TRAINING LEAD-UP
Sunday, Aug 8:
I met up with SB at Latta Nature Preserve for orienteering practice, so that we could build up skills before the 72 hour Sea to Sea Adventure Race that we signed up for with AT. We wore 30# rucks, since we ruck, and because we will be carrying gear during the adventure race. Weight, along with terrain, fatigue, night vs day, and a variety of other factors, influences your pace count, so it's important to practice under a variety of conditions to know what kinds of adjustments you need to make.
Latta, like some other parks in the area, has a permanent orienteering course, so we picked one section of it to try... the easiest one, to get our feet wet. Since you can't un-remember something, we also wanted to be strategic in our decisions of when to use the course, to not burn up this nice resource wastefully.
Some things we learned:
- Confirmed our pace counts. (CP2)
- Became more familiar with terminology and corresponding symbols for different landmarks (like gullies). (CP3)
- Maps were made on a certain date. Since then, new roads may have been added, or roads that used to be there may have become overgrown and decommissioned. (CP5)
- Although the shortest distance between two points is the immediate direction towards the destination, it may be faster to use a groomed trail, even if it adds distance, because you don't have to worry about climbing over a bunch of downed trees and walking through soft and uneven terrain to get there. (CP5)
- Sometimes, fences (or other landmarks) that used to be there when the map was made, is no longer there. (CP5)
- Made use of backstops (like a road/trail, or a powerline) and attack points (CP7)
- Realized that some points you may only see when coming from or looking from a certain direction (like in a gully) (CP7)
- It can be helpful to spread out a bit to get more coverage in searching for waypoints, but still stay close enough to each other to not get lost or break any rules about buddy proximity. (CP9)
- You can use "shooting off" to make sure you hit a certain handrail and take that handrail to the point that you want, vs trying to shoot straight on and miss the end of the handrail altogether and hope that your bearing is 100% correct. We tried this with a fence, and it was a good idea, but the fence no longer existed. (CP9)
- It is hard with a permanent course built long ago to know if you can't find the point because it's somehow disappeared or deteriorated, or if you can't find it because you just didn't find it. Especially here, but even in normal adventure races with optional points, you should decide on how long you'll spend looking for an elusive point before cutting your losses and moving on. There was one point that we never did find. We attacked from multiple points, looked 360*, looked on the ground for a downed permanent control point, and tried to use terrain (hills) and water features and the power line clearing as references, but to no avail. (CP10)
- It's nice when normal people walking on trails helps you ID where the trails are, when you're off-trail. (CP12)
We covered 4 miles in about 2:23:19.
Monday, Aug 9:
Continuing with my Adventure Racing prep, I went kayaking for 6 miles in 2:14:41, experimenting with different sitting positions. Sitting back is the lazy way and may be more comfortable for the back because it doesn't have to work, but sitting up allowed me to use my core to generate more stroking power.
Tuesday, Aug 10:
Afterwards, I did a 2 mile ruck for speed in 19:38 with 20# in the v3 20L using Ballistics. This also counted for nothing, because it wasn't specified until afterwards that it had to be a strict ruck. It sucks tearing up one's body for no reason.
Wednesday, Aug 11:
For a ruck club train-up for 9/11 events, we did a 1 mile warmup with a 40# weight vest, then some people had to bail because of lightning concerns, a 1/2 mile coupon carry with a 30#SB to the pavillion where we'd do our workout, and then a 1 mile ruck back using a different route because the flash flooding caused the original route to become an entire body of water where you could no longer see where you were stepping (curbs, ditches, etc), even though it wasn't necessarily deep.
It was pretty epic, and it's awesome when someone new comes along and embraces the hard core stuff that we do, too.
While we were waiting for some of the lighting to clear, we took the opportunity to do a little class on coupon swapping, too, since it was going to be Jen's first event.
When I had first arrived at the park, I wondered why they had closed off the gates to the parking lot. I now realize that they're probably used to this, and knew that they had to keep cars out because they would've been surely been swept away if they had been in the lot during the flash flooding.
The workout was a 30 min AMRAP of
- 5 SB 4-ct Ground to Shoulder
- 5 Burpee Over Sandbag
- 5 Sandbag OH Press
- 5 Plank 2-sided SB Pull-Throughs
- 5 SB Clean & Toss
- Then a lap up and down the stairs (or substitute 25 step-ups)
I liked this because the coupon ruck commemorated Flight 93, the 5's represent the pentagon, and the stairs commemorated the Twin Towers. Maybe a 20 minute time limit would've been good for the 20th anniversary coming up, but I wanted a longer workout.
Aug 12-13:
I researched some more bike options at local shops, went to the range, tried a brewery near the range, and started getting book-smart about AR.
FORCE MULTIPLIER DAY 1
Force Multiplier is a 2-day event used to train people like personal trainers, ruck club leaders, and anyone else who wants to become technically proficient in doing sandbag and ruck training. It follows the "train the trainer" concept (aka force multiplier), where experts train us, so that we can go on to teach fellow GRTs how to do the exercises in an effective and safe way. I'm all about form, because you maximize your gains when you do the full range of motion, and you minimize the risk of injury.
The course was led by Jaala Shaw, a widely respected member of the GRT community. She has been a Selection candidate multiple times, is a Crossfit Kids Program leader, GORUCK Tribe Kids leader, and an overall renaissance woman. I had done the first part of the Bragg HH with her, but only had limited interactions then during coupons carries. You sometimes wonder what a person who has reached such high levels of fitness may be like, if they'll be arrogant or have some hard-core persona, but I was delighted by how approachable and down-to-earth she was.
Because this event was all about empowering leaders in various communities, Jaala and her helper coaches Grant and Chantalle also focused a lot on *how* we could effectively teach others, which was really interesting for me to learn about as someone who doesn't do this for a living.
We had a great group of GRTs come out... trainers, ruck club leaders, and GORUCK enthusiasts, many of whom were my friends.
We learned the history of GORUCK, shared best practices for gear and clothing, learned basic movements, and took turns teaching basic movements to others in the group. One thing I liked about the best practices discussion on gear and clothes was that Jaala gathered ideas from the whole group, since we've all had a lot of experience rucking in different conditions and had tips to offer.
While going through the basic movements, we were shown how to teach it, what kinds of cues to focus on, variations of those basic movements, and modification options. We were given hypothetical scenarios where a ruck club member had a certain limitation, and we were asked to suggest appropriate modification options, which could come in the form of adjusting load or volume, limiting RoM, or substituting for a different exercise that would still achieve the same stimulus.
Basic Movements:
- Squats
- Hinge
- Carry
- Press
- Pull
During the lunch break, some of the guys had fun with the stuff that the crossfit box had lying around.
We learned about recovery and nutrition, with foam rolling, wrapping, and lacrosse ball action.
There was an open-book multiple choice test that we got to complete overnight, too, to test our learning.
FORCE MULTIPLIER DAY 2
We met up at Lake Normal State Park for a Timed 12 miler on the trails. Because of the terrain, the usual time cap was bumped up. The distance of the two loops was also a little short, which helped offset the conditions, although I needed a Timed 12 for PATHFINDER anyways, so I did loops around the parking lot at the end.
On the first loop, I missed the right turn and kept going straight at one point, so we ended up at a campsite and had to figure out where we were and backtrack, which killed some time. I didn't make the same mistake the second time around, though.
I accidentally broke a friend, which I felt bad about.
Our next test was Sandbag DT, which I had done before, but also practiced leading up to this class, to make sure I was confident and ready.
Our next module was about programming, which is a big and interesting topic. Jaala provides 1-on-1 coaching to a wide variety of athletes, so she was able to share sample weeks of different levels of athletes' programming.
We then broke into two groups to create workouts. Ideally, it's no more than 4 exercises, because it's hard for people to remember more than that. We looked for a balance of types of exercises. We were sure to include a warmup at the beginning, and everyone had an opportunity to teach part of it. While we were leading the workout, we sometimes had people who pretend-needed modifications. We led a cooldown. At the end, we got feedback from the coaches, too, which was helpful.
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