Fit 360: GORUCK Light, BFF, 15K City Ruck, Basic Weekend

Friday, August 9, 2024

GORUCK Light, BFF, 15K City Ruck, Basic Weekend

TRAINING LEAD-UP

Wednesday, Apr 10:

18A "Dynamic Warmup" in 25:23, then 45 min Peloton Pro Cyclist Ride with Christian Van Velde covering 13.2 miles with 400 cal burned.

Thursday, Apr 11:

At Blackstone, still trying to get a combination of optic cut G19C slide and lower that will work without getting malfunctions every other round... no luck, unfortunately, even with 2 different brands of ammo.

GORUCK LIGHT

CLT GORUCK weekend with Cadre Fagan kicked off with a Friday Night Light that started at 7pm. GORUCK is trying a different scheduling scheme and series of events this year, to see if they can find a combo that will get more participation. The good thing about a Friday night light is that you don't have to throw off your sleep with a night-time Tough, which can take a week to recover from.

After some initial changes to the parking situation, we took S Kings Drive from the tennis courts, since the greenway entrance was closed. We merged back onto the greenway and looped around the Metropolitan shopping center from there.

We covered 3 miles once we got moving, in 1:44:53. I carried a 25# team weight, 60#SB, and did some one-handed litter carrying, wearing MACV1s.

It was a low-key intro to coupon carrying and a bit of teamwork for anyone wanting to dip their toes into challenge events.

At our little breaks, Sam took the opportunity to tell people about the bigger events.

BFF

The next morning, the Basic Functional Fitness test was held at 8am. It consists of 2 min HRPU, 2 min SB Burpees with OH Toss, a 1 mile ruck + sandbag shuffle, and a 200m suitcase carry. There are different levels of difficulty you can use, but it's all on the honor system, and run at your own pace anyways.

I went with the "BASIC" level, the second to easiest option, which uses a 20#R and 40#SB. Since it was part of a bigger weekend, I didn't feel the need to go crazy with it. The next level up, the "Tough" level, would've required a 30#R and 60#SB... doable, although with slower times and more work, for sure.

You get to choose what sequence you do the events in, so I knocked out the harder ones first, so that I'd be freshest for those. I was happy with 40 HRPU in 2 min and 25 SB burpee OH tosses. I did my 1 mile in 14:04 in MACV1s.

Freedom Park had a perfect spot for the 200m farmer's carry... the city loves football, and there was a 40yd dash mini artificial turf field. I didn't have to guess at distances! I finished that in a minute thirty.

They gave you a sheet of paper that you could use to record your results as you went.

15K CITY RUCK

"City Ruck" is the new name for "Star Course". People can relate to and understand what a "city ruck" is better, I guess. I've done Star Courses that were 5K, 10K, 12 miles, 26.2 miles, and 50 miles... the only distance that I had not done yet was the 15K, so this was my chance to complete the collection!

I decided to go solo. I just wanted to knock it out. You only have an hour to do the BFF before the City Ruck starts, so I rolled straight in and started trying to plot the points immediately, with not much time to spare before it was time for everyone to set off.

There were actually quite a few waypoints for the 15K, so to avoid having to subscribe to the Pro edition of the Road Warrior app, I got creative and just plotted one point to represent clusters of points to get an overall plan, and then as I knocked out points, I could add the specific originally left-off points back. You have to be careful not to make mistakes if you try this, because it can be easy to miss something or mess up route optimization settings in the already non-intuitive app. It worked out for me, though.

I covered 8.4 miles in 2:04:17. My route optimizations might've allowed me to not need to do a full 15K to hit all the waypoints.

I thought I had been moving pretty well, and that I had been efficient with my plotting on the move, but it turned out that my co-ruck club leader did 3 more miles than I did, and finished faster than me! That's nuts.

GORUCK BASIC

There were tonnnnnnns of people at Freedom Park that day. A zillion families. Rather than going out and risking not having a parking spot when I returned, I stayed in the park and tried to nap. We did end up moving the start point to the tennis court again, so I did end up moving anyways when it was close to time to start.

For the Basic, there was a little more PT, namely with the "300" workout. Still pretty low-key. Just a good time to be outside, carry things, work with others. I carried the litter, some 40#SB, and wore a 20# shorty rucker v3, with MACV2s.