THE DRIVE
Thursday, after work, I drove out to Chattanooga, so that I could make it early enough to visit a friend during the daytime on Friday, then join in for the GORUCK Light in the evening.
I had found this little guy at work. It's the little things in life that bring joy.
I had already been thinking about signing up for the Chattanooga events, since I wasn't familiar with the city, but it was not too far away. I don't remember whether it was Knoxville or Chattanooga that I had previously driven though on a different trip. It's also possible that I went to Chattanooga at some point as a little kid.
It turns out that it was a long way away, though, at least it felt that way, going through Thursday rush hour traffic getting out of CLT, followed by a long drive in the dark through country and wilderness roads, it felt like. It was highway-like at times, but with nothing around. On the GPS, I could see that I was often near one river or another, but I couldn't see any of it. I'm sure it would've been a beautiful drive in the daytime.
It's about 5.5 hours without traffic... with 6 hours of driving, I could just as easily make it to SE Ohio or Florida, so it's not as close as I thought it was in my mind. I always though of TN as being a neighbor to NC, so it would be close, but I was still in NC up until like 1 hour from my destination... NC is long, I guess. I knew from previous trips to the East that NC's stretched really far east, but it turns out that it stretches out really far west from CLT, too.
I eventually got to my hotel, late at night. HIE all the way. It was about 25 min from downtown, but the stay would be cheaper that way. It wasn't like I was doing an HTB where I wouldn't have much time between events, so a little drive was fine. I only needed two nights (Thursday and Friday), since I'd be doing the 12 hour event overnight on Saturday night.
GORUCK LIGHT
I got to the start point early, to make sure I could get in fine on a Friday evening. Traffic wasn't an issue, since most seemed to be exiting the city... there was actually a decent amount of traffic going the other direction, more than I expected for what I thought wasn't that big of a city. I was able to park right at the start point, and there was a weekend-long parking pass, which was convenient for my situation, where I'd be doing three events in downtown.
The area by the river was much more built up than I expected. There were a ton of bridges crossing the river. The river was wide, too. There was an aquarium and other things to do. There were mountains on the other side of the river. It was really pretty there. It was super windy, too! I don't know if this is normal for the city. It was almost uncomfortably windy, and non-stop.
By the river, there is a big drop-off from street level, so it wasn't easy to get a big line of sight on the area. Eventually, I found the rest of the group up by the street, though. I saw one guy that I knew. It's also great to meet newbies. It turned out that none of the crew was from Chattanooga, which is ironic, because one of my goals in the trip was to make some new friends from this city specifically. There were people from as far as FL and NJ there. And I thought my trip had been a long one!
Each cadre runs his events in his own style. Cadre Hand has pretty by-the-book events where you learn all the key lessons of GORUCK. We had a ruck dump, penalty PT, had plenty of coupons to go around. Nothing too crazy weight-wise, but it doesn't take a lot to still be challenging.
We were lucky that Walnut Street Bridge, a pedestrian bridge, had opened up just two weeks ago, after being closed for about a year and a half. Many people were out and about enjoying it. We enjoyed it, too, by doing burpee broad jumps (with ruck), with half of the class jumping, while the other class carried all of the coupons (which meant doubling up in many cases), and then we switched.
On the other side of the bridge, there were more park areas. We couldn't see everything since it was dark but it seemed well-maintained. We made our way to "cardboard hill," where Cadre Hand told us about the first Medals of Honor that were awarded, with a Chattanooga connection. During the Civil War, "crazy SOB's" as he called them volunteered for a super risky mission that involved infiltrating Confederate territory in Georgia, stealing a train, and then trying to ride that train all the way to Chattanooga while destroying critical infrastructure and supply lines along the way to cripple the rebels. They ran out of fuel and got executed as spies, since they were doing all of this covertly instead of as obvious military.
We split up into teams and went head-to-head, doing bear crawl SB drags up and crab walk SB drags down a big hill that locals like to slide down with... cardboard. We had to go up as many times as it took for everyone to use every SB allocated to the team. SBs make a good substitute for sliding cardboard, I will say. Our team won, and I wasn't there when the losing team chose their "punishment", but I think they chose a beer chug competition for endex as the punishment, since we all ended up participating in that later on.
After that, we made our way back to the SP (going on a different bridge), did the beer chug (I think we lost), and got patched.
The next morning would be the "guided 12 miler". There was a FRAGO, though, because the trails up at the original SP of Lookout Mountain weren't really designed to handle a big group while keeping everyone together at any kind of reasonable pace, and the street crossings and limited parking would also be an issue, so Cadre Hand would have us meet back at the same SP as the Light and Tough, instead.
GORUCK 12 MILER
This wasn't a Star Course. This didn't end up being a guided ruck, either. Instead, you got the route, which was to do a loop around the bridges nearby, followed by a ruck along the "Riverpark," which is a greenway that is 13 miles long in all. We'd all get released to go off at our own pace, but we had to finish within a 20 min standard to get patched.
Getting there in the morning was a challenge. Even though I had gone their the day before, it was through a different route from my visit to my friend's workplace. This time, coming from my hotel, which I was now checked out of, Google Maps took me a way that sent me to a road that had closure signs, so I started taking random roads to try to detour around it, hoping that Google would adjust and get me to the SP a different way. I ended up going into downtown and eventually ended up back at the same blocked road sign. I was sweating bullets since I had eaten up all my time buffer with the detour. I ended up going down the road with the closed road sign, and it did take me all the way to the SP without any issues. It was a very premature sign... you could get all the way to the SP. It was just that the road closed right at the SP, for a Pride festival. The upside was that I found a parking spot right next to where everyone was gathered, so I very quickly assembled my stuff and jumped in for the step-off.
The temps were nice, and I hoped that it would stay cloudy so that we wouldn't burn up or get too hot. I hadn't been sure how fast I wanted to take it. I gradually fast-walked my way towards the front of the pack over the course of the bridge loop. I didn't try to get to the very front, but I did want to keep them in sight, since I feel more reassured that way.... like if I wanted to get to the front, I could easily speed up and do that if I wanted to, but I didn't need to. This wasn't a competition, anyways.
There was one part of the route that wasn't super obvious unless you had Google Maps or something up, so I was glad to be able to follow others while playing Ingress. There were many portals in that area.
The greenway goes past an athletic complex, a rowing complex, a restaurant, a water treatment plant... lots of random things. There are bridges. Park areas. Bathrooms. I was glad for the bathrooms and made a stop, so I had to power walk fast to catch back up.
Cadre Hand had to release the start of some of the participants who had been at the original start point, so he met back up with us towards the turnaround point. The front pack had already gone past, but I called them back, and we ended up rucking together.
The way back tends to feel faster than the way out. When we got to the confusing part, I let others start leading the way again, and I went back to playing Ingress until the end.
Even though the format wasn't the originally intended one, it was still really enjoyable. You could hang out with others based on the pace you wanted to hold. It was a nice way to see lots of the riverside area. We didn't have to worry about traffic. We had great weather.
Afterwards, some of us got burgers at Burger Republic. I got
I normally don't eat white bread, but after a 12 miler, it's OK. This was a high-quality burger!
I had already been tired before lunch, so I was excited about napping as much as I could before the Tough. One really nice thing about the Pride festival being there was that there were a bunch of porta potties to use, because otherwise, who knows where I would've had to go.
This event ended up kicking my butt. I don't know if it's because I had already done the Light and the 12 miler, or if it's because we were carrying coupons for many miles without many free bodies for relief. I've done Heavies and HTBs before, so it shouldn't be the former. Or maybe, and more likely, I wasn't in the necessary rucking shape for it... who knows.
The guy who had brought the flag for the first event wasn't coming to the Tough, so we had to scramble a bit on the flag... one guy had a flag but no pole. We had to get resourceful really quickly and got a branch off a tree. I have a bunch of random stuff in my car since I don't keep it clean, and we were able to find enough string and binder clips and stuff to secure the flag to the branch. It was a good branch.
Cadre Hand asked each of us as part of the admin portion, what we wanted to get out of the night. I said I wanted to get some fresh air in my lungs. After hearing all of the answers, he interpreted our collective answers as us wanting a challenge, he'd tell us later on.
We did ruck dumps again, more PT for not meeting the time standards. A few of us were back from the Light and 12 miler. When we went to his truck to get coupons, there were more coupons than people, but we had a litter to use. It got loaded up. Even the first <0.25 mi movement down to the riverside was challenging for the team.
At the riverside, we did some PT assessments, with the goal of understanding where we stood, as well as to understand the capabilities of the team. Know everyone's strengths and weaknesses, so that you can account for that and maximize the potential of the team.
We started with push-ups. You're supposed to use proper form, and Cadre Hand did go over form requirements, but when people are grading each other or are delusional about their own form, "no-reps" still get counted as reps, which helps nobody. The poor form guys still think they have great form, and the cadres might get an inflated sense of what peoples' real numbers are, but I'm pretty sure the cadres can see the poor form and know. Those are the same people who might show up at a real cadre-led PT test and end up failing the PT test right off the bat, when standards are actually enforced.
Next were sit-ups. Taylor (not surprisingly) crushed pushups with proper form, but she also crushed sit-ups and everything else, for that matter. We didn't do a 2-mi run, but for the cardio portion, we did a 25m sprint, bear crawl up the hill, crab walk down the hill, and walking lunges back to the start line, for 3 rounds, or something like that. I consider myself pretty fast and efficient, but Taylor still beat me by like a minute. After that, we did unweighted (due to the step height) step-ups for 2-3 minutes. I don't know if to here were goals beyond the stated ones, or more specific versions of those goals, but one effect of the PT test was to show all the guys in the group how strong and capable the women in the group were, either winning pretty much every event (Taylor), or mid-pack in some stuff (push-ups, step-ups) and first or second in others (sit-ups and cardio). Any incorrect preconceptions about womens' capabilities were immediately crushed.
Now for our first major movement, a 2.75 mi ruck going to the north side of the river, up hills to Riverview Park. We couldn't see a river there, at least in the dark, but there was a playground there. For failing the time hack, we had to do PT, which we took turns leading. For the ruck get-ups, Cadre Hand ended up calling out the people who weren't going down and getting back up every time. I had been calling the reps on that one. I was waiting until everyone was up before calling each next rep, but it turns out that about half of them hadn't actually gone all the way down. They had to redo all the reps of that exercise from scratch, while the rest of us continued with priorities of work.
One guy who had gotten called out by the TL for holding the team back ended up tapping out. I'm curious about when a cadre chooses to try to convince someone to stay, vs when they let them quit without a fight. In this case, I could hear the guy giving many reasons why it was the right decision for him to leave, and cadre didn't really say much, since the guy was listing those reasons the whole time. Having gone through SFAS and all kinds of other challenging schools, I'm sure the cadres have a good read on whether people really have it in them, and maybe that's a factor. Maybe if the person trying to quit does have it in them and just needs a little nudge, they'll nudge, but if their heart and training really isn't in the right place, they'll let them self-select. Who knows. One good thing was that the guy took the SB team weight with him. We were already struggling. During those movements, I helped on the litter a little bit when it was low-carried, and it was heavy. I consider myself decent at low carries, but it was heavy even for me. There were wrist straps available, which helped, but it was brutal. When it was high carried, all bets were off.
I ended up being the next TL. I suggested that we stop using the litter as a litter and just carry it (folded up) and the SBs on our backs the normal way, since that's easier to carry, and you don't have to worry about height differences at all. We had a 1.38 mi movement back down to the northern side of the riverfront, at a big open park below a bridge. It was a good feeling to meet the time hack on this one. We took our group photo here.
At the park, we had more team-on-team relays. We did buddy drags and buddy carries along a long field. There was a bear crawl ruck drag or something, too, to help even out the playing field when it came to peoples' sizes, too. We lost, but the effort and teamwork was what mattered.
The next movement was a long one... 6.15 mi along the Riverpark greenway trail that we had done in the morning, except we'd be going even further. With all the coupons and maybe one free body at a time, even sans litter, it was tough. One bit of relief that we got was that at about the midway point, while we were passing a cluster of bamboo, Cadre Hand had us stop to make a better flag pole out of bamboo. That was an even better pole. It was so nice to put the stuff down. The first TL decided to call an uber, though, saying that he felt an injury coming on. The uber came quickly, and he took the collapsed litter with him back to Cadre Hand's truck. I had been carrying the litter on my pack (in addition to the SBs), so that was a relief. I took up a nearly-empty water bladder instead. Even though it was only very partially filled, it was still enough volume and weight to swing back and forth a lot while rucking, and your body having to counter that pendulum is working extra hard. I could feel one side of my body getting really tight. I was really dragging towards the end of the movement, mustering everything I could to keep up.
Eventually, we made it to the far point of the long movement. It was a memorial to marines who were attacked at a recruiting station. We did a WOD to honor them, with 21 reps of 5 exercises to honor the fallen five. We took turns leading the exercises. It was a special experience to do this WOD beneath their names.
- Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Joseph Sullivan (USMC)
- Staff Sgt. David Allen Wyatt (USMC)
- Sgt. Carson Allen Louis Holmquist (USMC)
- Lance Cpl. Squire Kimpton Paul Wells (USMC)
- Logistics Specialist 2nd Class Randall Scott Smith (Navy)
One guy was acting like he was really worn out from the event. It turns out that this was his first one, and he had done pretty much no training for it. Cadre Hand said that he must be really mentally strong, to get as far as he did. He had threatened to quit on the long movement out, while we were rucking, but when I heard it, I told him no, told him that I was going to take his SB so that he could recover, and he ended up sticking with it, which is great. And the only reason that I had nothing at the time was that Cadre Hand must've seen me on the struggle bus with the low-filled water bladder and sandbag, and he ended up getting his own little coupon ruck in for a couple of miles.
After the workout, it was time for the long movement back. It was a relief to know that we only had this one movement left, and that the finish line was in sight, but it was still a long way to go. We got to dump a couple of coupons, but the cumulative fatigue from the miles and weight kind of offsets the gain from the dropped coupons, so it doesn't necessarily end up feeling that much easier. Cadre Hand didn't let us take it easy or do any breaks along the way or ease up on the pace.
It felt like mog mile or something by the end. Every step was very effort-full. But we made it. Some were feeling much better than others, but it was a struggle for me. The first timer was overwhelmed with emotions during the patching ceremony. Good for him for finishing something so difficult and for not giving up.
I skipped breakfast with the group so that I could try to get a bit of sleep before starting the long drive back home. Chattanooga was great and exceeded my expectations. I also got a bonus "gut check" out of the Tough... phew!
