TRAINING LEAD-UP
Wednesday, Mar 22:
Deepen and Flow Yoga with Adriene
Friday, Mar 24:
HDT Hell's Sandfire 25 min AMRAP with a 40#SB, with 1 round and 60 reps completed, followed by HDT SIAS 15 min AMRAP with a 40#SB with 5 rounds and 20 reps completed.
Afterwards, did 2 min ea of dead hang, low plank, and 40#SB OH hold as a filler.
Saturday, Mar 25:
Sunday, Mar 26:
Youtube 45 min Power Yoga Class with Ally Maz from Lululemon. It was great active recovery, since I was in need of rest today.
Monday, Mar 27:
50# in the v3 rucker in the neighborhood for 4 miles in 1:16:50. I rolled my left ankle on a forest trail while messing with my phone for pictures, wearing MACV1s. The weight felt natural, though. It was my first time using the 50# again since Mammoth.
Wednesday, Mar 29:
Tiny Apartment WOD from Mar 19, 2023 with a 30#ruck added to all exercises for 23 min, followed by the HDT "Deltopec" 25 min AMRAP with a 30#SB for 5 rounds and 26 reps taking it casually.
Thursday, Mar 30:
Project OM Yoga with Adriene livestream. It was somewhat plain, so I did some extra stretching and foam rolling afterwards.
Friday, Mar 31:
Took a friend to the range, to show him some pistol and rifle basics.
After that, I led an unknown distance ruck on the greenway starting at 9:30pm. We ended up going for 10 miles total, since we kept up a good pace. At the far point, for this "zero dark thirty" ruck, I broke out the AGM thermal monocular and the L3 Harris PVS-31As for everyone to try out. We saw deer with the thermals, which was really cool. It was a good time, even for the guy for whom this was his farthest ruck ever. I used 30# plus the gear held in a HPG chest rig, wearing Salomon X-Missions.
KINGS MOUNTAIN SP O-MEET
SB and I decided to give the Green Level course a try for the first time. Previously, I have only ever done Orange Level courses. We decided to go as solos again, to get double the practice. Our friend was doing it too, and he signed up for Red again, looking for redemption from his previous attempt with a buddy.
It was raining at the start, which made things a little more miserable, but that's part of the training value that you get out of doing events like these.
We plotted and planned routes individually, and then I set off first, since I like to run more.
Not long after I set off, I got stuck for a little while looking for the side trail that would take me towards a creek. It was a bit overgrown, but I eventually found it and continued on. My plan was to hug the border of the vegetation, once I passed the creek and one trail. It took me a while to get out there, and SB had actually caught up and passed me, going a different route, and I'm guessing, probably finding the side trail faster than I did.
Finding the second point wasn't as difficult, because it involved a little bit of backtracking from what I had done previously, and then I shot a bearing.
The third point was a little bit perplexing. Moving from the second point to hit a road, I was spit out onto the road in a different spot than I expected, but I made the left turn onto a trail anyways. There was a park map on the trail, to help me confirm where I was, and the rest of the intersections and landmarks matched very closely from there. I hugged the vegetation when I exited the path at the right spot to find the point.
From point 3 to point 4, there was a little backtracking, and then there was an easy step off the trail to get the point in a reentrant.
To get to point 5, I decided to continue on that trail. It ended up being curvy and a bit more distance, but I didn't have to think too much. SB ended up bushwhacking a little bit to make her way to a road which gave her a straighter shot, apart from a little detour she had to make around a fence line of a restricted area. There was an easy intersection-based attack point to find point 5. SB had made up time on the road, but she had more trouble finding the point once she was close. I still hadn't seen her since just before I found point 1, though.
The journey to point 6 was going to be where we got tested, though. It was about a 1K journey, and my plan was to shoot a bearing for it. There were stream intersection landmarks at increments of 220 and 230m, and then there was another 500yd from there.
There were no boulders represented on the map, close to the point. I must've been pretty far off. There was a backstop on the map... a stream which I could see, so I just had to move along the stream to find where I was on it, in relation to the point. I went south, which was the right way to go. I ran into another guy who was looking for the point, and just as we found the point, I ran into SB again.
We continued on, as solos, towards point 7. The next point was also tricky, and looking back, we do think the point was placed in the wrong re-entrant... one parallel to the one pictured on the map. Vegetation and distance to point 8 bolster our belief. That one took us time to find, understandably. I think this is the first time I've knowingly encountered an incorrectly placed point, though, so it's not super common.
Point 8 was a quick jaunt from there.
Point 9 was just a run to the road, a run along the road, and a side-trail up to the point.
I went back to the road to go back to base. I covered about 5.3 miles.
SB did end up beating me this time, even though she took a more indirect buschwhacked route from point 9 to the finish. Since I had left earlier than her, our about even finish still meant that she was faster.
We met a Red course guy and learned about what his experience was like. It didn't seem like they had too much more difficulty and distance, at least on this course.
We waited for our friend to come in from his Red journey, and also ran into Frank and Cat, which was fun.
RANGE DAY
Afterwards, we went down further into SC to shoot at our friend's range.
To prep for my upcoming first PRS match, I did the Kraft positional drill. The custom gitlite GC felt so underfilled, making stability challenging to achieve. My trigger weight felt so heavy, since I've been used to shooting AR and pistol. It's been a while since I've shot my RPR. The ocular focus also seemed off.
Each round got a bit better, based on where impacts were landing, but it wasn't a super encouraging first time back. How much of the result was due to wobbly props vs being rusty vs barrel life deteriorating?
I took a long time finding targets in my scope. I still need to focus on follow-through.
Moving on from PR, we did a pistol progression of ball and dummy, double taps, multiple targets, El Pres, and Bill Drill.
I invented a "chaos drill", where we had different types and heights of 5 targets, numbered 1-5, with different positions, too. SB and I took turns naming numbers for each other to shoot. It was fun.
We also ran another drill using a barrel as a prop with one-handed shooting.
We then switched to rifle, and did some VTAC work, before packing up and going to dinner at a good BBQ joint that moved farther away.
While we were there, the long-awaited April drill was finally published, so we decided to go back to the range to try it, using the car headlights. My time was too slow, but I was happy to make the hits.
We shot for about as long as we could!
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