GORUCK Jedburgh 2022

TRAINING LEAD-UP

Sunday, Mar 6:

Pretty Christmas Cactus!

Monday, Mar 7:

After being accepted into the GORUCK Games, I decided to sign up for another round of Joe Baker Fitness.  He has a decent amount of OCR experience for a GORUCK guy, so this guidance on training would be great.  

I did a 4 mile ruck with 30 reps of ruck PT every quarter mile, using a 30# ruck and Ballistic trainers, taking 1:34:54.  I also added the HDT 2022 March Madness qualification exercises, which took 17 min including rest periods.  HDT March Madness is a fun online challenge, that started during the pandemic, as a way to connect people while still getting after it.  I call it an online challenge, rather than a virtual one, because you go live for it when it's your turn to do your AMRAP.

Wednesday, Mar 9:

I did a JBF 22 min AMRAP of 60#SB DLs and burpees, plus a bonus round for Marco Polo.  I did a 1 mile coupon ruck with a 60#SB and a 30# ruck.  I did a 31 min bike ride for active recovery, and then a 5 mile timed ruck with 30# in 53:58.

SB was on a post-Sea to Sea zoom call, which was fun to watch:

Thursday, Mar 10:

While working from home, I meant to grab a kombucha... it turns out that I had accidentally grabbed this, instead...

I did the Cabarrus Ruck Club Jedburgh Prep Ruck.  A number of us would be participating in the GORUCK event, so we used the ruck club as an opportunity to learn a little history, and run a little mission.  

SB had us split into two teams and each learn a challenge phrase and response.  We rucked in our individual teams to a meeting point, where we encountered the other team and had to successfully recite the exact phrases, or risk getting shot.  It means a little more when that phrase is used, coming from SB!

We covered 3 miles in 1:05:04.  Cabarrus puts a lot of thought and planning into their rucks, which are always fun.  Beer at Old Armor afterwards!  And Sabor South American food, too.

Friday, Mar 11:

Power Yoga with Adriene.  I was still sore from the beginning of the week!

Saturday, Mar 12:

JBF 32 min EMOM with a 60#SB.  Worked about 30s out of each minute.  Was bored the rest of the minute.  Maybe I'm supposed to use a heavier weight that makes me need or crave the rest more.  Or maybe I'll do a plank next time.  

I did the 12/23/21 RuckWOD with 30#R in 12 min afterwards, after a snack.  Then I did 2x(100 SU and 25 30# tricep extensions), followed by 2x(30# bent rows and 2 min high plank) in 18 min afterwards, as a filler.

Sunday, Mar 13:

SB and I signed up for another adventure race - the South Fork Sampler.  I did some recon of the area near the start.  I rucked across Rocky Creek Park, which seemed like a new MTB park.  It was so close to where I lived, too!  I wouldn't have known about this were it not for the AR.  It was so new that there were almost no leaves or sticks on the trail.  I went out of my way to remove every stick I did see.  From there, I rucked past a HS and on towards Goat Island and discovered the Riverlink Greenway.  I'm not sure that it was there when I visited Goat Island in the past.  Or maybe I just didn't walk/explore far enough.  It's nice, though!  I may have to plan a ruck club event there in the future.

I covered 6.5 miles in 2:27:12, with 30# in the v3 shorty rucker.  

Tuesday, Mar 15:

Started learning about precision rifle with a visit to Scott's, in preparation for our upcoming GORUCK PR class.

Here's what we covered:

• Set up LOP
• Mounted scopes
• Set optical focus
• Positions (prone, kneeling, barricade, tripod rear)
• Dope cards
• Gear overview

Thursday, Mar 17:

Once midnight struck, I was able to go live for HDT March Madness round 2.  There weren't enough signups to fill up all 64 spots, so there was no round 1.  It was a 20 min BW AMRAP.

At lunch the next day, I did a strict ruck with 30#in 23:24, a 2 mile run in 14:29, and 30 burpees in 90s for time. 

With Cabarrus Ruck Club in the evening, we did the monthly HDT Coalition workout, which included a little SAQ shuttle run action.  The workout was held at 26 acres brewing.  As a fun bonus, Brandon pointed out that the ISS was going to fly overhead that night, so we got to watch that, as well.

JEDBURGH

We were told to self-organize into groups.  First, you have to figure out who all is signed up to go.  Most people are on social media, but some are not.  You get people starting to form different groups themselves, too, and when you ask an entire group chat all at once, it does become more awkward to say no if you need to, because you may have already been asked elsewhere, as well.  Other factors: It's nice to group up with friends.  It's also nice, however, to use these rare cross-country events as an opportunity to spend time with friends from other parts of the country who you may not get to see often.  You don't want anyone to feel alone, either, if there are some who may not know a ton of people and want to find a group, but don't know anyone except you.  I've done my share of form-your-own-team events where I didn't know anyone going in, and I joined a random group that let me in, and it always ended up working out, and I always had a good time and got to meet new people that way, so that situation isn't a bad thing, but you also hate leaving a friend high and dry.  Eventually, we did come to final results with team formations.  

We got messages leading up to the event, which we tried to decipher.  We also had an extensive reading list.  I like to "win".  I like to be as prepared as possible for events.  A lot of these books were out of print or rare, but I searched out copies as soon as I got the list.  We split up the reading responsibilities, since there were 7 books, and they ranged from a couple hundred, to many many hundred pages in length.  It wouldn't be possible for one person to read them all between the drop date of the reading list, and the event.  We'd summarize the learnings for each other as we read our assigned book.

We also had to come up with aliases and backstories.  I'm not good at lying or acting, but I guess I can still work with that, since my character can also be reserved.

Not much is said about Jedburgh.  People don't even say the name of the event, so there's not a ton to go on, from past events.  We did have one team member, SB, who had done the previous Jed event.  We can still expect each one to be different, though.  We would try to read into clues, guess what skills we might want to brush up on prior to the event, guess what gear might come in handy, on top of the published gear list.

As far as my recap goes, I won't share all of the details.  I feel comfortable sharing about activities that we did that we've seen and done at other GORUCK or similar events before, since those are common knowledge.  There's nothing new under the sun, and this is all based on the types of training and scenarios that people did / do in real life.  And if you want people to get excited about and sign up for events, you need to give people some sense of what it's about, more than someone just saying "it's cool - do it".  One person's cool is another person's same-old-same-old.  Especially when an event requires an investment in registration fees, gear, travel and lodging, you kind of need to know if it is the one thing you want to put your money towards that year, if you need to be choosy.  Every event is still going to be different, with new scenarios, regardless.  

The vast majority of our team got an Air BNB together.  That gave us a chance to review content before the event, organize and give each other gear, and make sure that everyone was good to go before the event.  

The first part of the event involved classroom time with hands-on practice built in.

We did stealthy recon of different buildings, which we've done at a different event before.

We learned the history of the Jeds.  We covered first aid.  We got to hear from an ex-case officer from an agency.  

We learned small unit tactics.  We learned how to use some supplies that we were issued. 

Infil

After the learning modules, it was time for us to set off on our missions!

I'll just say, it may have been March, but it was Florida!

The teams were dispersed throughout the AO.  When I landed, I remember diving into the vegetation to get out of sight as quickly as possible.  A stick cut my eye, but fortunately, my eyeball wasn't impacted.  The event got real very quickly!

Prelude

We were in an over-arching scenario, so we understood that we were in a land with different tribes fighting against each other, as well as an enemy that threatened them all.  We found our stealthy contact from one of the tribes.  A big skill to have in these types of situations is building rapport, so that you can make the most of alliances and get info and resources that you need.  Fortunately, our contact was very friendly and led us to a beach where we drew up a range card.  That had been a fun and interesting skill to learn prior to the event.  We made our way back to our main HQ afterwards.

There were a number of missions that we'd go on throughout the event, with each one lasting a few hours.  We had a cadre facilitating each one.  We'd get a brief, make a plan, and brief back the plan.

Whenever we did movements, we needed to be stealthy.  That made navigation a little bit different at this event, compared to what we were used to from orienteering and adventure racing.  In those other events, the goal is direct and fast routes.  Here, you will often choose indirect routes that the enemy or your target wouldn't expect you to take.  We had to stay off roads, and when we encountered cars or people, we would duck into the woods.

Mission 1: Supply Drop

For our first mission with Rich, we took a trail system, to get to a supply drop.  We split into two groups for the last leg, with one leg staying in a hiding spot while another group went out to retrieve the supplies.  I was in the group that went out.  We wanted to move fast, so we left our rucks behind, and I also left my rubber knife and IFAK behind.  

There were sentries that we had to monitor and understand patterns for, and avoid.  Two from our party went ahead to go for the supplies, but something happened, and they disappeared from sight.  I thought they might've been captured.  I wished that I had my knife, to at least have an option to do something, but I was completely unarmed and felt useless.  Eventually, I decided to book it back to the rest of the group and bring them out for a rescue, if the two had been captured or "injured" in the grenade blast or whatever had happened.  We'd have better chances with bigger numbers and gear.  Oh yeah, there were alligator warnings, too, so we moved especially quickly when we passed bodies of water.

When we got to the location again, to our surprise, we ran into the two, who had actually been hiding after an encounter, and who had subsequently successfully found and unlocked the supplies.  I was so relieved that we were back together and whole, and that we had gotten the supplies, which we might need in later missions.  A big lesson I learned was to never go without my knife and IFAK, and that things were generally easier if we all stuck together, since it was like a half mile each way, at least, in the dark.  There were two radios within the team, one for each party, but I hadn't had one, so running back had been my only choice to communicate with the other party.

Mission 2: Tribal Leader

For our next mission with Chuy, we needed to make our way to another location and build rapport with a tribal leader to get some valuable info.  We again took an indirect route on the trails, to reduce the risk of encounters.  Even on the trails, we had to be vigilant about potential encounters.  Another Cadre decided to keep us on our toes, and would stalk and surprise us in the most jarring way.  

On our way there, we ran into a different tribe and were temporarily held until we convinced them to let us go.  Backstories were helpful there.  It's tough to decide how you want to handle this kind of adversity, because it would be bad to cause some kind of international incident unnecessarily, too.

We had to take down an enemy camp on the way, and we did so, too well, apparently.  That kind of did cause an incident, but for those who witnessed it, it created some lasting memories of a James Bond / Leeroy Jenkins mashup. 

Once we were on our way again, we navigated through the somewhat tricky trail system to find the village of the tribal leader.  I was the team leader at the time.  While our original plan was to have SB lead our group for the whole event, the Cadres had us switch TLs with each mission, which was good for giving everyone a chance to learn and grow from the experience.  Sometimes, it's good to focus on putting your best foot forward to maximize performance and success, but sometimes, it's good to provide learning opportunities to more people, so that more people can become skilled in a domain as a result of the event.

Anyway, as TL, I spoke to the tribal leader when they were very suspicious of us and our intentions.  It's not a strength of mine, but I did my best.  While I spoke to the leader and helped her understand our common ground, the rest of the team got to work with teaching the tribe how to build a fire, and we made some coffee for them.  It was cool how everyone "found work" to contribute to our success.  It was seamless.  

The tribal leader passed me a note at the end, with a suggestion that we find some beautiful stones, whatever that meant.  We never did figure out what it meant, but it certainly kept us guessing.

Mission 4: Patrolling and Recon

We were with Cadre Surf Hog for the next mission.  He taught us how to walk with quiet steps by using the outsides of our shoes to minimize the surface area of our steps.  We had hand signals that we'd use to communicate to each other without words.  We'd stop to assess our surroundings, periodically.  

We learned and practiced how to cross linear danger areas in a methodical way.  It took some time to get it right, but we got better at it with each road that we crossed.  Eventually, we were close to the beach, where we met some military leaders from one of the tribes, who wanted us to complete a task, but who were reluctant to go with us to do it.  It's tough to know what to do in that situation.  Mission first, though.

We went down a booby trapped trail, and fell into the traps multiple times in the darkness.  We had to render aid to the casualties, whenever this happened.  Eventually, we made it to the shore, where the TL and I moved up to build another range card and do some recon on some bad guys who were patrolling the beach.  You didn't want to get caught.  At one point, we had to avoid detection by diving into a gigantic patch of briars.  That hurt, but it was necessary.  That was some heart-pounding action.  We made our way back to the HQ in an expeditious way, afterwards.

Final Group Mission

There was another mission for a downed pilot scenario that we didn't get to do.  I think each team got to do all but one of the missions, based on the amount of time that we had.

We joined together with the other teams as one giant team for one final mission.  We did wedge formations to make our way up a beach, to get to northern point and demolish something.  Afterwards, we went inland, to wait for our exfil.  The role players were excellent, as always, keeping in character.  

Mission accomplished!  It was a fun team to be on, with a good blend of skillsets and good attitudes.