TRAINING LEAD-UP
Wednesday, Jan 19:
Hill repeat session 2...
- 30# Ruck only
- Bear hug 40#SB
- Right shoulder 40#SB
- Left shoulder 40#SB
- Bear hug dirt bucket
- Normal shoulder carry 60#SB
- Farmers carry 2x30#SB
- Suitcase Carry 40#SB
- 30# Ruck only
Thursday, Jan 20:
Joined Cabarrus Ruck Club for an MLK memorial ruck with about 40# total in the OutThere AS2 pack that I planned to use for the Sea to Sea adventure race.
Covered 2 miles in about 44 min.
Friday, Jan 21:
Completed "Heavy Week" PT workout in 32 min with a 30#R and 40#SB.
It's really a workout that helps you get better at pushups. It's not heavy like the name suggests, but it's good.
Saturday, Jan 22:
JBF "SB Strength" workout in 22:33, with 40#SB and slick burpees, followed by the SRT "Sight Picture" 16 min AMRAP with a 80#SB for the deadlifts and a 30# ruck for 5 rounds and 9 reps, followed by the JBF "Sandbag Complex" workout with a 30#R and a 40#SB in 18:32, for a total of 67 min of work.
Sunday, Jan 23:
Hill repeat session #3...
- 40#WV only
- 2x30#SB farmers carry
- 60#SB on shoulders
- Sand bucket suitcase carry
- 40#WV only
- 45#SB bear hug
- 45#SB right shoulder
- 45#SB left shoulder
- 40#WV only
In MACV1s and my GORUCK Merino long sleeve top for the first time.
It was warm wearing the weight vest, even in 48* temps.
My legs were sore from yesterday, so this was good active recovery.
Monday, Jan 24:
Brick workout for AR prep.
- 5.7 mile bike for 33 min
- 1.4 mile run in 17.5 min
- 4.5 mi bike for 26.5 min
- 1.4 mi run 18 min
All with a 20# OutThere AS2 pack. I wore Kinvaras on the runs.
I did this in the evening, which gave me daytime and nighttime practice.
My legs were still sore today, so I did an extra epsom salt bath after my shower.
Tuesday, Jan 25:
Day 24 - Process | MOVE 30 day yoga journey with Adriene for 22 min. My body wasn't in teh mood for a workout, so I took a rest day to day.
I did clean my bike. Maintenance for expensive things supposedly helps expand their lifespan, and costs you less in the long run.
Wednesday, Jan 26:
Did the Dec 26, 2021 RuckWOD 20 min AMRAP with a 30# ruck, with 1 round and 125 reps, followed by the JBF "Sandbag Top" workout in 22.5 min, with a 40#SB and 30# R for everyting except for HRPUs and SBMMs. It was a rare morning workout for me.
Friday, Jan 28:
Hill Repeat session 4...
- 2x30# SB farmers carry to the hill, for a change in venue
- 30#SB on back
- 30#SB front (bear hug, cradle, front rack, etc)
- 30#SB OH
- 30#SB on back
- 30#SB front
- 2x30#SB farmers carry back home
With a 30#ruck in my MACV1s wearing the v3 20L rucker shorty.
It was a steeper hill this time, with 233 feet of gain instead of 187 feet of gain.
Covered 2 miles in 54:03.
Saturday, Jan 29:
Trip to Pete's with BP, where we met Pete and also Steve.
We zeroed BP's new rifle setup, did some of the usual GORUCK drills with turning and shooting, multiple targets, positions.
We worked the VTAC board all around and through, for speed.
Then, we did a fun drill called "man on man", where you start close, and go 5 yards back each time you make the shot, until there's only one person left. If nobody makes a shot at a certain distance, everyone still in it gets a second chance. You can also do variations of this, with par times, multiple hits or multiple positions required, pistol or rifle, strong hand or weak hand only. I made it to 25 yards, which I was excited about.
We finished by running a drill from Apex Shooter
- start in the driver's seat, buckled, hands on the wheel
- unbuckle on the beep
- shoot out the passenger window, 2 hits per popper
- stay pointed downrange while moving to the back of the car, and shoot 3 at a silhouette
- holster and drag a SB from the back of the car to a barrel
- shoot 3 at a silhouette from the barrel with strong hand on one side, then weak hand on the other
- holster and drag the SB to a wall
- shoot 2 per plate, from the right side, hole in the wall, left side, prone
It was pretty cool that Pete let us use his car for this, haha.
Shooting from the car was challenging. There are so many options for how to try to brace.
Sunday, Jan 30:
I met up with SB to do some bike towing practice on a grassy field, for safety. It worked pretty well.
We hit up Blackstone afterwards.
And then I did the JBF "Sandbag Shortcard" workout in 37:38 with a 40#SB, followed by 3x (25 Russian twists with 10#, 25 V-ups with 30#) for 10:30.
Monday, Jan 31:
Did SAQ 1.2 for 45 min total, including 4 min each of warmup and cooldown runs, as well as setup time for the drills and rests between sets.
Tuesday, Feb 1:
Compassion Yoga - Core Strength Vinyasa with Adriene for 58 min. Needed an easy day after the past 2 days. Spine needed some stretching, too, after those weighted V-ups.
Wednesday, Feb 2:
Blackstone with SB.
Got a new Estonia Reference LMT, so I zeroed the red dot that I put on it. With the MARS ambi lower, the safety toggle is farther back and isn't as easy to get to. Being able to activate the slide lock from the right side is nice, though.
I did the APFT at night, with 49/45 pushups, 80/76 situps, 14:32/15:54 for the 2 miler in the Saucony A4s.
After that, I did a baseline 2 mile strict ruck in 24:47 with the 30# shorty v3 rucker, wearing ballistic trainers. There was still snow on the ground!
Thursday, Feb 3:
Did max pullups for the GORUCK Games data gathering effort with 13, a PR for me. I usually stop when I can't do them continuously. This time, it was all about the number, so I did dead hang breaks to recover before doing extra reps until I couldn't do any more.
Then I did a 5 mile ruck in 44:11 wearing a 20# speed rucker and Ballistic Trainers.
GORUCK PAPERMAN BASIC+
We have a local GRT who had lost her dad when he got gunned down at a convenience store in uptown. He had been a police constable in SC, and was known for his kindness to all that he encountered when he delivered papers.
Last year, I had participated in a hero WOD that people from across the country did in his honor. This year, the 5th anniversary of the tragedy, his daughter organized a public custom event. A good number of first responders came, as did the family. 43 people showed up, and 100% of registration costs went to the family of CMPD Officer Mia Goodwin, who had been killed in the line of duty a few months prior.
We started and finished at Freedom Park. Cadre Norwich did a great job of teaching us about the tough job that LEOs have, putting their life on the line every day to protect us, while under intense scrutiny for all of their actions.
We carried a lot of 40# and 60# sandbags and water bladders around the Freedom Park neighborhood and around town.
At Romare Bearden Park, we took a break, and then we moved around the corner, in front of the convenience store where the incident had happened, and had a moment of silence there. It was an emotional moment. Afterwards, we did the Paperman WOD in teams that rotated around stations.
Terry led us in a flag retirement ceremony at the parking lot of the police department.
We covered 11 miles in about 8 hours, making this a Basic+.
I was glad for the opportunity to be a part of this group as we honored Walter Edwin Scott Jr.
REEDY CREEK ORIENTEERING MEET
After nearly no sleep following the Basic+, SB and I went to Reedy Creek to take on our first orienteering meet as a team. After having done my first O-Meet at Kings Mountain the previous month solo, I was excited to introduce her to the experience, too.
We did our route planning. We decided when we wanted to go with slightly longer routes using trails, vs when we wanted to take the most direct route with bushwhacking. From my last experience, I now knew that the CPs had numbers on them, and we also paid attention to the landmarks to look for, and wrote out the names of the clues by the points on the map, to put it front-and-center for us. There was a big key available for people to check at the start, in case they weren't familiar with the symbols.
For our first leg, we decided to buschwhack. Rocks were indicated on the map, and there were indeed large boulders.
For the next point, taking the indirect route on the trail seemed like a safer bet. Where we hit the turn in the path at the water way, we searched for the CP. Some teenage boys wanted to help us, and pointed the way. We hadn't really wanted the help, since we felt like we wouldn't found it. It was nice of them to want to help, but we're also doing this to sharpen our skills and gain experience. This is what the "pit" symbol on the map looked like in real life.
For the next point, SB led the way again. I was just following along. Our plan was to take turns every couple or few CPs being primary navigator. We crossed the waterway. There was a bit of a trodden path where we saw that other people had stepped through before, to minimize wet feet. We went up the hill on our planned bearing. The CP would be left of the peak of the hill, and the boundary of the park would be our backstop. We searched for a while, and didn't see the point. There was supposed to be an earth bank just beyond it, so we looked for that, too, but everything we saw seemed pretty flat. We expanded our search left, and saw another guy who was searching. Eventually, we found it much more to the left than we had anticipated. That one was a surprisingly hard one, since it had seemed fairly straightforward on the map, with lots of nearby indicators.
SB and I are both very thoughtful in our approach to challenges and training, and actively look for ways to continuously improve. We have open dialogue, too, and are pragmatic. I mentioned how I felt like I was kind of blindly following along on the last movement, so we decided to talk through the plan and choices and thought processes as we went, so that we could both think through it as we went, regardless of who was primary nav at any given time.
Our next leg had us going back down the hill, across the creek, and on a bushwhacked bearing until we ran into a trail, which we'd follow for a while before veering off to find the point. As long as we didn't mistakenly go left, we'd hit the trail, so when given a choice to go left or right around a tree or clump of impassible vegetation, it was always better to go right. There was always a small fear that we'd go too far left, but I was relieved when we eventually hit the trail. Trails are also easy landmarks because people walk along it, so even from far away, you can sometimes tell where it is, even if you can't see the trail itself.
We had two options on where to cut away from the path and approach the CP. Instead of following what we had originally planned as our route on the map and waiting until the last moment to cut through, we decided to cut off-xroad early, to follow a clearing formed by a waterway on a gully. It was a really good feeling when it worked, and we found it. As we were going along the gully, we weren't moving in a column. Instead, we spread out a bit for better horizontal coverage, which was a good strategy. You can see from more different angles as a team that way.
We continued along the gully until we hit another trail, and then turned right on the trail to follow it over a couple of bridges. The next CP was supposed to be at the boundary of denser vegetation and the more open creek area. Since it was a more open area, we could see a number of other people searching for the point. We try to not let what they do influence us much, though, and stick with our plan to test our abilities and our original plan. After going through some prickly vegetation, we found it, and ran into a guy who photobombed - we'd see him after the meet, get to talking, and eventually become friends with him, which is really cool.
We took a bearing to the next point (CP 6) and went uphill to some "carins" to find it. CP 7 was also based on bearings. The path to CP 8 was a challenging one because there was significant downhill and uphill, and there was a side gully that could trap someone into following it, but it wasn't the main gully that we were supposed to follow. When there's significant elevation change in the route, mistakes are more costly from a time and effort perspective, too, but fortunately, we didn't go far off track, and we were able to cross the creek and successfully find the next point. I didn't go all the way up to the CP when SB grabbed it, since we were going to go back down to a trail for the next segment.
We reached the end of the trail and found ourselves at the corner of a clearing, which was our indication to turn into the woods and go due south. We found the point pretty quickly with this strategy, which was exciting.
We followed the trails some more and then cut away to find CP 10 in the middle of a bunch of boulders. You had to jump up onto them to get the CP.
SB noticed that there was a path of boulders that led back to the trail, so we followed it.
We were now in a more developed part of the park, with lots of trails by the pond. It was pretty easy going now. We saw a CP from a different difficulty level route. A bit further down, we cut away to get CP 11. For our last movement, we followed the trail a bit more, before finding a trail that we could cut through to get back to the shelter where we started.
It's insightful to see your actual route vs your planned route later, and to figure out where you might've gone wrong. Looking back, I should've veered right more on my way to CP 4!
It was a super fun time, even though we were tired from the Basic+. We covered 3.5 miles here, and that was good active recovery. The AS2 packs that we wore didn't really phase us, since we're used to much heavier packs. We spent a little time recapping the event afterwards, to do an AAR and reinforce lessons learned.
Back in the parking lot, we saw our photobomber and talked to him. He likes to do these monthly. We told him about Sea to Sea, which we'd hopefully survive by the time the next event rolled around.
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