May 9:
When we got back from Bellbrook, SB & I did some recon for a Space Force-themed Tough simulation event that some local ruck club people had asked us to organize. They were training for an HTL with a cadre that we had some experience with.
It's more challenging than one may first think, to put on an event. The biggest challenge was finding a place that would allow overnight parking. From there, it's not too hard to figure out what parks and open areas you may use as stops for different evolutions. Another tricky part is finding roads between those open areas that are safe for walking along, especially with awkward coupons.
It is fun to make creative use of the terrain and the route, to tie it to your theme. We already had some ideas of things we wanted to do, and we have to tweak them based on what the route ends up giving us. Some activities that you want to do require specific venue attributes.
Monday, May 10:
Did the deck of cards workout in 68 minutes, which is 4 minutes longer than last time. I did it Cleve-style, with Brickyard Manmakers, 8-count Body Builders, Flutter Kicks, and Ruck Swings. Aces were 20, faces were 15, Numbers were as-is, and Jokers were 1 minute jogs in place. I used a 30# ruck and had to break up the man makers when the rep count was 20. Those were the hardest.
This turned out to be an interesting Timed 12 miler, which I wasn't planning on when I initially set off. I used a 30# ruck plate but didn't use the hip belt, to change things up. I also added a hockey stick for the last 9 miles, to mimic carrying a rifle. It was super light, so it didn't mimic the weight, but it did give my body a long object to worry about. I drank 3/4L of water total, at the 7 and 9 mile marks. I didn't really need to eat during. I got strange blisters on my back from leaning forward, due to the lack of hip belt. I wore sweat pants, because I thought it was going to be a shorter ruck, but it didn't get too hot or get in the way, regardless.
This was a good confidence-booster before Bragg Alpha Shooter, because I feel like I haven't rucked a lot recently. I must've looked silly, but in my mind, in case anyone asked, my back story was going to be that I was running to street hockey practice.
12 miles in 2:41:43... not bad at all, especially with a hockey stick and no hip belt!
After the ruck, I went out for another mile so that I could watch the sunset at the dock. I was really thirsty, but I endured so that I could catch it. I did have water in my ruck, so I could've drank it if I wanted to, but I endured. 27:12 for 1 mile including sunset watching.
May 14:
Headed back home.
SB and I were able to recruit some volunteers to be fellow cadres and role players. We got there early to stage some equipment that we needed to encounter later in the event (a Mars rover). I also set up the field with cones.
Admin & Basic Training
We started at University Meadows Elementary School. We asked the rosters to come wearing white t-shirts, on which I wrote each person's last name at the start. The premise was that the Space Force wanted to stand up its own special operations group. The participants were everyday civilian ruck club members who decided to go through the 18X program to try and get selected.
For the selection process, they started with the APFT, which we wanted to include, because that was part of what they'd encounter at the upcoming HTL. We demonstrated and then tested 2-minute pushups and situps.
We did the 2-mile run around the school track, which was very convenient and made this venue a perfect start point. It was nice to be able to keep everyone together and in eyesight, to minimize the risk of anyone getting lost. We lit up different parts of the track with glowing objects, which was fun and on-theme. For the 2-mile run, because there could be a big disparity in times, and because we knew we'd be on a tight schedule, we actually just gave them until the 14:24 standard that they had been given, and then let people finish whatever lap they were on after that.
We also tested pullups at the playground, because that was also going to be part of the assessment. That was another awesome thing about this start point.
After the test, they went through Basic, which meant ruck dumps and making sure that they could follow directions, exercise mental and physical discipline, and act as as a team and not as individuals.
During some of the exercises, I read them a little background about the Space Force, for indoctrination. I tried to use space or flight-themed exercises, like leg lift-offs, star jumps, supermans.
It as a very short basic training, but they passed, earned their space blasters which they had to come with, and got to move on to the next phase, SF SFAS. We had 12 rosters, which was actually kind of perfect for an ODA team.
SFAS
Cadre Bass took over for the next evolution. The rosters rucked 2 miles to the entrance of UNC Charlotte's campus for team building. When they stopped and put their coupons down, they had to start placing it down the same way every time, to establish an SOP. We were also intentional about teaching lessons along the way, leadership lessons for example.
As a veteranarian, she designed an "animals in space" workout, because life forms in space will come in all forms. They did bear crawls, duck walks, crab walks, frog hops (broad jumps), snake slithers (low crawls), and starfish wheels (cartwheels). The starfish wheels were hilarious, because grown adults who were attempting to do these.
We had a race between two teams for "team week", where they had to do movements while breathing through their nose to keep mouthfuls of water in their mouths without swallowing them, like we had seen at Tribe and which has been something done for ages with native populations testing their warriors. You wanted to be the team to fill up the most cups. It was pretty gross but also funny.
I led them on the 2-mile movement to our next destination. We were on the greenway most of the time, which was good for avoiding traffic hazards. There was one section at the end that didn't have sidewalk the whole way, so we went onto the grass when possible.
En route, the engines in our space shuttle overheated, so we ha to low-carry all of the sandbags and coupons for a while, to let them cool down. It's good to provide twists in the event, to keep things fresh and test different types of work capacity (grip strength, in this case). I think this was a challenging movement for them.
They didn't make the time hack, so they did a little PT as payment. They worked hard, but sometimes, you fail the mission despite your best efforts, sometimes due to circumstances you can't control (overheated engines). The consequences of failing the mission are still there, and you just have to deal with it and move on.
Q-Course
They got a little break as guest speaker Charlene talked about consistency in training at Newell Elementary School. After that, I taught them some team tactics during the Q-Course. We did the wedge formation, the ranger file with rally points and pulling security, bounding, and giving SALUTE reports. I also gave a demo on low crawling technique.
