"Tough Love" Basic Sim with Fort Mill Ruck Club

With this name, a Tough sim would've been a bit more fitting, but it was still a nice event, and a great way for people to try out a Basic-style event with low pressure.  It was organized by a guy from the Fort Mill Ruck Club.  They only asked for $10 to help cover the cost of a custom event patch, so it was really accessible.  The packing list was the same as the usual Basic one, but I decided to go with a 30# plate for training purposes, particularly because 30# is the standard weight for PATHFINDER Compete.  I wouldn't do this at a normal GORUCK event, since that would blue falcon my team, since I'd be able to carry less extra weight as a result of carrying more on my back already.  Since this was low-key, though, I bumped it up.  I also wanted to test using my shorty rucker in an event setting.

We gathered at Tega Cay YMCA.  We were encouraged to bring ruck club flags, so I brought the one from Charlotte, although that was the only RC flag that there ended up being.  The organizer Terry introduced himself, emphasized that he wasn't a cadre but more like a cruise director.  He asked for a TL, and I am familiar with how events go, so I stepped up and led the group in a series of warmup exercises.  Fagan and his brother came as well, although Fagan didn't feel well after the warmup and ended up sleeping in his truck to try to get better during the event.  

After that, we set off with a series of coupons, including sandbags and cloth litters holding more sandbags.  We could choose how we wanted to carry everything, so we could've not used the litters, for example, but I wanted to give people the experience of hand-carrying things and not just having sandbags on shoulders.  We did have a remembrance poppy team weight that Terry provided, which has been used as the team weight at some other GORUCK events that I've done.  Fortunately, we didn't have to carry water jugs.

Our first stop was behind Tega Cay Elementary School, about a mile away.  We got to ground our gear and do a lap of the stairs behind the school.  Then, we had a "musical interlude" on the artificial turf playground behind the school, with "Bring Sally Up/ Bring Sally Down" pushups.  

We switched TLs, and I got to carry things for a while.  Sandbags had to be linked, which was one factor that we had to deal with when I made the litter decision.  We went with shoulders for the next movement, though.  I shared the pain train with someone whose first "event" this was, which was cool.  She led fitness classes, and someone from the ruck club, one of her instructees, had convinced her to come along.

We did step-ups on a retaining wall as part of a deal to disconnect the sandbags when we got further along.  The path there isn't completely flat, so some sections were quad burners.

Our far point was Runde Park, where we did some ruck exercises and a little bit of low crawling... just a 25 foot taste of it.  The 20L shorty v3 ruck is OK for PT, but I did notice that for coupon rucking, the shorter frame makes the "shelf" for coupons much lower than I'd like.  I'd prefer to have the coupon as high up and hear my neck and on shoulders as possible.   If I let the hip belt be near my actual hips by making the shoulder straps loose and long, then the ruck ends up sitting way low, which also means that the weight plate is lower than would be ideal.

We started making our way back.  My feet were tired from all of that rucking, so I was glad to be going back.  We made a stop at Turner field, which was wet and muddy in parts.  Our cruise director let us choose whether we did PT on the grass or on the asphalt in the back, and we went with asphalt.  It would be hard, especially for exercises like the getups, but we preferred that over getting wet and muddy, especially the newbie girl, haha.  She was having none of that mud.

We made it back to the end and enjoyed beer and patches.  It was cool to see that ruck club put on a nice event.  It's a good way to introduce new people to rucking, or give them extra practice at things that they may encounter at events.

In all, we rucked 7 miles.  250# of coupons for 12 participants.