TRAINING LEAD-UP
Monday, June 29:
18A "Dynamic Warmup" - my body was feeling tight today, and my right glute felt strained and bruised from falling into the tree on Saturday. I did a 30 min Power Zone Recovery Ride with Sam Yo on the Peloton, covering 6.7 mi, 133 cal, 65 ave watts, 90rpm ave, 29% resistance the whole time (vs adjusting based on cadence adjusting as prescribed), 13.5mph ave.
(Encountered a pretty funny Peloton user name)
Tuesday, June 30:
Glute and pec PT v1 in 30:17, HDT 31.1.2 (core) in 29:00. Felt strained and inflamed in the morning but better in the afternoon, so I went for the workout, while still trying to rest my right glute by avoiding heavy leg work.
For dry fire, I used the TitanX for 40 min. I added a pink dot on the front sight that's otherwise just black. I wanted to try being target-focused, and without something, it seems super hard to see the front and back sights in your periphery. Shooting based on index seemed supernaturally easy. I do tend to hit to the right a bit on my first shot after the draw, but after seeing that, I adjust, and the rest of the string is OK. Doing all this shooting with multiple targets was surprisingly fatiguing for my trigger finger, though, which makes sense if you do something for like 40 min. It was hard to do the "left palm smash", maybe because the gun felt light compared to my usual one.
Wednesday, Jul 1:
Home - Day 14 - Return & Yoga for Gut Health with Adriene. Needed this, since my body has been jacked up this week.
Thursday, Jul 2:
18A "Upper Body Prep" in 25:53, then "Push-up" in 59:54
COLEMAN'S DAY
For my day off on Friday, I went to Coleman's to tackle the July AET drill. It was a fast and furious one, where you shoot from 3 yards, with 3 rounds on the A-zone body and 2 rounds on a 1/4 sheet of paper representing the head. I did 2 mags of warmup followed by 7 mags of the drill (35 attempts, I guess). The best I did was 2.17s. I got a tight group there, but when I'd try to go faster, I'd start missing.
I played with my pump action shotgun afterwards, to make sure that the manual of arms stayed fresh enough. That recoil is something, so I only shot 5 slugs and 4 buckshot, as close as 10yd and as far as 20yd. I had to hold low to hit center on the 20yd shot.
Next, I played with the Honey Badger, shooting 50 rounds alternating pairs on two targets. I stayed at 20 yards and had to do it static to not miss like crazy. I tended to overshoot on the transition... I wonder if it's because the gun is so light so I swing it over hard vs being able to finesse it.
Lastly, I shot at the pistol arcade with the CZP10C ported with the Acro optic. It was my first time using that on steel.
I was only there from 9am-12:45pm, which was plenty in this heat. You get to a point of diminishing returns sometimes.
GORUCK 12 MI CITY RUCK CLT
It was good to not go overboard the day before, because the next day was a 12 mi city ruck. I had afternoon plans, so I wanted to do it solo and fast. I hoped that my right glute would hold up.
We got access to the waypoints as soon as we checked in, which was nice, since that gave us time to plan our routes. I was very happy that there were only 6 waypoints, so the free version of Road Warrior would suffice. Point entry in Road Warrior was pretty smooth for this set of points. Sometimes, you run into errors in Road Warrior's data, and it thinks a point is in one place but it's in a different place, so you do have to be careful about that and double-check against Google Maps and some common sense.
There was a great crowd out there for the 5K and 12 mi options. I wonder how they decided to do just those two, vs 5K / 10K / 15K / 12 mi like they did in past years. Definitely easier to manage and plan points for. There's still something for everyone... you'd just bump up or bump down depending on which one you feel more inclined to do.
Both Melissa and I decided to go to Bojangles Coliseum, first. I had never been there before, so I was excited for the excuse to see it. I wanted to do the riskier point first, since I wasn't as familiar with that area. Melissa chose to do it first since it was the longest leg. I ended up seeing Melissa coming back, as I was going out... she was like a mile and a half ahead of me, I figured, and we were only a few miles in!
I had been drinking a lot of water, since I had a looong bathroom break here.
Next, I went through a bunch of neighborhoods, then went in towards uptown. I was playing Ingeress along the way. I took a longer stop to drink more water at Captain Jack.
I came upon a guy who seemed to be moving fast and must've been ahead of me, right before this tattoo bar point. He got further ahead as I slowed to play more Ingress with all of the portals in uptown, though.
The story of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence happening a year before the rest of the country joined in still tickles me. I've seen this monument before, so I had a general idea of where to look for it and what to look for.
I'd be coming back to the Truist Field area later that evening, to see the drone and fireworks show with my dad. My legs were starting to tire at this point.
Next, it was time to go into South End. The mural's parking lot was fenced off, but I climbed with my wobbly legs onto the concrete bench to get my selfie.
Ingress all the way back. I was low on resonators by now but did my best to maximize points.
Road Warrior had 11.8 miles planned, but my Garmin had me at 10.95 mi. Who knows, but I'll take it!
One of the PATHFINDER challenges is to do a 12 miler, so I had been thinking about making up the last mile with some extra rucking after I officially finished, but my legs were ready to be done, and with the strained glute, that was best. I still had the Cloverleaf the next day anyway, too.
I hung out at the tent until the last of the ruckers came in.
Now to get home and showered!
Next up was watching Young Washington with my dad. I like theaters with reclining seats. I liked that the takeaway of the movie is that you can learn from failure and still go on to do incredible things. You can also defy odds stacked against you, like societal barriers.
After the movie, we went to Romare Bearden Park to watch the drone and fireworks show. It was the first year that they'd be doing drones, and it would be their biggest fireworks show yet. Leading up to night time when the shows would be, they had vendors and live music. Lots of people were out. If you paid for a ticket, you could watch from Truist Field. It's nice that they had a free option, too, though.
The drone show was great and better than the one that I saw in Denver, because it was much closer to us, so we could see everything really well.
The fireworks were plentiful. They just had one spot shooting off the fireworks, vs having multiple origin points spanning a wide area, so it was like a concentrated show.
I was already feeling low on sleep from the early start on Saturday, but this was another early start after being out for the fireworks show.
For the cloverleaf, it was very by-the-book... each of the three rucks would set off from the start point, so that our loop-shaped movements would form something clover-like by the end. GORUCK also had specific workouts mapped out for us before each movement.
WOD 1: "The 1776 Ground Grind"
25 min AMRAP of
- 17 DL
- 76 Flutter Kicks
- 17 Ground to OH
- 76 Mt Climbers
WOD 2: "The Quarter-Millennium"
50 each of
- Thrusters
- Push-ups
- SB Bear Hug Lunges
- Plank Pull-throughs
- SB Ruck Squats
Somehow, the packing list didn't mention bringing SB's, so none of us brought any, haha. But Fagan had some, so the group got to share. I was happy to do the exercises with my ruck. We broke up WOD 1 into 5 sets of 10 reps per exercise.
Movement 2 took us to a community garden.
WOD 3: "July 4th"
- 7 SB Burpees
- 4 SB Squats
- 17 KB Swings
- 7 Clean and Press
- 4 Ruck Bear Hug Good Morning
- 25 Ground-to-Shoulder
And then we finished with a lap around the pond.
We covered about 3.5 miles in all. That was a good grind.
What better way to celebrate the USA than doing some good work with fellow Americans?
Dry Fire at night... capped it at 40 min, to not overdo it before USPSA the next day.
- Draw-and-shoot for 6 mags
> need to consciously relax my shoulders
> need to remember to be more target-focused
10 min of multiple targets with the occluded CZP10C
> wasn't clamping with my grip for this like I should
> better about being target-focused for this
JULY BLACKSTONE FIRST MONDAY MATCH
Stage 1: <Comstock>
- Start with feet on XX's, hands on XX's on the wall, gun unloaded and holstered
- On the beep, move into the left box and shoot 2 IPSCs @ 2yd, 2x ea
- Move to the right lane, shoot 2 IPSCs through the slot @ 5yd (only partially visible), then 1 IPSC around the left side of the wall @ 3yd, then 1 1/2-covered by the barrel @ 3yd, then 1 on the left side of the second wall and 2 on the right side of the 2nd wall @ 3yd
Learnings/Outcomes: 11/11 Div, 18/19 Overall
- 18A in 22.13s = 4.0669% HF
- I had a malfunction after my first shot... maybe my mag wasn't fully seated
- I reloaded after the first spot, since the cold start meant that I'd have to use 2 mags, even though the stage was an 18 rounder (with no makeups at least)
- I did a makeup shoot after seeing a C on the last target
- I was watching for my holes, so I went slowly
- I need to go faster on such easy targets
<No video due to issue with the phone lagging>
Stage 2:
- Start standing on XX's, hands on knees, gun hot and holstered, facing downrange
- On the beep, run to the left side of the lane and shoot 1 partial with a NS and 1 full @ 7yd, 2 hits ea, then shift right a little and shoot 1 full on one side of the wall and 2 heads (1 of them upside-down) on the other side of the wall @ 12yd
- Shift right even more and shoot 1 partial with a NS and 2 full @ 7yd through the door frame
Learnings/Outcomes: 10/11 Div, 18/19 Overall
- 13A, 3C, 1 NS in 28.99s = 2.2077% HF
- A disaster
- I was missing on the heads and also hit a no-shoot, so I spent a lot of time on makeups, doing 4 makeups
- The slide locked back after 9 shots (I had topped off, so 9 were still in the mag at the time) for some reason, so my instinct was to do a mag change (vs tap rack)... I wonder what the best practice would be in that scenario, since you may not want to take the time to check if there are rounds in there
- I did lots of extra shifting due to not landing in the optimal spot that I had planned out ahead of time. In the moment, I wasn't looking for the target spot
- Start with feet on XX's, facing uprange, gun unloaded and mags on the belt
- On the beep, run to the left side of the lane and shoot 2 partials with NS's @ 7yd, 2 hits ea. Shift right a bit and shoot 1 head A-zone with NS's all around @ 7yd and 2 partial heads (1 upside-down) with NS's @ 10yd
- Move right even more and shoot 2 partials w/ NS through the door frame @ 7yd and lean around the right lane / wall to shoot 1 slanted full IPSC and 1 partial with a NS @ 10yd
Learnings/Outcomes: 7/11 Div, 10/19 Overall
- 18A in 31.78s = 2.8320% HF
- Finally got redemption
- Slide locked back after 10 shots, so 7 left in mag, for some reason
- I probably got credit for more A's than I should've, but when heads have been shot a bunch, it gets harder to tell where the lines are, and you might benefit from the benefit of the doubt more, maybe
- I had inefficient movements with extra shuffle adjustments and even backtracked shifting
- I did one makeup on the last target
Stage 3: <Comstock>
- Start anywhere outside the shooting area, hands above shoulders, gun hot and holstered
- On the beep, shoot 3 heads from the right side of the lane, 2 hits ea @ 3yd. Move to the left side of the lane and shoot 2 partials with NS's and 1 head @ 3yd around the wall and barrel. Shoot 2 partials with NS's through the port @ 5yd.
- Move to the left box and shoot 1 head with NS and 1 full @ 2yd
Learnings/Outcomes: 6/11 Div, 10/19 Overall
- 19A, 1C in 25.41s = 3.8507% HF
- There were many head shots on the stage, but I managed to get credit for many A's
- My mind was all over the place, and I didn't move and stop at the right spots
- It was still one of my better 2 stages for the day, though
- I went R->L due to the angles at which the targets presented themselves
Overall: 8/11 Div, 12/19 Overall
- I did well rank-wise despite 2 disastrous stages and malfunctions
- I was just there to have fun and relax after work in a setting where rank didn't matter, I decided after the disastrous stages
- I was glad that only a small group showed up today, so that I could get home early and watch the world cup. That's probably why there weren't as many people there.
- I set aside the potentially bad mag after the 2nd slide lock incident, so that I could re-test it later and figure out whether it was a mag issue or a user issue... I googled it, and I don't think I was hitting the slide stop, since my hands aren't there based on my grip
- Too much unnecessary shifting and not landing in correct places
- Based on the 1st stage, I need to get a better sense of how fast I can push speed on a COF that I haven't shot yet. I need to gain confidence and good judgment about that.
- After the slide locking back incident, one guy asked me what type of ammo I was using... I wonder if that's why he asked?
- I might've been doing a better job holding high for the head shot today
