HDT March Madness Sweet 16 "One Hand Jam" 15 min ruck AMRAP with 30#.
Human Powered Movement hosted an Adventure Racing 101 clinic, to help people get ready for their upcoming South Fork Sampler event. I got there early, and speed rucked 2 miles out and 2 miles back on a trail that extended from the start point, to do some recon. I went fast so that I'd make it to their clinic in time, covering 4 miles in 49:44 with a 30# 20L v3 shorty ruck wearing Brooks PureFlow.
At the clinic, learned about what to expect at this particular race in terms of maps, CPs (common traffic cones with the traditional punch, as opposed to flags that may get stolen because those would seem more out of place), the technicality of the MTB trail (not too bad), and the kayaks (with a demo on how to get the boat into the water and then get into the kayak without tipping it over). While I now had a couple of races under my belt, the trail part and the map part were good to understand. The map would be more high-level than usual, but the points were accessible enough that this was OK. He also included a picture clue with each CP, which would really help.
Tuesday, Mar 22:
JBF "Grip/Strength" in 63 min. Used a 20#RPC and a 40#SB where appropriate.
Wednesday, Mar 23:
Everyday 45 min Vinyasa Flow with lululemon. My triceps, some biceps, traps, shoulders, and even abs were sore today.
Thursday, Mar 24:
HDT March Madness Elite 8 15 min ruck AMRAP with 30# at midnight the previous night, followed by JDB "SB/Cardio" in 20 min with a 40#SB... so kind of Wednesday, but officially Thursday.
In preparation for a potluck we'd be having over the weekend, I made 4 instapot batches of Mexican rice. It took me maybe 4 hours. Way longer than such a thing should take!
I ended up burning the first batch by accident, because I used the suggested 25 min time from an online recipe, instead of the 20 min time from the Instapot box.
The next batch turned out better. I did bring the bad batch, just in case, because I was afraid that 3 batches may not be enough to feed 25 people.
GORUCK TACTICAL SHOTGUN OPERATOR
This weekend, I'd be taking two rare classes that I had yet to take... Tactical Shotgun Operator and Precision Rifle. The two are typically held on the same weekend, I think because the same Cadre instructs both of them. PR can only be held at facilities that offer long enough bays. This year, a class was being held in Moyock, NC. It's in the same state at me, but it's a whopping 5.5 hours away! That's not bad, though, considering this is the closest these two events have been to me since I started tracking it a couple years ago.
For TSO, I decided to buy one for the class. These don't cost that much, at least compared to an AR or a PR, and the hassle and liabilities of borrowing one would've been much more of a headache than just getting one. Plus, it's good to learn on a system of one's own, especially if you get to pick that system and find out that best suits you.
The event registration site had asked us to bring a Remington 870 / Mossberg 590 type pump action shotgun. In reality, any kind of shotty would've worked, even semi-auto ones. Not knowing this, though, I found one similarly sized to the 870 / 590, not something like a Shockwave. I went with the Benelli Supernova, since in the extended state of the pump, my arm could reach. On the 870 / 590, my arm couldn't reach, which would've made chambering the next round much more difficult. It had a pistol grip, which I was used to from the AR, and it had ghost ring sights, which would be easier to use than a bead sight, I guessed. The price wasn't bad, either. If I had known about the option to go semi-auto, the leap for a Benelli M4 would've been significant, price-wise, so who knows if I would've taken it. I didn't even know if I liked shotgun shooting, at this point. I got to test out Adam's for a few rounds, but that was the extent of my experience.
SB and I met up at her place, and we made the journey east, with my containers and containers of rice in tow.
At the class, we learned about the parts of a shotgun. It's a little different from what we're used to with the action release, but you practice to get used to how it works.
We learned how to clear it and load it. We learned tactical reload and emergency reload techniques.
We learned about the affect that chokes have on the shot groups for buckshot. We saw the effect of distance on the grouping, as well.
Building on techniques we would've learned in other classes, we shot from kneeling, and around barricades. We also worked on transitions to pistol.
For our culex, we had to use the prescribed sequence of slugs vs buckshot, to shoot while moving, to shoot from around barricades, with a decent amount of precision from 35m (farther than we had shot the entire class, so hopefully, you made a good guess on the hold), and then finishing with a transition to pistol. It was quite an extensive culex! While GORUCK calls this a level 2 class, because it requires skills from other L2 classes, I'd call it an L3, at a minimum.
After class, we had our Mexican buffet potluck. There was a ton of rice left over. I'd take it home, though, and eat it for as long as I could before I had to toss it. The food and everyone's contributions were very tasty!
PRECISION RIFLE
Classroom Portion
After dinner, we rolled into the classroom portion of Precision Rifle. I had decided to buy vs borrow there, as well. If I was going to do this, and invest this much in a class, I wanted to use those 2.5 days to learn on my own system. Especially with PR, you don't get as many chances to live fire with your weapon, since the longer ranges require more work to get to. With weapon systems that involve optics, too, eye relief and other fit considerations matter more, and with PR, there are more things to adjust to really suit you and set you up for the most success. Yes, you can make it work with something that's a little less than ideal, but when you're spending 2 days in glass, looking at small, distant objects, your eyes and your body will get tired if it has to strain a lot to push through. It won't be quite as enjoyable of an experience, and you may not be able to shoot quite as well.
The nice thing about classroom time at the end of a range day is that there are no more beverage limitations in the evening!
We covered many topics, so that we'd have a baseline understanding of our gear and principles by the time we hit the range the next morning...
Terminology
Factors influencing External Ballistics
Fundamentals of Marksmanship
Ranging
Wind focus
After the class ended, the Cadres offered to check out any setups that might be new or that may need some help. SB had issues with her scope rings, but I had brought a Ruger Precision Rimfire with its own scope just in case, and we were able to move the scope from it over to her gun. It went up to 25X, so it worked well.
Range Day 1
We buddied up, as we do with all GORUCK classes. Mil stayed with Mil, MOA stayed with MOA. My BB had more experience than I did, which was good.
We practiced NPA dry, before starting to zero our rifles. This was my first time, so I wasn't even on paper, initially, and hadn't bore sighted (didn't know such a thing existed yet), but a Cadre (there were about 4 supporting ones that weekend - amazing!) helped me use the bracketing technique to get on paper, and then adjust from there. Now, I know that going for a berm or large dirt patch is also a good technique. I set my zero stop, once I was zeroed. I brought the manuals for the rifle and the scope, which was helpful.
These are my shots from three different elevation/windage adjustments. The groups are each sub-MOA, for the small sample size of 2-4 at each one, at least.
Once we were zeroed, we started collecting dope at 200, 300, and 400. We logged parallax settings used for each distance, along with the factors influencing D/A.
Spotting with one eye closed for long periods of time strained my eyes, but it was necessary. At one point, we had tried to tie my Amazon $100 scope to my BB's nice RRS tripod, but as I'd learn later, glass quality is huge, if you want to be able to actually see important things. We abandoned that idea after a while, and I just used my gun's optic.
We moved up to the 100yd line to practice standing, which was very difficult for me and my 17# rifle. I ended up not attempting any shots, because I never got good sight alignment for long enough to try to hit the steel.
Seated, moving in the stock helped with eye relief. I did make all the attempts, but I only had time to make 7/10 attempts.
I look soooo awkward and uncomfortable...
One funny thing... don't forget to put your scope caps on to help show that your weapon is in extra safe mode, with these cadres! They mean business!
Next, we got to play a "pick your poison" game, where you got a 3x3" patch, and you could either try to shoot it with 1 round at 100yd, 2 rounds at 200yd, or 3 rounds at 300yd, but with a 30s time cap. One round would give me no margin for error, so I decided to go for 2 at 200, since I felt like I would have enough time to take 2 shots. 3 within 30s might've been beyond my skill level at the time. When I zeroed, I was within an MOA, so my gun was capable. At these distances, wind isn't a big factor, too. I ended up making both hits, 1 inch left of center. Nice! Normally, people go for 100yd, so I was excited that my gamble paid off. It did mean, however, that the next time I played this game at a future class, I'd have to go for 3 @ 300yd, at least. My BB also made his, which made me really happy.
We did move around from one 100yd increment berm to another quite a bit. It was handy to have a lot of gear, but that meant that you had to carry a lot of gear, too. It's a good thing we do GORUCK events and are ready for this!
For dinner, a very nice classmate treated us to my favorite - BBQ!
We went back to the classroom after this, for a special module on movers. Normally, this isn't part of the curriculum for the basic Precision Rifle class, but we had a rare opportunity to shoot at some robotic movers this weekend, and we couldn't miss this chance!
Range Day 2
In the morning, we all took a cold bore shot at a pie plate at 100yd. I think I was either 17 or 18. SB might've been 24.
We played a game of battleship next. 5 rounds PP in a pile. You do pushups while your partner takes a round from their pile, runs up to their gun, builds, breaks, then comes back to tag you in for your turn. Keep going until one of the team finishes their rounds, plus 30s for everyone else to wrap up what they're doing. You get a point for each hit on a circle, plus 1 bonus per ship sunk, so there's some strategy involved, along with a need for good communication. We tied for 2nd, not bad.
Next, we practiced movers, by having half of the class work in the butts by walking at 2 and 3 mph with paper targets, while the other half of the class took turns shooting from 100yd. I was in the butts first.
The rounds make a very unique sound when they whiz overhead. You don't get many opportunities to hear it. You'd see the rounds impacting the berm, too.
Holding up the stick, especially as it wavers, requires a lot of arm strength! You'd feel it when your target was impacted, and to show the shooter that they were successful, you'd wiggle the target around and bring it down afterwards.
We moved back to 200yd afterwards, with 3mph. 100yd had been good for me, and I made all 5 of my hits at 2mph and all 5 of my hits at 3mph. 200yd only got me 3/5, though. I tried tracking, but ambushing is easier.
We did snaps, as well, and that wasn't hard. The key is to use low magnification.
We put it all together with the chaos drill, which included both movers and snaps, plus a no-shoot.
It's really fun to dry fire movers. You feel like a real sniper when you're doing it, and you never miss, haha. You can run the bolt really fast, and there's no recoil. All jokes aside, it is really beneficial to dry fire movers, to get your lead and your use of the reticle down.
After that, we got a couple more hours to build out dope from 400 to 800 with our BBs. The mirage made it difficult to determine if we were making hits at 800. You couldn't easily tell if the steel was shaking from the impact, because the steel already looked like it was constantly moving due to mirage. There were ponds between each 100yd berm. I don't know if the purpose was to create mirage, or what.
I tested out a couple different rear bags, for maneuverability, height, etc. I had to double stack on the farthest berm, to be able to see over the berms in front of us.
I was really happy to have collected dope out to 800. That's supposed to be a big thing in PR... knowing what to hold, for your gun. I didn't know fully then, but it is dependent on muzzle velocity, which will change over time, so it's only valid for that velocity.
Our class ended with the most fun part. Half of the class went to level 2 of a tower, to shoot at clay pigeons that were arranged throughout a car lot that went from 100-300yd. You didn't know the exact distances of every target, but you had some reference points and could make an educated guess. My happy place was the 200-250yd range.
We swapped with the other half of the class to move up to the third floor, where we shot at the robots. Whereas the movers from the morning traversed horizontally, here, they could move towards and away from us, too. The robots were programmed to only respond to vital zone hits (spinal cord). We experimented a little bit with shooting from a chainlink fence barricade.
I used a lot of ammo, practicing on those movers... like the full amount that I had brought to the class. It's rare to get opportunities like this, so I was going to get in all the trigger time that I could.
This was such a fun and different class. I highly recommend it!!!
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