GORUCK Harry Potter BBB

TRAINING LEAD-UP

Wednesday, May 3:

HDT 31.1.1 (arms) in 53 min, in the morning.

In the evening, I worked on a team weight for Gryffindor, which is the house that I was sorted into from the Pottermore test.  

I had some ideas that I shared with the group, based on some supplies that I had lying around...

- Time Turner

- Choir Frog

- Sword of Gryffindor

Most people liked the Time Turner, which was for the best, since it would be the easiest to carry, and was already at 25#.   The more detail I added to it, the better it started to look.

Thursday, May 4:

HDT 31.1.2 (core) in 33 min, followed by a 2 mile recovery run in 19:27 in yellow Kinvaras.

Total Body Yoga Deep Stretch with Adriene.  I've been stretching daily this week, to recover from Tuckfest.  My abs were surprisingly sore today, from upper and/or core.  At first, I thought my tummy might've ached from me eating too much fresh basil in my salad, but I think it was soreness.  I get sore in my core so rarely that I assumed it was a basil OD.

Friday, May 5:

HARRY POTTER HISTORY RUCK

HDT 31.1.3 (legs - BW version) in 37 minutes at Dorton Park, to squeeze it in before Cabarrus Ruck Club's Harry Potter History Ruck.  Since this was a special custom event with a fun theme, many had travelled in from other parts of the country.  This was a chance for people to meet up and catch up.

The format of this was that we'd ruck for a bit, and then we'd stop for a trivia question that SB would read out.  Whoever answered correctly the fastest got to pick a piece of candy from her ruck.

We turned around at the top of "Afton Mountain", where there was a nice sunrise view.

We hung out for a bit afterwards over beverages.  We had covered about 3 miles in 1:04:57.

WIZARDING WORLD BASIC

The first event would start at 8pm on Saturday.  I brought in ruck plates for a number of visitors again.  It's good to see them get use, especially when with baggage fees, it saves people from having to pay nearly the price of another plate.

Leading up to the event, we had been sorted into houses.  Derek sent emails and communications to the participants regularly, which helped us get really excited for this in the months ahead.  Shea designed the patches, which were beautiful, but also had deathly hallows easter eggs hidden in the design.  Her work and creativity is always amazing.

The four houses formed up on the field at the scout camp, facing the center, where flags and team weights per house were staged.  Two prefects - a boy and a girl, were designated for each house, selected by the Cadre based on who's kind of been around.  The Gryffindor girl prefect was still on her way, but I helped out, especially since I had the roster list and could get everyone in alphabetical order.

Looking around the field, it was fun to see the costumes that everyone had prepared.  There would be a costume contest and judging at each of the Basics, with winners determined at the end.

Finally, the Cadres emerged from the Great Hall (the building where the banquet area and bathrooms were), in full character.  It was amazing.  

It was also funny to see how the Houses' personalities really did come out in the house members' behavior.  At one point, a Hufflepuff started to wander off to the bathroom without a battle buddy, like Hufflepuffs would do.  And of course, it was the Slytherins who started snitching on them to the Cadres by making a commotion about it.  The Gryffindors were fairly reserved, and organized.  The event organizers all happened to be sorted into Gryffindor.  Hufflepuffs would randomly break out into dance, and they were constantly laughing and having fun.  Ravenclaw were also organized.

We did warmups at the park.  Professor Snape knows the value of a good warmup for injury prevention.  We had the scout camp to ourselves, which made it less weird to have a bunch of wizards and witches in costumes and broomsticks running around.  SB did a great job finding and securing this place for us to use.  Finding a location that can support the activities we need, with numerous safe route options nearby, with secure overnight parking, for the number of cars and people we expect, is no easy feat!

It got dark, and it was time to set out into the public, though!  We first filled up some sandbags, and then we set off on a greenway, mindful of the residential areas we'd go through.  It was fun rucking in costume, in our houses.

We rucked out to a field by the greenway, where two houses at a time would go head-to-head in various competitions, and then play the winner or loser of the other matchup for final points.

We started with Wizard's Chess, where each house lined up behind their side of the board, and whoever was first in line had to answer a trivia question correctly to move a piece on the board game.  If they were correct, they'd move the piece and then move to the "finished" area to continue watching.  If they were wrong, they'd go back to the back of the line to have another chance later.  I know some basic rules about how pieces can move, but I don't know much about the game beyond that, so I got advice on which piece to move where.  

After that, we swapped into Quiddich, in the dark!  It's a mad enough game during the daylight!  Fortunately, we put our rucks down for this, because it can get aggressive!  Each team got to strategize on who would be beaters, chasers, keepers, and seekers.  You had to run with your broomstick between your legs, of course.  I was a seeker.  Seekers would do whatever PT Professor Snape prescribed, until he would randomly decide to throw the golden snitch, and then the Seekers from each team would try to be the first to grab it and bring it back.

After the games, we rucked back to the start.  There was leftover BBQ from SB's place, which I ate before I tried to catch some rest between events.

FANTASTIC BEASTS BASIC

The next event started at 3am.  We formed up in our houses again, and had another costume judging session.  Each Basic had a different theme, so the costumes were different, too.

We set off in the opposite direction this time, down some paths in the scout camp, and then up to a school.  

At the field, we had more competitions.  My favorite was the Basilisk race, where we had to conveyor belt a sandbag pain train from one side of the field to another.  We weren't allowed to move our feet while we had the sandbag.  We weren't allowed to let the Basilisk touch the ground, either.  If you were caught making either infraction, your house would have to set down the basilisk, do 25 pushups, and then resume, while the other House continued making progress.  This game was my favorite, because it fit the theme well, and it was very GORUCK-related.  It required a good mixture of physical and teamwork skills, too.

We had played a game with some similar elements with LDB at the Zombie Light, and something that had worked really well there was that as TL, I didn't touch the props at all, and just let the team take care of the legwork, while my job was to monitor the overall situation and make sure that the team flow and pace was where it needed to be, to avoid the risk of drops.  The team did really well, so I didn't need to do much.  Of course, Slytherin was cheating by shuffling their feet, and they got caught for it, so we were able to win.

I think it's funny that even in Harry Potter world, I have a primary weapon system (broomstick) and secondary weapon (wand).

Also, Dumbledore looks extremely adept at drawing from concealment.  There's no more powerful wizard in the world, I'm sure!

The other game that we played was a sandbag drag with rope.  We had to take turns dragging the length of rope with a sandbag on the end of it, one person at a time, towards the out spot and back.

Here's a daylight view of some of the teams:

When we returned to the field by the Great Hall after the event, Professor Dumbledore handed out his Cadre Patch to new members of his 5-event group.

Afterwards, we took a big class picture.

HARRY POTTER BASIC

The third and final Basic was made to be family-friendly, so that kids could enjoy a GORUCK event with their parents, too, especially with this theme that all ages would love.  One funny story - a family with two boys came.  They were supposed to all be in Gryffindor, since that's where the parents were, but one of the boys really felt like he belonged in Ravenclaw and asked if he could switch into that house and be away from the rest of his family.  He was adopted by Ravenclaw immediately, and was right at home.

The event started at 10am.  We were sleepy, but there was still much for fun and hilarity to be had, starting with the third edition of the costume contest.  The creativity of the costumes was amazing.    

Professor McGonagall led us in a yoga session, to stretch out our sore and tired bodies.

In this Basic, we raced the other houses to see who could complete puzzles the fastest.  That's a good game that any age can take part in.

We also played more Wizard's Chess (no trivia this time), which the kids enjoyed too.  Nick Uva from Open Sight Studios took some especially awesome pictures during chess.  It's a little different from his usual subject matter, haha, but he crushed it.

Another fun challenge was a trip to the Black Lake, where we had to use gillyweed to see who could hold their breath underwater in a 5 gallon bucket for the longest.  We had one person from each house go up at a time, and the winner earned one point for their team.  It started sprinkling, but that was OK, since we were wet anyways.  And there were pavilions for the other games.

Another fun themed game was the backwards mirror basilisk race.  Run backwards using only a blurry mirror to help guide your path, around a series of rucks.  Afterwards, go out and back with a wooden egg on a spoon.  

At the end, the winner of the House Cup was announced (Slytherin), as were winners of the costume contest.  Somehow, there were like no kids in Slytherin.   The Cadres also gave away the House Flags and toys from the games to the kids, which was nice.

We took House photos.

Afterwards, we had a cookout.  Always very welcome after a trio of events!

The organizing committee cleaned up afterwards, and celebrated the success of another awesome custom event.  The amount of work and thought that Derek and the Cadres put into this was apparent with the quality of the event, and the amount of fun that everyone had.

In all, we covered about 8 miles over the weekend.