TRAINING LEAD-UP
Sunday, Jun 26:
I organized a ruck club event to do the Zach Tellier Hero WOD. Nobody else turned up, maybe because it was early in the morning (8am, so not that early), but it was a good workout, good time with thoughts, and good scenery. I used a 13#SKB for lunges, a 30#R for squats, and finished in 51:34.
Afterwards, I did 5 miles on the trails in 1:42:29 with 30# in the Speed Rucker.
Tuesday, Jun 28:
HDT SAQ 2.2 in 35 min, followed by HDT IR30-31.1.3 (arms & legs) in 46 min.
It's so convenient that rucks can be used to carry workout implements, as well! Rucks are not just for rucking.
Thursday, Jun 30:
I had stomach issues yesterday and ended up sleeping from 2pm to a whopping 7am. After sleeping so much, I was ready for some cardio today. I did 5.5 miles in 1:10:48 in the Speed Rucker, wearing Altra Torin Plush's. I got hot spots on the outer right ankle and outer ball of my right foot, oddly.
It wasn't COVID!
Friday, Jul 1:
Did the Dec 29, 2021 Ruck WOD in 10 min with a 30# rucker v3, followed by HDT March Madness 2022's "Buzzer Beater" 10 min AMRAP with a 60#SB, followed by the GORUCK T&T "No Peace" EMOM in 34 min with a 40#SB, which was challenging to get through, but I persevered.
I did 4 miles afterwards with 30# in the v3 rucker, wearing Ballistic trainers.
2-GUN TEAM MATCH AT CLINTON HOUSE
A GunRun friend invited me to do a 2-gun team match with him at the Clinton House. It was a range that I had never been to before, and it wasn't that far away. It would be my first time doing a pure shooting match, that wouldn't really have a physical component. It would be a good opportunity to focus more on shooting skills, without the distraction or extra stress of physical activity. That's a good thing to try, because shooting is where I have the least experience and where I need more focus to address the weakest link to prep for the more tactical physical+shooting events.
The atmosphere and gear was quite different, which you could tell even as you got out of your car. The stages were all held in bays close to each other, so everything was in walking distance. To make hauling gear from stage to stage easier, though, people had wagons and strollers that were converted into tactical wagons and tactical strollers. When you're used to seeing babies in strollers, this is quite a sight! It's pretty cool, too, and would be fun to customize and design, if I were to get into this more in the future.
This was our setup for the day:
The way scoring is done at these matches, it isn't pass/fail like it is at Gun Runs. Instead, you have a par time to complete a certain course of fire. You get 20s penalties for each failure to engage (never getting to a given target), and 10s for shooting at but not being able to hit a target (10s per target, not 10s every time you fire a round and miss). There are also penalties that you can rack up for shooting no-shoots, or for "procedurals", where you don't follow the specifications of the match or the course of fire.
The stages are not blind, either, so once you get the brief, you get a chance to walk around a bit, test out what firing positions might be like, sight in, and go through the motions to figure out what you want to do, if you'd like.
It was foggy as we began our first stage. Starting together from an "X" on the ground, each team member would run left or right to a shooting position on a tank trap, to engage steel with rifle at about 75yd. I went for the 6 bigger silhouette targets, 1 hit each, and Bosco, as the more experienced shooter, would go for a plate rack of 6.
Once both of us had dumped our cleared rifles in buckets, we'd move to a pistol shooting position at a side bay. As a team, we had to complete a dueling tree (just moving the plates to the opposite side), and spin a spinner, which was also new to me. A spinner is like a sea-saw, but with one plate up and one plate down, connected by a pipe that would spin the whole thing around a perpendicular pipe, given enough momentum. We'd have to fire enough rounds with strategic enough timing to make it spin.
I'd tackle the dueling tree first, since I had done those before. I struggled for a while to make my first hit on the tree, but I wasn't sure why. Maybe nerves.
Once I finished that, I moved to the spinner to help Bosco with it. He had to pick top or bottom plate to hit and wasn't allowed to switch once he chose one, so I did the other, which we had decided on during the planning time. He started on the bigger one on the bottom, since it was the easiest to hit. We ended up timing out, though. It's hard, and you don't want to shoot as the plate is coming back towards you, since you'll slow it down. And when the plate is on the extremes of its angles, the hittable target area becomes smaller. It's an interesting challenge, indeed! We ended up timing out when we were very close to spinning it.
Stage 2 (officially Stage 1):
We rolled our beach wagon over to the farthest berm for the next stage. The first shooter stepped up to the shooting position to engage 5 small (head-sized) pistol targets with 1 hit each from about 10m away. After dumping a cleared pistol into the bucket, they'd grab their rifle from the big bucket and shoot 5 silhouette targets that were about 50m away, from a standing position.
Each time the shooter missed, the other shooter would have to farmers carry 2 dumbells about 10 feet, before the shooter could try again (and potentially miss again). The dumbells were 25# each for the women, and 50# each for the men.
Once the first shooter finished, they swapped spots for a second round.
Since 25# per hand wasn't that bad and wouldn't affect my shooting much, we decided to let Bosco shoot first, since 50#/hand for him would be a bigger deal, if he had to do the penalty often because of my misses. I did 3 laps for his misses, and he did 2 laps for my misses.
Some teams had to do much more than that! It was pretty funny.
We moved over to the next stage, which would involve two bays again. In the first bay, we'd initiate the stage by pulling a rope that would activate two swinging targets, which were like pendulums of no-shoot targets that would obscure your ability to shoot 2 targets behind it. There were 5 targets out front there in all, and the center one wasn't obscured by the pendulum no-shoots.
There were also 5 targets along the left and 5 targets along the right side, for each shooter to engage on their side, with one of them partially covered by a no-shoot. The rifle targets ranged from 30-50m and were made of cardboard, so that it was easy to score precisely. We had to do 2 hits, or 1 in the A-zone. It was a best practice to do 2-hits, just in case, with the high likelihood that you might get one in the A-zone anyways.
Once we finished with the 15 rifle targets, we moved one bay over for pistol work. There was a stacked plate rack of pie plates, a dueling tree, and another spinner to finish. All were about 15m away.
During rifle shooting, I got one of Bosco's hot brass casings in the back of my shirt. It burned, but there wasn't much I could do about it.
In the pistol area, I took on the pie plate stack, Bosco did the dueling tree this time, and we both tackled the spinner afterwards and succeeded in clearing the stage this time!
Stage 4 (Officially Stage 4):
We got to do a shoot house, a skeletonized one. Since it was live rounds and we didn't want to shoot up the shoot house, all of the targets were just outside the windows, on the outside of the house. Interesting shoot house setup.
One person would be the rifle shooter and go into the house to engage all of the turtle shell-shaped targets (2 hits or 1 A-zone), remembering sight over bore. The targets were sometimes at sharp angles, but we got to preview them all after the briefing, and figure out the optimal way to flow through the rooms in the house, while also keeping in mind the 180 degree rule, which they were very firm on. That makes any kind of backwards movements hard. Once they finished, they ran out, so that the pistol shooting partner could go in to engage the cardboard silhouette pistol targets with 2 hits each or 1 in the A-zone.
The pistol shooter flowed through the house to get their targets, and then they also had to take on a horizontal plate rack that was about 15m away, and then they had to drag a heavy sim man down the main hallway of the house.
After that, either shooter (we chose the rifle shooter, since they would've had time to recover by then) could pick up a stage gun (a PSA Dagger, which is similar to a G17) and shoot a target about 20m away with irons.
I did rifle, and Bosco did pistol. I wanted to put some of my Team Tactics training into practice, and I felt like rifle was a little easier. He was better able to drag the sim man, in any case. I made the last hit in one fast-for-me shot, which felt awesome.
Stage 5 (officially Stage 3):
This one was fun and had some chance to it...
You put your rifles and pistols and their mags on a table, where each weapon was color-coded. There were corresponding color-coded pistol and rifle targets downrange.
The chance came into play because when it was your turn to shoot, you flipped over a cup to find out what color you had to shoot, which meant that you randomly got either you or your partner's pistol or rifle. You could end up shooting both of your partner's guns, or both of your guns, or both pistols, or both rifles.
Pistol targets were at about 15m and could've been two knock-overs plus a mini Texas Star, or two knock-overs plus a dueling tree. Rifle targets were 4 cardboard about 30-40m away, with one partially obscured by a no-shoot.
Before the stage, we checked out each others' scopes and reticles and zoom levels, to find what would be the best setting in case either of us had to shoot that weapon. Bosco had a CZP10C with a Red Dot, so I had to learn that really quickly.
We were unlucky and had to shoot each others' guns, but we figured it out and were able to clear the stage.
This was like a "burn it down", followed by a "coordination"...
We started in the driver and shotgun seat of a car with hands on the dashboard. On the beep, we picked up our pistols from the dashboard, chambered a round, and took down knock-overs, poppers, and a double Texas Star.
Then, we got out of the car and retrieved rifles from the trunk, and then built positions in the open doors of the car on the outside, to shoot at two cardboard rifle targets nearby, with one partially covered by a no-shoot. Since it's allowed, some competitors game it and add accessories that help with stability, based on the stage.
Next, we had steel about 80m away, that we had to have the first shooter hit, and then the next shooter also successfully hit, before we could move on to the next target.
It took me a while to find the far steel in my sights because I had the magnification turned up way too high. I also messed up the sequence, by not having enough awareness and moving on too soon before making sure my partner made his hit first.
We did well on pistol, though.
After this stage, our whole squad actually got to re-shoot our first stage, because our times had been started when we were still standing on the X, whereas other squads didn't have their timers start until they had both been ready to go at their tank traps. At this match, "squad moms" ROed the stages, instead of having dedicated ROs for each stage that just stayed at the stage the whole day. That made it possible for each "squad mom" to potentially interpret the rules slightly differently.
We chose to re-shoot (and risk doing even worse), although the result for us was the same, because we still got stuck on the spinner, and actually didn't make it move as much as we did the first time. There is a benefit to having run the course once before, but it didn't help us. You also get more tired as the day goes on, and at some point, are ready for the day to be over. It's not physically demanding, but it takes a lot of energy to focus on all of the details of the stage, technical skills, and performance.
Stage 7 (officially Stage 7):
This last stage was quite difficult and complex.
Starting in the pistol area, the first shooter had to shoot the body of each of 8 cardboard silhouettes about 15m away with 2 hits each or 1 in hte A-zone. They also had to hit 3/6 plates in the Texas triangle, plus make 1 hit on a long range steel silhouette about 30m away.
The second shooter had an even harder job, with 1 head shot on each of the 8 cardboard, but there was a no-shoot area built right behind each head on the lower targets. Our team hadn't realized that those were no-shoot areas... we thought that the white space just marked the boundary between the upper and lower targets for awareness. I should've known better (because white = no-shoots all day) or confirmed with the RO myself, though, during the brief. They shot the 3 remaining plates on the Texas triangle, and then made another hit on the far steel.
After that, both would run up to the second level of the Connex, pull up ammo cans that contained rifle mags, load and make ready, and take turns engaging 5 steel silhouettes at about 100m, like we had in the previous stage, with a requirement that we use the rail for support.
Bosco went for the bodies on pistol since I was having a better day with pistol, and he did the big plates, since the small plates were more centered and helped to stabilize the star.
I shot multiple times at my head targets and had Bosco try to spot me to let me know if I made it or if I needed to add more shots, but in shooting many times, I also ended up with a no-shoot. I also struggled to hit the longer range target. I was tired and hungry by now, having barely eaten during the day.
It also took me a little time to find the rifle targets. We timed out with 2 no-engage and 1 missed rifle. Like I said at the end of the Gun Run AAR, it's nice when you can end on a stage that. you pass, so this wasn't as happy of an ending.
It was still a lot of fun to try something new with a more experienced shooter, though!
