TRAINING LEAD-UP
Sunday, Oct 23:
HDT 34.1.1 (arms) in 73 min, followed by a 2 mile run in reflective Kinvaras. I had to cram the rest of HDT programming in, since I had done the SUC team match and also had ruck club this week.
Monday, Oct 24:
Rucked 6 miles in the 20L v3 Rucker, wearing Salomon X-Missions in 63* temps, in 1:25:14, for HDT. My goal was to hit the sub-16 standard for Mammoth training. Normally, my 6 milers for HDT are with 30#, but it made sense to bump it up, since Mammoth was the reason I was doing HDT again.
Tuesday, Oct 25:
Yoga Camp Day 11 | Release with Adriene
Wednesday, Oct 26:
HDT 34.2.1 (core) with 28 min of PT and 10 min of the half mile ruck OH one arm carry, followed by an AFAP strict ruck for 2 miles in 24:18 with the 30#RPC in MACV1s.
Friday, Oct 28:
Haunted Ruck with the ruck club for 2.75 miles with a bunch of new people (which is always nice to have). We were in a fancy part of town with big houses, so we saw lots of giant skeletons. The decorations were nice. I think the visitors had a good time. They all dressed up for it, too, which is nice.
After I finished with them and handed out candy (patches were late shipping out), I set out to complete the rest of a 10 miler to hit PATHFINDER Forward Overnight Ruck requirements. Halloween season is a nice time for an overnight! My goal with my on-the-fly route choices was to not hit any single segment of street twice, like it often is.
I was using Fox River socks, which are beefy, but I did get a hotspot on my right pinky toe in the Salomon X-missions.
Saturday, Oct 29:
Hit the FOP with SB for practice.
We did the Straight Dope card positional drill, where a lot of on-the-clock time was spent interpreting the colors and figuring out what position went with each color. I guess that's somewhat ok, since you might have to classify colors of painted steel during matches, too, although I don't think that's the intention behind the drill. It's also random, what sequence you get, and if you're lucky, you don't have to move much. Positional practice is always good, though.
We did 1-round drills with mag out (that's my only way to emergency reload with the RPR).
My "game" contribution was a Coletac back-of-packing list trio of targets that I randomly numbered from 1-15, and we picked and number and had to find and shoot it. The intention was to help us with scanning, although I don't know how much it helped with that, since the "range" was only 3 sheets of paper wide at 100yd.
During the day, I'd randomly shoot at steel at 30 and 35yd with pistol. 30 was OK, but I'd miss at 35 for some reason. I'm so flinchy today. I need to figure out what I'm doing so differently at 35. My hold should be OK.
It's cool how much shot up painted steel looks like the moon.
I did my third attempt at the Kraft drill. It was much messier this time, going out to the 4-ring.
Usually, I'm at the 2-ring. I was pretty frustrated, because normally, you should improve with practice, not regress. It is interesting that it all went low left. That means something when you shoot pistol. I wonder if it means something similar when you do PR, but I'd need to break it down to the 4 positions to diagnose the problem, instead of shooting everything at the same diamond.
Next, we did a mini stage where we shot 2 pistol, 2 modified prone, 2 kneeling, 2 seated, 2 standing, 2-knee kneeling. We repeated, and I went from 8 min with low urgency, to 4 min, with about the same result in terms of accuracy.
We finished the day with a fun and goofy "game" called "pigeon killer" (clay pigeons, which are the clay targets that you skeet shooters use). We'd spin around, build modified prone, and shoot, at a pigeon or pidgeon fragment (better, since it was only about 100yd, so 4 inches is excessive).
After shooting, we went shopping for Mammoth gear! The nice salesman at REI was an expert in packs and helped me find one that fit my frame and gave me options for securing the rifle. When he and his buddy found out what we needed it for, they were surprised, to be sure!
And after that, we had brown rice sushi. What a day!
Sunday, Oct 30:
My dad was visiting again, so we went for a 6.5 mile ruck on the 4 mile Creek Greenway. I used 30# in the Salomon XA Comps. I didn't use 50#, and even considered going slick because my body was tired, but 30# was fine. It did feel harder than it should've, though.
Afterwards, I did HDT 34.2.3 (arms) with 22 min of PT plus 0.5 miles of single-arm 35#carry in 12 min.
Monday, Oct 31:
Another Halloween where I managed to avoid trick-or-treaters!
HDT 34.3.1 (legs) with 36 min of PT, then 1 mile with 60#R in Ballistics in 15:36.
Also, dry fire.
- I did some kneeling and standing
- and seated and prone
I focused on follow-through and on grabbing the gun from the barricade stop while changing positions.
When I wasn't squared up on my position, I'd take the time to adjust.
I noticed the effects of a catty-wompus game change on wobble... it's real! So fix it.
Running the bolt shifts the bubble left when I push the bolt down, so I need to counteract that force or try to be more gentle with it.
Tuesday, Nov 1:
I did the APFT for the start of PATHFINDER Ruck Training Class 034.
50/45 pushups, 78/76 situps, 14:31/15:54 2 miler wearing the reflective Kinvaras. Kept up the 300!
Afterwards, I did a 50# ruck in Altra Torin Plus while playing Pokemon and taking pictures of deer. I still finished in 29:16.
I saw other animals today and the next day, too!
Wednesday, Nov 2:
Everyday Vinyassa Flow Yoga Class from Lululemon. It felt so good after recent workouts that have been tough on my body.
Thursday, Nov 3:
HDT 34.3.CP (next-day zombie walker) 25 min AMRAP with 45#SB/20#RPC) followed by HDT 34.3.2 (arms) with 43 min of PT and a 17:21 2 mile interval run in my very old light blue Kinvaras, to try to squeeze a bit more life out of them.
GUARDIAN LONG RANGE TEAM MATCH @ THE ARENA
Guardian is a bit different from other matches, in that it's more focused on helping new people get into the sport, and has a higher level goal of supporting the causes of orphans and the vulnerable.
At their individual matches, they do a typical competition on Saturday, and then on Sunday, they pair up the lowest ranked with the top ranked, second lowest ranked with the second highest ranked, etc, and then have a second day of competition in those teams. That's such a neat concept.
This was more of a traditional team match, though. SB had a conflict with the date, so at first, I wasn't sure I'd be able to sign up, but Scott helped me find a more experienced partner who was willing to help a relative newbie like me, which was awesome.
Friday Train-Up
UKD Range
Like with many two-day matches, Friday is a zero day, where they also have optional classes that you can sign up for. I've come to learn that those classes are often geared towards some of the skills that will help you during the match, which makes sense. At SUC, movers were a part of the match, and the pistol class talked about different zone hits on IPSIC targets (so I heard).
That wasn't why I signed up for these classes, though. For me, it was the $50 training opportunity.
First, I attended an Unknown Distance range class. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to zero before the class, since the class started at the same time that the zero range opened, and was on a different bay on the other side of the compound. The first thing we did once the class started was to range (which I had done while waiting for the class to begin) and confirm dope. That's potentially meaningless to do if you aren't zeroed, but I drove to the match, so my zero should've been decent (at least not wildly off).
The instructors even gave us the wind holds, by only knowing what caliber we were shooting, which was really impressive. I guess they are familiar with the gun number system, and how you can use the first digit of the G1 BC to get the number that gives you good approximations for wind holds.
Once we confirmed a few distances (at least as far as we could still spot impacts, which was out to 850, but impossible at the next increment, which was 1218), we had free time, so I took advantage of the nice array of props that they had - high rocks standing, log double kneeling, rock single kneeling, low fence double kneeling and seated.
The instructors (one of whom was also one of the two MDs) talked about team dynamics, which was great in the lead-up to this team match. They talked about different options for how to break up the range into sectors when you're trying to talk on. Shoot once you find, at some point, vs searching all day. Go with what the spotter says, vs having a full-on discussion mid-stage. Do an AAR afterwards.
We covered some practical shooting basics, like doing pre-stage checklists, having paper dope cards handy, staying on low magnification when possible.
We did a module on wind, where we talked about how to get the gun number and apply simple math to adjust your holds as the wind doubles or triples. We talked about how to read mirage angles to estimate wind, and did a neat exercise where an instructor went out with a smoke maker to have us guess the wind. Vegetation can lie to you sometimes, and keep in mind that the bullet will go up potentially 47 feet in the air, so don't only look at wind near the ground directly in front of you.
KD Range
After being fed, which was a nice surprise, we moved over to the KD range (and the initial KD range people moved over to the UKD range).
We talked about the shot process (stability, NPA, aim, control), economy of movement (walking up, holding the GC, bag down then gun down, repositioning as needed), team dynamics (distinctive features, shapes, colors last).
Before starting on free practice time, I ran over to the zero range next door. I adjusted down 0.1mil. I didn't have my mat, so my elbows gained an appreciation for mats over concrete.
Back at the KD range, there was only a single target, since they wanted to keep the rest a secret before the next day's match. We shot at an 840yd target that was 0.4 mil wide in 3mph wind.
I shot off of a tank trap, roof, fire hose, tombstone slanted sides, fence, low table, and low railroad tie.
After that, I went back to the zero range to make sure that I was still good, and hadn't slipped turret rings incorrectly.
Registration Area
Back at the registration area, I bought raffle tickets, some neat patches, and a nice hooded tee.
The scenery at the Arena is beautiful. I could stare at that pond all day.
After the day was over, I drove to Alabama, about 45 min away, to get a good night's sleep before the match. It's kind of nuts that I had to drive to another state, and switch to another time zone, to get a hotel. I had to carefully figure out what time I needed to wake up the next morning, to get back to GA and switch time zones at the right time.
Day One
I shot 40 rounds of rifle and 20 rounds of pistol on this day.
All of the shooting was done under a single pavilion, so there was a lot going on at the bay. The competitors were staged in the lower parking area, and we'd rotate haphazardly through 6 stages until we finished shooting everything. There was a line behind each of the stage start points, and briefs would be given, periodically, when enough people for a new batch came in.
KD Stage 6: Minivan
- 600 D/A
- One person shoots from the front row of the van, the other from the second row of the van, fully in the van.
- Shoot at 3 targets, N->F, then back, 2x per person, then go to the next target. Hit or miss, move on.
We didn't find all of the targets, because the left and right limits of the range were difficult to judge, since we were all on the same by, and this stage was on the far right end. Our first "near" target ended up being to the far right, where we weren't even looking. We shot at the one target that we did see, but it wasn't near by any means. We heard "wrong target", as expected.
I wasn't able to go prone in the van, since there wasn't enough space, so I tried to use the armrest as a barricade, but that was challenging, too.
We got a zero on this stage... not a great start, but you learn and move on.
KD Stage 5: My Partner Screwed Me
- 1300 D/A, 5mph wind R->L
- Start with 3 pistol targets, 2 hits each, alternating shooters after each attempt. Then whoever still has more to finish just finishes what they need afterwards.
- Search for trident placards that indicate the rifle targets.
- The first rifle shooter has 5 marked positions to shoot from, 2 rounds per... must hit both from that position for shooter 2 (me) to get the opportunity to shoot 2 at a far out target.
I didn't miss pistol.
I never got to shoot rifle at the 870yd target, though, since Chris was having some difficulties. I tried to give corrections, but no luck.
At least we got pistol points this time.
KD Stage 4: Working the Railroad
- No pistol.
- Run up the hill, unload gear, grab a railroad tie and put it on tank traps.
- Engage 2 targets with a "clipboard" symbol placard, N->F, 2 rounds each, hit or miss, alternating shooters at each targets. Repeat until you use up 10 rounds.
- If you only find the far target, as an example, you can shoot it, but you'd only get credit for the rounds that are supposed to go to the far target.
- There were 3 table shooting positions to choose from, and you may need to move to see the targets.
We couldn't find the near target (it was probably visible from the far right table, which I should've stuck to my instinct on and went to, since they probably chose that span of shooting area for a reason), so we just went for the far target. At least the burned "near" rounds helped to confirm wind calls.
And who knows - maybe we would've eaten up a lot of time shooting the near target and having to change holds and maybe even positions, anyways.
Lesson - don't be swayed by where other teams go... they don't know any better, either, most of the time.
KD Stage 3: Pick Your Poison
- Rifle targets are in a horizontal troop line with a "watch" symbol placard with an orange outline indicating the leftmost target. Hit 5 targets, L->R.
- One person shoots from the roof, the other person shoots from the "window" with a table below it.
- 2 rounds per shooter, hit or miss, alternating fire.
- Then switch to pistol, L->R, 2 impacts each, alternating shooters, follow the leader, since L->R could look different baed on your angle.
Having used the roof the previous day, I knew how I wanted to place my legs.
There was some wobble, but I did my best.
I didn't miss pistol, but rifle was hard. I couldn't see my misses because of the vegetation around. I only got a couple points. Was it bad wind reading? Or something else?
The roof was connected to the table, so I had to ask Chris to stop moving at one point.
KD Stage 2: Rocky Riddle
- Run up to the telephone pole and solve 5 riddles, with each correct answer unlocking one shooting position. You get 2 min to solve, and if you finish early, you could start shooting early. It turned out that no matter what, you got to shoot from all 5 positions, but you could still get a head start by solving everything early.
- Shoot N->F at coat hanger placard targets, 1 round/target. After shooter 1 finishes, shooter 2 goes.
It turned out that we had to shoot from a different position each time, but that wasn't clear to me from the initial brief... I thought it maybe meant that you had more position options to choose from.
We had some issues talking each other on to wrong targets for various reasons... one was actually unmarked, and for the other, I miscounted berms.
Another frustrating stage.
KD Stage 1: Piano Playing Prairie Dog
- Start with 3 pistol targets, L->R, 2 hits each, must hit to move on.
- Take all gear up to the top of the platform, with one shooter prone, and the other using the rail. Shoot 3 targets with lightning bolt symbols, N->F->N, 2 rounds each, hit or miss, alternating fire.
Because of our different visual angles, talk-ons were a little more challenging, since I could barely see the top half of one of the targets, but we figured it out.
The piano keys are interesting targets, because they can swing from the bolt at the top of it. I rushed the second shot, and should've waited a second for the key to stop moving, even though I was aiming for near the top, where there was less movement.
On my way back to near, I shot what I thought was a perfect shot, but could see no hit or miss at all, despite there being a big berm. The target was only 200yd away, so it was puzzling.
KD Stage 7: Movers
- Everyone in our half of the competitor field got on one line at 550 yd from the berm, to shoot at human-operated movers.
- Shoot 5 as the target goes in one direction, and 5 more on their way back.
- The mover comes up at 90* (so no surface area), flattens to show itself, stays for a moment, and then starts moving at 2mph, stops halfway to turn 90* again, move down, come back up at 90*, face us again, pause, then resume movement. At the far end, they'd do their disappearance act again and come back up, and repeat the same thing on the way back.
Their movement pattern, which we got to observe many times and even dry fire at as each person went, gave us multiple opportunities to shoot at static targets (4/5 shots per direction). You just had to be focused.
With a 1 mil target and 1.2 for the lead at 2mph, subtracting 0.5, I got 0.7 as my lead from the leading edge. While I was going, the RO noticed that some of my bullets were resulting in a puff of blue smoke about 30yd from my muzzle. He was experienced and had seen it before. He suspected that my bullets were disintegrating, maybe because of a higher muzzle velocity than what the bullet could handle, or a dirty barrel.
That explained why my perfect 200yd easy shot at stage 6 had not been visible anywhere! And maybe that could even explain some of the misses in stage 3.
I still managed to get 7/10 shots on target, so maybe all the ones that went downrange hit.
This was the last stage of the day, so I had the evening to try to figure out if I could do anything about it, like borrow cleaning gear, but there was none to be found. Finding alternate ammo would've also been difficult.
We'd just do our best. I had a few good shots, at least, before I'd have issues each stage, so I'd just need to make the most of those.
Plan for the Next Day
Chris, who's the MD for Mammoth, knew that I was training for Mammoth, so he gave me some good things to work on the following day:
- speak louder during on-stage communciations
- bring all my gear to the stage shooting area, like I would at Mammoth
- take brief notes on a little slip of paper instead of my giant notebook
Dinner and Raffle
At night, we had a representative of the charity that we were supporting, talk about the good work that the money raised from the event would go to. The organizer of Guardian has a personal connection to the cause, and it's awesome to see what he's done to advance it.
In lieu of a prize table, Guardian does a raffle to raise more funds, and Saturday night is the night for that.
I drove back to Alabama, to rest up for the second day.
Day Two
We were already in teams for this special edition Team Match, so we just continued with the match the next day. The half of the field that had started on the KD range (us), moved over to the UKD range for day 2, and vice versa.
The organizers learned from day 1, and had the teams rotate among the stages in a more organized fashion this time, which helped speed things up, since it wasn't random allocations where you might get backlogs at certain stages or sub-optimal use of stages leading to backlogs.
I'd shoot another 40 rounds rifle and 20 rounds pistol on this day.
UKD Stage 4: The Box
- 1100 D/A
- Target indicators are white targets with orange horizontal stripes, for 4 targets.
- No pistol, 8 rifle rounds/shooter.
- Shooter 1 starts on the left side of a little hiding stoop, and shooter 2 is on the right.
- The left part of the stoop is opened up, so that shooter 1 can look for targets with their eyes and scope (no LRF) for 1 min. They can talk, write, etc. Shooter 2 can't see anything during this time, though.
- Next, the right half of the stoop is opened up sot hat shooter 2 can have 90s to range, talk, etc.
- Finally, we have 3:30 to shoot N->F, 2 rounds each, alternating fire, through the troop line.
Chris didn't even try to spot for me because of the vegetation. When he was shooting, he advised me not to spot for him, either, and just prep my next shot.
My last 2 shots, at least, exploded.
I had trouble making out the first target's shape with my binos... I wonder if it's my eyes or bad focus on the binos.
This was a really well-designed stage, that tested some extra and useful sniper skills, like communication, range cards, and time management.
UKD Stage 5: Deuce
- 2 pistol targets, 1 close and 1 farther. You pick who goes for what. Hit 2x before partner goes.
- Before getting into the truck to shoot rifle, you must either stick a RR tie up there, or run out and back. We did the latter, since I had dropped the RR tie even low-carrying it earlier.
- 5 rifle targets with vertical orange stripe. Shoot N->F, 2 shots each, hit or miss, alternating shooters.
I didn't miss on pistol.
I shot the wrong rifle target once, since I hadn't panned and counted, or noted special features next to each one.
This was also a stage where your partner had to be still to not affect your shot, since we were both shooting from the top of the truck.
Fortunately, the RR tie that was left up there from the previous team gave me something to stand on to get enough height.
UKD Stage 6: Target Detection
- 1 min to study 5 faces on a poster, no writing allowed
- Run up to the connect, go prone, and search for targets with the previously pictured faces next to them (with fake ones that didn't match also there to confuse you).
- Tell the RO which one you're going after, before shooting.
- 2 rounds per target, alternating fire.
- 10 rounds rifle/person, no pistol.
- ROs wouldn't call "impacts" for this stage.
To get to this stage, we rode in a people mover.
It went pretty well for us.
The RO told us after the stage that holding vs dialing would've saved me a bit of time, since the targets weren't very far away, which is a good point.
UKD Stage 7: House
- 1640 D/A, 79*F, 30Hg.
- 3 pistol targets, alternating fire, hit to move on, L->R.
- Go inside the house, and out the window, shoot 5 targets N->F, 2 shots on each, alternating fire. You're allowed to move furniture around.
To get to the house, we rode in a people mover.
When you have to go N->F, you somewhat need to find all 5 targets, first, which makes it tricky when you can't find them all.
We did correctly see and shoot the first one.
The second target was a sniper's head that was mainly visible if you built a higher position, though, so we didn't get that one, and had gone for the third target instead, which was out of sequence.
Tricky!
UKD Stage 1: Yelling Match
- Shoot 3 pistol, alternating attempts, but you only need 1 hit per target for the team.
- Run up to the second level of a cone, and do modified prone from 2 different tables.
- Targets are white, with symbols on them.
- Shooter 1 draws a card, yells the symbol to shooter 2, who searches for the target with that symbol, hits it 2x, then draws a card to reverse the process for shooter 1.
- Repeat 2x.
- In the meantime, there's loud music blaring.
The symbols were drawn on the targets, which were shot up, making some of them more difficult to interpret. Also, one image was rotated 45* from how it was presented on a card, which I interpreted as being a different image than what I saw on the target (a 5-dot like you would see on a die).
UKD Stage 2: Around the World
- 1800 D/A
- Start with 10 rounds of rifle.
- Go up to the 3rd floor of the connex structure (the roof), shoot at 5 targets, N->F from prone, 2 shots each, hit or miss. The targets have a white backslash orange stripe.
Chris noticed a tricky close target that had its slash in the opposite direction.
I spotted and talked Chris on to a duck target. He talked me on to a different target, going berm to berm.
I gave him a good correction.
We didn't get nearly as far as we wanted, but at least we got some points. With my bullet issues, I maybe only had a few good shots in me, anyways.
UKD Stage 3: 22LR and Partner Shooting
- Use the stage gun (a 22LR) at a 107yd target diamond. Shooter 1 gets 1 min to make 5 shots. Shooter 2 does the same. Each miss is 15s off the 6 min par time. Must shoot standing unsupported, off-hand.
- Next, there were 2 pistol targets, which you hit R->L, 2hits each, shoot until you hit.
- Move on to rifle, where the partner can only have hands and feet touching the ground. There are 2 targets, which you hit N->F, with 5 shots at an IPSIC at 625yd, and 5 shots at a diamond at 644 yd, then switch.
The 22LR standing was hard, and I did better over time, realizing that I should use my left eye.
It was hard holding myself steady, so I was a wobbly base for Chris to shoot off of, and he got one hit.
Focus Areas for the Future
Spotting targets
Ranging quickly (Chris was amazing at this)
Talking partner on to targets
Figure out what's going on with my barrel and ammo (try Non-Hornady, try cleaning the barrel... cleaning ended up doing the trick, it seems)
The match was great... Chris got to break in his new gun, and dust off his skills. I got to learn from a very experienced shooter who was willing to help me. I gained a lot of good match experience, and learned from one of the best!
