Gun Run - Land Nav Edition 2022

TRAINING LEAD-UP

Sunday, May 8:

HDT 31.1.CP (Sanddoom) 20 min AMRAP with a 30#SB. 

Monday, May 9:

Open Yoga Flow with Lou at the USNWC, followed by 2 miles with 30# and a yoga mat in 45:41 in the Salomon Speedcross.

Tuesday, May 10:

Range trip:

And HDT 31.2.1 (Core) with 35 min of PT, a 0.5 mi farmers carry ruck with a 30#SB, followed by a 2 mile strict ruck AFAP in 24:11 with 30# in a bouncy Salomon XA comp.

Wednesday, May 11:

HDT 31.2.CP (Hell's Sandfire) 25 min AMRAP with a 45#SB with 1 set and 62 reps, followed by HDT 31.2.2 (Legs) in 25 min with a 1 mile ruck with 30# at the end in 12:30.

Thursday, May 12:

HDT 31.2.3 (Arms) in 27 min, plus a 0.5 mile ruck run in 6:03 with 30# in Ballistic trainers, followed by 3x (50 situps, 50 hip thrusters, 50 4-ct flutter kicks) for 15 min as a filler.

Friday, May 13:

Neighborhood Ruck with my dad and sister, with 30# in the 25L v 2.1 in 43:28.

Plus games, of course.

Saturday, May 14:

Mark from Fox Events put on Operation Catocin, for some land nav, cypher solving, stealthy stalking, and fire building fun.  

In the afternoon, I took my dad and sister to the Catawba Riverkeeper Trail that I became familiar with through the South Fork Sampler, covering 4 miles in 1:34:51 wearing a 30# 25L v 2.1 rucker and Altra Lone Peak mids.

Afterwards, my sister and I went to the USNWC for yoga.

Sunday, May 15:

Did an easy 6 mile ruck for HDT with 30# in the 25L v2.1 rucker in 1:57:11, wearing Salomon XA Comps.  Played lots of Pokemon.  

I love how handy it is to have ear pro lying around nowadays.  I can use it at the range, use it for mowing the lawn, use it for refilling tires, and use it for driving cars with missing windows.

Monday, May 16:

Open Level Flow Yoga at the USNWC, followed by a 3 mile ruck on South Main then Main with Melissa, with 30# in the v2.1 25L, wearing Salomon Speedcrosses.

Wednesday, May 18:

HDT 31.3.2 (arms) followed by a 2 mile run in 14:25 in 61 degree temps, first thing in the morning.

Later, HDT 31.3.3 (core) with 80 min of PT (a grinder) followed by 12 min of SB OH rucking for 0.37 miles, then the rest of the mile (25:57 total) normal carry at night, since I was still feeling fresh.

Thursday, May 19:

Joined Cabarrus Ruck Club for 2 miles, before watching a baseball game.

Fun and different!  I even wore my Snow White ruck for it.

Friday, May 20:

Met up with Bryan and fam from HDT, who were in town to host the Rufus Throwdown.

GUN RUN LAND NAV

This was the Gun Run Series's first Land Nav edition.  It combines two things I've come to love - firearms comps plus orienteering.  This would be a longer distance event because of the land nav aspect, so we ended up covering 8.5 miles.  It was like 10K as the crow flies, but with optimal route choices and the way the shooting areas are segregated from the navigation areas as a safety measure, we got more mileage for our money.  There were 9 shooting stages, too, more than the usual 6 stages over 5K.  That resulted in what felt like an amazing day-long adventure, instead of the usual sprint that the typical Gun Runs feel like.  This may have even been more fun than the Night matches, which is saying a lot.

I brought 6 mags of rifle and 10 mags of pistol, so both of us ended up wearing plate carriers to help bring all of our ammo.  I also wore ACUs because I wanted some protection from thorns and stuff while bushwhacking, so it got quite warm.  Fortunately, they had water resupply stations built into the route.  The route made good use of the land, and was well-designed.  It kept a good flow for the participants, so that there weren't big backups.

Each missed point of the 6 waypoints would result in a 60 minute penalty, to add some incentive for finding the points, without making them a DNFable element to the event.

Nav Leg 1:

The first point was the most difficult to find, because the most reasonable route based on the map that we had required bushwhacking, following an azimuth, and pace counting, which we're used to, but that's still not always easy.  The point was farther and more to the left than I had expected.  We found it mainly because other teams who were also searching for it found it.  I wonder whether nearby power lines were messing with the compass bearing.

Shooting Stage 1:

We went back to the start for our first shooting stage, where we shot at a gong through a VTAC board, with 3 hits from each slot (a diagonal and a horizontal).  I was the first shooter, because after I was done, SB would have to drag me on a skedco, but we ran out of time before I got my last hit.  It was hard for me to get proper eye relief at certain angles.  28/42 teams were able to pass, but we did not.

Shooting Stage 2:

We moved over to another nearby bay for shooting stage 2, which involved a dueling tree and some small knock-down targets on either side of the tree for each of us to tackle.  For the tree, one shooter would flip the leaves to the other side, and the other shooter would flip it back.  We could work concurrently.  We were only allowed to shoot off-hand, though.  We passed, along with 37/42 other teams.  Our pistol work since December/January made this possible.

Nav Leg 2:

We got our next point from the volunteers at checkin, and went down the main road towards our next point.  We had to make a left turn but went too early down one road (it became clear when we saw a pond, and the pond was too early on the map compared to where we needed to be) and ended up finding a different point, so we made a mental note and returned back to the main road to find the correct turnoff.  

We kept going and found the right road, and found the real point on the side of a shack, with instructions to go to a rally point (a truck and tent with more volunteers).  By this time, it felt like we had done a bunch of navigation already, yet we were only 2 shooting stages in!  I was feeling really warm in all my kit already, and I knew that I needed to chug water and top off again at the rally point.  

At the rally point, we were told to go up the road to the next two shooting stages.

Shooting Stage 3:

We got a little wait time here, which was nice for letting us cool down some.

When it was our turn to shoot, one person had to retrieve their kit from the back of a truck (SB), while the other got out of the car to engage a steel torso with pistol at 10yards.  Any miss on pistol meant that we'd have to do an extra step of applying a TQ on me later, so there was a lot of pressure.  I was slow and careful.

I finished with the torso and ran down a dirt road to 4 more pistol targets, which weren't that far away, but I did miss, so I had to get the TQ.  SB applied the TQ, then started to engage 2 rifle targets across the pond with 3 hits each.  

I was feeling bad by now about doing things to cause us to time out on two stages, so SB had yet to be able to complete a rifle stage.  32/42 teams passed.  We failed, but not by a lot.

Shooting Stage 4:

We got some redemption at the next stage.  One team member would be the radio person (me), who would be in a tent with instructions on which rifle targets to hit and in what sequence.  The other team member (SB) would hear the instructions on the radio and execute.  This went very well for us, and we passed, along with 34/42 other teams.  It was a great use of strengths for us.

Nav Leg 3:

We went back to the rally point to get coordinates for the next 2 waypoints, which we were allowed to find in any sequence.  We went for the point by the tower, first.  I mistook an elevation indicator for the location of a tower, though, which caused some confusion.  Another issue was that the protractor that we were using didn't have its slots cut exactly right, which caused drawn points to be off by a bit, which is enough to throw things off.  When I figured that out (after we struggled to find the point), I recalibrated using the "see a target, know the bearing to find where we are" technique.  We found that the point was close to the tower all along, which we had predicted from the start, thinking that it was a nice feature to incorporate into the event.

At the tower, there was an ammo can where we had to grab a shotgun shell for a later stage, which was a nice and fun twist.

To get to the other point, we followed what at first looked like a path that would get us towards where we wanted to go, but it ended up only being a service path for one of the tower cables, so we went back to the main road to cover ground quickly, before ducking back into the woods at the right pace count to get the next point.  This grab went very smoothly.

Shooting Stage 5:

Here, we got to use the shotgun shell.  One shooter would use a stage shotgun to breach the door.  Teams that lost or forgot the shell would need to use brute force (an ax) to open the "door".  The other shooter would go in once the door was breached, and hit 4 cardboard targets with 4 shots each.  I got flustered and didn't adjust for sight over bore, and doubted if I got 4 per, so I went back to shoot more, which wasted time.  This did cause some other teams to fail.

Shooter one who had done the shotgun would then go in and hit pistol targets on steel, 4 targets with 4 hits each.  We failed by less than 15 seconds... we were so close.  32/42 teams passed.  

Shooting Stage 6:

Both shooters had to pick up a 60#SB.  Once it was off the ground, there were 3 small pistol targets to engage with 3 hits each.  I carried the sandbag (haha, I initially used "SB" as the abbreviation, but that's also my partner's name), so that SB could focus on shooting, since she was the better pistol shooter.  After a few seconds, I realized that I was able to help shoot with my right hand while my left hand held up the sandbag on my shoulders.  Unholstering was a bit of a challenge with all the gear on me, but I eventually became more useful.  

Once we finished with pistol, we brought the sandbag over to the rifle shooting area, where we were allowed to drop the sandbag.  3 targets required 2 hits each.  Shooter 1 had to do this first, and then shooter 2 would do the same.  We timed out during rifle.  22/42 teams passed.  You had to be fast on the pistol to finish this stage.

Shooting Stage 7:

It started to rain.  We had to carry a "nut sack" sandbag up the road.  Other teams were luckier and got to carry a single jerry can... it was based on chance.  We had some wait time under the tree, where we could minimize getting rained on.

I chose to be the rifle shooter, since I hadn't gotten to do much rifle yet.  I climbed up into the tree house and found and hit 3 targets with 3 rounds each.  I braced on the side initially, and then switched to the top of the ladder later.  I had a double feed, which I cleared by removing the mag when charging alone didn't help.  I continued on, and finished my tasks on time.  This, despite the rain making the targets a bit harder to see... I wonder if the rain contributed to the malfunction, too.

Meanwhile, SB had some pistol targets to engage.  She carried something that looked like a missile out, and shot.  At one point, she ran out of ammo, but she remembered that she had one loose round in her pocket, and calmly retrieved that and loaded it and shot it, and we were able to finish in time!  There was even thunder and lightning, which upped the adrenaline levels, partially because we wanted to finish before there were any threats of pulling us off course, if it came to that.

Nav Leg 4:

We knew where to find this point because we had come across it during nav leg 2, so we didn't even bother to plot it.  At this point, there was a map posted with instructions to the next point, which we found on the opposite side of a sparsely wooded area.  That other point had instructions on how we could get to the next shooting stage across the road.

Shooting Stage 8:

It was still raining.  We had some wait time.  We had to shoot at increasingly small targets across the lake from standing, kneeling, and prone positions.  For each position, one shooter shot 3 hits at the target, and then the other shooter would repeat.  

I got standing but missed a lot with kneeling.  I never finished the kneeling portion.  Had we even gotten to prone, it would've been hard, from what we heard, because there was a lot of tall grass obscuring the view from most positions, and by this time, there was a lot of fog from the rain, too.  

Shooting Stage 9:

Ellis typically has a bounding stage on each team match, and this was no different.  We started at the same barrier, then moved forward, and either left or right in a V formation.  We passed this stage at the Ellerbe team match the prior year, but this time, I wasn't getting hits for some reason.  I wondered if it was a loose QD or parallax.  Last time, we had been so happy at this stage and thought it was fun.  It was the same stage this time, but it wasn't fun, since we didn't pass it.  I had even braced on two sides like an L.  21/42 teams passed, so it was a somewhat difficult stage.

We ran back to the start to finish.  

This was so much fun, despite how the last stage went.  We really hope Ellis brings back the Land Nav Team Match.  It requires so much more work and many more ROs with the 9 stages, but it's sooooo worth it.