TRAINING LEAD-UP
Monday, Dec 8:
Yoga Joy & Yoga for Comfort and Nourishment with Adriene.
Then, HDT "Jump Release" BW 25 min AMRAP with 4 rounds and 44 reps, then HDT "Fast Break" 20 min AMRAP with a 30#RPC with 5 rounds and 21 reps.
Tuesday, Dec 9:
5.5 mi ruck in 1:54:36 on a cold night playing Pokemon, with 3 bathroom breaks, wearing MACV1s and a 30#Rucker V2. It was good active recovery after yesterday.
Thursday, Dec 11:
Took my first private lesson with Emily McManus at Blackstone. I wanted to improve my speed while maintaining accuracy.
She had me shoot at my normal-ish pace, then had me push the pace, which gained me over half a second for draw-and-shoot-2. Starting with my right hand near my holster helped and makes a lot of sense.
We progressed onto multiple targets, then walk-and-shoot forward and backward, then mixing the two with different ranges for the multiple targets.
I do need to be more disciplined about finding my sights every time.
As always, dry firing is essential homework.
We shot a lot. I should bring more ammo and more mags next time.
She also encouraged bringing the gun up to my head, vs moving my head down to the gun.
It was a super well-paced and well-structured lesson.
Afterwards, I checked zero on my SR15 and zeroed my BCM, each with three rounds, and they were fine. I finished with a few mags of ball-and-dummy on my CZ. The first two mags were fantastic, but I think I got a little tired and impatient on the second two mags, since that group was more to the right.
GBF OPERATION SHOOTER 2025
This would be my third time doing this event. I've done every shooting event that GBF has had to offer, outside of their very first beta run of Operation Shooter.
We had a 5am start, so I stayed at the Sawmill lodge the night before. As always, it's a bit of a reunion when you get there, seeing old friends and making new friends who you'll come to know over the course of a long weekend together.
Event 1: The Run
The day started with a 2.5 mi run out to the back gate and back along the main road. Right before the run began, we were told that over the course of the weekend, we should expect the unexpected. This would come to fruition when we got back to the start and were told to do it again. I'm glad I didn't smoke my legs on the big uphill back in an attempt to gain any places. I wasn't going to anyways, with the whole weekend ahead of us. I saw some of the front runners running back as I approached the start, but they like to run extra and cheer people on sometimes, so that's what I thought was happening at first.
I ended up doing 5 mi in 47:13 = 9:27/mi average.
Event 2: The Endurance
I was surprised when we got the brief that we'd have another cardio-based event right after the run. We'd be going on an unknown distance ruck, following red and white flags (with some chest-deep water somewhere along the way). We'd end up at "tire town" where we'd shoot rifle steel standing, kneeling, and prone, 3x through. We'd run back the way we came to get back to the start, do a rope climb with the 25# dry ruck with rifle staged, then go to a bay to shoot 5 standing, 5 kneeling, 5 prone. Then, we'd repeat.
I brought two mags on me and staged 2 mags at the start point shooting bay. 1 mag would've been enough ideally, but I didn't want to run out.
The ruck ended up being 6 miles for 1 lap, with parts that involved bushwhacking, a decent length river follow. You had to pay attention to the route you were taking, since the retrace might not be as obvious on the way back. Many people ended up missing parts of the course or taking the wrong route, so this event got dropped, not that it would've necessarily counted anyways, since Gregg likes to make it a surprise about which ones count vs which ones don't, to incentivize you to push all the time no matter what. Also, we only ended up doing 1 lap, so it was kind of like the opposite of the previous event, since we did fewer laps than we originally thought there would be. You could tell by the elapsed time that this would likely be a 1-lap deal by the time you were over halfway into the first lap, though. I did 5.77 mi in 1:55:30, 20:01 average, which is good considering the water and the shooting and the buschwhacking.
We didn't need to bring our pistols or belt, which helped.
Event 3: Hostage
Our first more shooting-oriented stage...
Run forward to the log with only 10 rounds in your rifle mag.
Load and take 2 shots per hostage taker target (red circles) from prone, and you're allowed to brace on the log. We had a 4 min time cap, which would be plenty of time for good shoots.
I got 2/10. The wobble wasn't bad, so I wonder if it was rounds flying or the differences between the ammo that I zeroed with (IMI) vs the ammo that I was using for comps (Federal XM193) to try to mitigate the risks of popped primers assuming it's an ammo issue. My rounds went high sometimes and low sometimes, but the left windage deviation was pretty consistent. Once I adjusted for the windage shift, my impacts got a little better, but they were still pretty small targets to deal with.
I estimated the range at 36yd.
Event 4: Pistol
Another shooting-oriented stage...
Run up and shoot the plate rack, then the Texas star, then another plate rack, from corresponding barrels, then run back to the table.
I had to fight a couple of the targets. Nothing seemed obviously wrong with my technique, but I kept missing.
I did do a preemptive mag change before taking on the star, but I ended up missing a lot and nearly had to do another mag change towards the end of the stage.
Event 5: Battleship
A mixture next, but more shooting than physical...
Start prone with 2 people per log. You have 5 min to run around a tree with your ruck and cold rifle and back. You then load and shoot at the battleships assigned to you. You get 2 points per completely sunk ship and negative 2 points each time you shoot one of the "bomb" icons.
My log partner was shaking the log, so I switched to shooting off of my mag after a little while.
I was shooting low and left again, so I adjusted, but the rounds were still wilder than I would've liked. Maybe the distance was more like 25 instead of 36, which would explain why I'd be shooting low.
I at least won my heat with 3 boats sunk... someone else in another heat sunk 5 boats but also shot 2 bombs, so we were equal in the end.
Event 6: Strip and Assemble
Run from the gate to the ATV by the pond and back, with ruck and rifle.
Disassemble the rifle into 4 parts (lower, upper, BCG, charging handle), reassemble it, then shoot any steel 1x from any position. Clear, then touch the table.
I only brought 5 rounds to save on weight.
The ruck ended up being 1 mile total..
I missed my first shot, which I tried to do standing for speed, so I switched to prone to guarantee a hit, since I only had 5 rounds total.
Event 7: The Carry
Carry your partner with your ruck and rifle and their ruck and rifle from the gate to the range, then make 15 rifle hits on target. Clear and touch the table for time.
My buddy had a little over 10 pounds on me, but that's not a terrible difference.
I didn't get her on my neck high enough, so it was a brutal carry. I considered resetting halfway through, but that would've taken more time and another burst of energy, so I just kept what I had. Towards the end, I felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest, going up the last little hill to get to the bay. When I only had one foot on the ground mid-step, my legs felt very unstable with at least 115+25+25+15 = 180 pounds on me.
The shooting was fine.
I got carried 3x afterwards... everyone wants to carry me.
After this, we set up balloons on logs, so that we had targets to shoot at during the ambush. Melissa had come down to volunteer, and it was fun to introduce her to the world of shooting comps.
Event 8: Optional Night Shoot Training
From 5:30-6:30pm, you had the option to do some low-light pistol and rifle training with the ROs. The alternative was resting. I wasn't super tired, so I decided to take the opportunity to get in a little training.
I shot 2 mags and 8 rounds at the plate rack, 2-handed, right-handed, and left-handed. My left hand needed to hold lower and was messy but the other two were clean.
I shot 45 rounds of rifle with Red Clover Concepts, doing their platform drill shooting standing, kneeling, seated, and prone, turning off my light each time I was switching positions, and shifting laterally while going dark. I also learned a bit about their new APOC sling and tried it out.
I did another 2 mags and 6 rounds of pistol at the end.
Event 9: Ambush
A classic from the technically second Op Shooter. The main point this time was to let us experience what it was like to have a whole line of people laying down fire at the same time. We even had some tracers to use. It was short-lived but still fun. There were no lights pointed downrange this time, so we aimed at chemlights that were laid along logs where we had staged balloons beforehand.
Event 10: Night Nav with Evasion
Everyone paired up to find 6 points on a map. Each point had a chemlight, a bag of some kind of candy, and possibly a note with a quote. While searching for the points, you had to avoid enemy forces who were looking for people on roads.
My partner and I, who I had done previous events with, decided on the sequence in which we'd grab the points, and how we'd get from one point to the next without being detected. Then, we learned that the enemy forces wouldn't set out until 30 minutes after we set off, so we tweaked our plan a little bit to take advantage of that head start.
We set off, and only one other team came the way we did, according to my partner, who was very puzzled by this. Our plan made sense to me, though, so we kept with it. The other teams ended up going CW instead of CCW. CW was the way to go, since you could knock out a lot of points before the enemy came out.
We actually never came across the enemy or even heard them. At one point, I might've seen motorcycle lights, but that was still far away and didn't come close to us. I was thinking that the whole "enemy forces" thing might've just been a ploy. It turns out, though, that there were enemy forces, and they actually caught a couple of teams. Getting caught meant a 10 point deduction.
My partner and I did take the long way around to reduce the risk of running into enemies, too, which might've been a factor, too. We ended up doing 4 miles instead of 3 like some of the other teams. Better to do extra mileage than to have to jump into thorn bushes, though!
Along the way, you could compete to see which team could grab up the most red and white tape from the UKD ruck evolution. There was going to a prize for the winner, but I'm not sure how real that was, either. Regardless, our team did a good job of grabbing up tape. A couple other teams did, too.
Some teams took a loooong time to find their 6 points from the previous event. They saw the enemy and stayed hidden for a long time.
Event 11: FOF
After waiting for teams to get back and resting for a little bit, we were woken up and told to attend another briefing. Our next challenge had us divide into two teams... A and B squads, each with a designated squad leader.
The objective was to go back out and have your team grab as many of the 6 checkpoints as possible, before the other team did. Another clever way for Gregg to clean up the venue before the event even ended! As a twist, you could "steal" from the other team if you had a 2:1 ratio of your team members to the other team's members in a confrontation.
We again put together a strategy, based mostly on peoples' speeds and which ones we wanted to target, and a little based on how familiar different pairs were to where the points were. We had Ed as our leader. He's good at leading, but he's also receptive to ideas. He and I ended up partnering up to go after one of the points. We weren't the fastest, so we weren't going to go after the gate. We'd leave that high stakes match to others on our team.
(photo credit: @jaynickerbockermedia)
Once we were released, our pair plus one opposition pair headed out in the same direction. We weren't sure if they were going after the same point that we were. If they were, there were two potential ways to get there. Ed called out that we should take a bushwhacking approach to the point. I still wasn't sure if the other team was going after the same point or if they were heading out to another point nearby, but now, we were on a mission to find the point. It's a bit harder to find while bushwhacking, but we got to the powerline and then found the point.
After getting the point, we decided to bank it and head back to HQ, rather than trying to add potential manpower to other pairs (who know where they would be and if we'd have sufficient numbers anyways). We took a bushwhacking route back, to avoid any oppositional forces, and then we sprinted to the end. We were delighted to find fellow team members there. They had also been successful, and we had 4/6 points already. Gregg teased that if we got even more, we might not only get the "only 1 swim instead of 2 swims" bonus the next day, but also avoid swimming altogether, but we had some doubts about getting off that easy. We didn't mind having a complete victory, though, so we put out guards all around HQ for an ambush. The other team came back with their 2, and we waited around for everyone to get back.
Event 12: The Rope
We got a little more sleep before the first event of the second day. It was still dark when this event took place, though, and just after the FOF event, we heard rain pouring down on the building. We dodged a bullet there. We knew ahead of time that we'd have a 20# ruck + rifle rope climb in the morning, though, so I wondered how the rain would affect the rope.
The rope was actually ok. There's enough natural grippiness in the rope that it was fine to climb. Some said that one rope was harder to climb than the other because it was newer, but a decent number of people still managed to climb the more supposedly difficult rope.
If you didn't make the rope climb to earn 10 points, you had an opportunity to try it slick for 5 points. If you couldn't manage that, you'd get 0 points for this evolution.
Event 13: Run, Swim, Strip, Assemble
This was the cold swim we'd been anticipating all weekend. Fortunately, temps had been climbing all day and night in the 24 hours leading up to this. It still wasn't "warm", but it was very tolerable and definitely warmer than last year.
You could leave all weapons plus some dry clothes at the lodge. Run to the back gate and back (2.5 mi total), with A-squad only having to do 1 swim and B-squad having to swim on the way out and the way back. We elected to run on the way back, to minimize the amount of time we'd be wet. The last bit of the run is a big uphill, so we'd have plenty of time to warm back up. Once we finished the run, we had to disassemble then re-assemble our rifles again (this time with potentially cold fingers). No shooting this time.
I did it in minimal clothes again, partly because it's better for running, but also because I didn't want to deal with as many wet clothes during and after the swim. Swimming with clothes on is challenging.
I did breast stroke with my head out of the water the whole time, so that I wouldn't get so cold from having my head submerged. It wasn't as cold this year, so I was fatigued from the swim, but I could move my muscles ok without having everything freeze up.
Event 14: The Omelette
Another Op Shooter classic... low crawl with your ruck on your back and your rifle in your arms from the 100m line to the 50m line. Once at the line, load one of your 3 full mags and shoot at 3 eggs (use of the log optional). It's up to you to determine when your eggs are neutralized. The yolk must be shot out.
Low crawl back, once your eggs are neutralized, before the 10 min time cap is up.
Low crawling slick is pretty easy for me. Doing it with a ruck gets fatiguing pretty quickly. I started slowing down in the last 1/3 of the first crawl, like last time.
I held high right on my eggs, adjusting based on where my hits have been landing all weekend, and got first round hits on the first two eggs. For the last egg, I tried and missed 2x before holding straight on and hitting. I could see my misses on the dirt berm behind the egg and adjust accordingly. On the crawl back, I did a backwards crawl again for the first 2/3, to give my pulling arm muscles a break, before switching back to forwards crawling for the last 1/3.
I had considered bringing my GC, but I left it behind, to save on weight, since the ruck would be rough enough.
Event 15: Pistol Dueling Tree Tourney for Fun
As the staff were making preparations for the finale, all the competitors did a dueling tree tournament, for fun. Unlike last year, where the winner stayed and took on the next opponent, this was run bracket-style, which is much better. I kept winning last time and was getting pretty tired of shooting round after round with no breaks.
My partner from the night nav evolution wanted a rematch after I beat him last year, which I didn't even remember, but it seemed important to him, so I went up against him. He won. I wasn't sad to sit out the rest of it, though. It had been a long weekend already.
Finale
Total scores from the weekend were tallied up, and the top 5 names were called off, in no particular order. The twist was that this last stage would be for all the marbles. All the points earned up until this point only helped to secure the opportunity to fight for a spot on the podium, but among the 5 top females and 5 top males, everyone would start from a clean slate now. This would be interesting. Everyone had been working hard all weekend long. Who still had physical stamina and focus left to perform when everything was on the line?
This would be a complex finale, too...
1. Start with a run down to the logs where we shot balloons during the ambush and back (originally, it was going to be a shorter buddy carry, but 3/3 of the smaller women were in the finale, so finding pairs for everyone would've been impossible)
(photo credit: @jaynickerbockermedia)
(photo credit: @jaynickerbockermedia)
2. Low crawl from the 100m line to the 50m line and shoot 3 eggs with rifle again, but stand up afterwards and run to the next bay
3. Shoot ~50yd pistol with 5 hits, then ~70yd rifle with 10 hits, both done from standing
4. Run up to the top floor (but not the roof) of the connex structure and hit a plate at ~100yd 3x
5. Run back to the main bays, climb over a 4? foot wall, shoot a plate rack, climb back over, and go to the finish table.
The run started with a good downhill, followed by a good uphill on the way back. Downhill tends to be my competitive advantage, but I was getting beat by all 4 women downhill... this wasn't looking good for me. By the time I got to the logs, the top woman might've had 150m on me. The spacing between everyone was pretty even.
I ended up making up ground on the low crawl, though, passing 3 of them in the process. I shot decently (after initially shooting at but thankfully not hitting the next lane's eggs) and ran on to the next bay. Pistol was OK, since I know my holds with my reticle. I only missed a handful of times. Rifle was fine, too.
The target wasn't very far from the connex, so the shots weren't difficult.
On the wall climb, I wanted to make the muscle-up easier, so I placed my rifle on the wall. It wasn't super stable, so I was careful about not disturbing the wall too much as I climbed, which caused me to not get a good high first push up the wall, so I teetered for a bit before making it over, but the rifle was safe, at least. The plate rack had one miss, maybe, but not bad. My fully aligned rifle on the wall was much more stable on the way back, so I could get a really good push over the wall this time.
I managed to get 2nd and then cheer on the others. After I finished, a couple of my friends asked me what the hardest part of that long evolution was, and I told them it was that feeling initially of getting beaten on the ruck run by everyone, but I kept doing my thing, running my own race, and managed a good comeback. It is pretty cool to watch everyone put out and struggle through but persevere.
The top 5 guys were safeties for the women, and after we finished our run, we switched.
The Born Primitive pants that I wore had all kinds of pockets for retaining mags, which came in really handy during this finale with all the platform changes and not wanting to lose any ammo.
Overall: 2/9F, 4/28Overall
There are always some really impressive women who show up all all the GBF events, whether they are mountain rucking events or shooting events. The weights and work done by everyone is the same, regardless of gender, so the fact that those women dominate, either 3rd overall for Lauren like at this event, or 1st for Olga at Stirling, is incredible and inspiring. It's not often that I get beaten, so when I do, it is notable. Lauren is both an elite runner and a great shooter.
Having good cardio does come in handy at this event, so I'd like to improve in this area. I'll keep working on pistol, too.
I'm thankful as always to all the volunteers who gave up their time to come and help us stay safe and have an epic weekend.
It's important at these events to stay on top of priorities of work, including eating and resting. You don't get a lot of time between evolutions, especially at this year's event, so you have to make good use of your time.
We were lucky that it wasn't terribly cold and that it was mostly dry this weekend.
I did leave by in-ear pro at home by accident after putting them in a different bag to charge them up... so I finished half the job. The over-ears were bulky, but over-ears are still better than no ears. I'll be that much faster with in-ears next time!
(photo credit: @jaynickerbockermedia)
It was good to use hold info from one stage to the next with the very precise rifle shots we had to make.
Another fun weekend with old friends and new with the GBF crew plus the tactical doggo Poppy! I stopped to give her pets every chance that I got this weekend, although she seems indifferent to most people other than her owner.
(photo credit: @jaynickerbockermedia)
Much respect to everybody who endured the event. This event packs so much into a single weekend... it truly feels like a whole week's worth of action! It's not easy to keep at it evolution after evolution, with limited rest in between. GORUCK back-to-back events are known for how hard it can be to go out for the second or third. You fight that mental and physical battle many more times during this Op Shooter weekend (albeit with many shorter events). Everyone who came out showed a lot of grit and tenacity!
