of slick pushups (65) to round things out. I was hungry afterwards, and ready for a shower. It was an enjoyable workout, though.
Monday, Oct 21:
My friend had an idea of honoring Ashley White, who was killed in action 8 years ago while serving as a member of the Cultural Support Team attached to a Joint Special Ops task Force. It was really moving to learn a little about her story, and women in the facebook group rallied to do a hero WOD in her honor.
45# is legit. It was a challenge to even get the ruck on, though the lunges weren't quite as bad as I expected, as long as I was slow and deliberate about each step. Those rope climbs (I did 6 climbs up the rope at the USNWC for each of the 5 rounds) were tough, too. It was tough to grind through, but thinking about Ashley's sacrifice inspired me to keep going even though it was hard.
I tapered the rest of the week, so that I'd be ready for Rugged Maniac.
RUGGED MANIAC NC II
I had some decently high hopes for Rugged Maniac, since my most recent interval treadmill workout had gone so well. The weather held up, fortunately, so the obstacles weren't wet from rain. They could still (and some were) wet from mud once racers started going through, but at least it was manageable.
I got a decent start, and was able to be in the mix of top 3 from the beginning. That's less stressful than the usual races where more people end up being ahead from the start, and I have to pick off the rest over the rest of the course.
Technique, patience, and experience wins the day again on the slick obstacles.
3.0 in 29:41, 11:01 average.
GORUCK FALLUJAH LIGHT RALEIGH
Originally, I hadn't had plans to do the Fallujah events, since it was on the same weekend as Rugged Maniac. I realized later on that I could be done with Rugged in time for the Light, and conveniently, the Raleigh Light was only an hour away from Piedmont Dragway, where Rugged was, so I signed up.
I got there a little early, even after a stop at Subway for some post-race fuel. There were 13 at the Light, half of whom were first timers, which is awesome. I love seeing first timers at events. New people coming into the fold. You get to watch people overcome their fears and push past what they thought were their limits and learn about teamwork and all the other good stuff that GORUCK teaches.
It was my first time with Cadre Dan. I had listened to a couple of his podcasts where he was interviewed by All Day Ruckoff. It's interesting when you finally meet someone in person, after only having heard them on a podcast or on a conference call before. He was way more chill than I expected, but it was a Light, after all.
There were a couple of unique firsts for me. For one thing, we got our choice in which direction we'd go for our route. Cadre Dan knew the area well, so he had a few options for us. We chose one that went into a forrest area, for some variety with trails and creeks, plus some Greenway. The alternative would've been greenway leading to a lake at the end, for 10 total miles, or going through neighborhoods. We chose the trails. For another thing, we got to suggest what set of coupons we'd bring, from the collection that he had in his truck. We did one 10# sandbag per person, one or two normal sandbags, giant brass knuckles, a hammer for the TL, a team weight, the flag, a med bag. He actually put one back, so that we could move faster.
I loved his approach to the Light, which was to give us a taste of everything that you'd typically encounter at a GORUCK event. PT, water, miles, themed event history, coupons, etc. We started off on the greenway. There was maybe a 2:1 ratio of people:coupons, so we got to switch off with each other. After maybe half a mile of greenway, we found ourselves on a trail that went parallel to the main road. We picked up a log "missile" along the way. We learned the 5 principles of patrolling (which would come up again during the HTL the following month): Planning, Recon, Security, Control, Common Sense, and practiced how we'd approach a potential enemy spot that we'd have to clear, on uneven terrain with high ground on one side and a river bed on the other side. We also practiced clearing a bridge, sending scouts to either side of the near end to check for danger, then sending scouts to the far side to do the same check then signal back, then sending the team over and pulling security, and having the far side security fall in as well.
We learned about how mortars are used. We learned about how to stealthily traverse. We learned how to cache our gear so that it would be safe while we rucked along a river bed. We did a little water work pretending to let mortars fly in knee-deep water.
We got out of the river bed, then were challenged to carry our "missile" along challenging terrain. We cleared more bridges, and for fun, let the bridge burn after we crossed it. But, we found out that we now had to find a new log. We weren't able to find a suitably sized one by the time we got to the end of the trail.
We learned about Claymores, and since we didn't have a log, we each had to carry a rock the size of a Claymore. It was 20-30#, probably. Along with the rest of our coupons. The team was fantastic, though, and everyone was fully dedicated to doing what they could to help find a way to carry all the stuff, doubling up and everything. There were never any arguments or complaints or shirking from work, which was so impressive to see.
It was getting dark by the time we made it back to the start point. We weren't done yet, though. We went around answering quiz questions, to see if we absorbed all the info that we learned during the event, related to Fallujah and mortars and claymores and patrolling. If anyone got a question wrong, we had 10 reps of some exercise involving our rucks plus the rock. We kept going until everyone got 2 questions right (and once you got 2 right, you could stop). If you got one wrong, you'd have to wait until we went all the way around the circle again for you to try again, which could mean lots more PT depending on whether everyone else knew the answer, though. Everyone persevered, though, and we ended up creating a little monument with the rocks, for posterity.
It was a pretty awesome event. It might be my favorite Light so far. It had elements of everything I love about GORUCK. Cadre Dan did such a good job of integrating Fallujah with the GORUCK experience with SF lessons and good living.
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