Since teaming up, he's been training super hard... massive weekly mileages. On Christmas Eve, both us us had independently been on night rucks. He's faster with rucking 12 miles than I am, but I'm faster at running slick 5Ks, and the Star Course is somewhere in between, so we were a good match.
The Tough and Light were going to be led by Cadre Fagan. I was very tempted to sign up for the Light, but I resisted, so that I could be in good shape for 10K. It ended up raining during the Light anyways, so I was kind of glad that I didn't, by the time the event rolled around. Catching up on sleep and doing post-event laundry is good, too.
I watched the movie a couple of days before the event. I want to start learning about the events that the challenges commemorate before the event, so that it's more meaningful, and I'm more educated about it going in.
GREAT RAID TOUGH
Temps were going to be in the upper 30s and lower 40s. Fortunately, the rain had come the previous day only, so apart from potentially wet ground, we'd be dry.
We had a good group coming. It ended up consisting of old and new Tough participants, and some for whom it had been a while since their last GORUCK event. The start point was the top level of a parking garage. We had to pay for parking, but view was pretty awesome.
We also had two shadows who happened to be part of the elite 13-plus time Faganites. We ended up with three cadres. Fagan, plus Dan who'd be joining him, plus a shadowing Cadre named Aaron, who I had first met when he was a special guest at the Mog Mile HTL. We were only a class of 14, so 3:14 was a very high ratio!
We scrambled to get the state and US flags, pool noodles for Fagan's stretcher, and a team weight. Our shadows actually provided the US flag and the pool noodles, which was clutch. Looking back, having them there was kind of like having Selection finishers shadowing Selection, because they've been there, done that, with Fagan events so many times.
My lack of much effort with the "Missing Man" ruck team weight resulted in extra good living with a 10# sandbag and 20# plate that was added to the ruck. We got 2 gigantic ammo cans (light but awkward if you're hand-carrying it), an empty jerry can, a med bag, and an extra collapsible stretcher as coupons, to go with the normal stretcher and the two flags. It seemed lighter than usual, but it was plenty to go around.
Oh yeah, we also each got a 10# sand baby. Cadre Dan was in town.
We made our way down the 7 levels and went to our first stop at some park for our welcome party. It included a few warm-up rounds of "on your belly, on your back, on your feet", push-ups, flutter kicks, bear crawls, dive bombers, sprints, jogs, lunges, burpees, burpee broad jumps, and a little low crawl.
We learned how to do buddy carries, piggy back rides, wife carries, and buddy bear crawls, all slick. The wife carry was new to me, and it was surprisingly not bad. I was fortunate to have a buddy my size.
And it wouldn't be a Fagan event without the Tunnel of Love and the Bridge of Happiness, so we did that, too, before we got the first history lesson about the Great Raid, which started with a recap of the Bataan Death March.
We got our first TL and went to a First Ward Park, although the only way I knew that the park was the destination was because I saw the sign when we got there. We got a lesson in how it's important for the TL to share info about where we're going, how far away it is. Fortunately, that lesson didn't involve extra PT. We learned more history.
We got a new TL and reformed our strategy for the litter. We'd stick with using 1 stretcher instead of starting to make use of the second one, so that we'd get a chance to have breaks from coupons. Initially, the pool noodles had been around the handles, but hadn't been taped to the handles, so they slid and rotated. We took this opportunity to tape them down against the handles. I'm not often on a stretcher crew because of height differences, but it worked out well in this event, and I had a buddy plus another pair to work with. It was also my first time assembling the pool noodles, so I also know what to do for next time.
Our rotation arrangement was to have three teams: Small of 4, Medium of 6, and Tall of 4. One or two of the mediums typically needed to be on flag, so we had 3 crews of 4. On any given movement 2 crews would swap on the litter, and the third crew would take the random objects like the jerry can and the collapsible stretcher and get a break, and this third crew would also be whichever crew the TL and ATL were on.
We rucked around town. It's interesting to ruck along a rail trail, through a metro station.
Our shadows got some awesome shots and racked up 7 miles along the way.
Our shadows headed out, and we continued on to Greenville Park by the Fillmore. On our way there, we took a chance on a shortcut, only to see that there was a fence at the end of it, but we checked the gate that had a sign saying it was locked only to find that it was not locked, and we were all very relieved.
We learned some more history, and then I became the next TL (volunteering before we were threatened with a mud puddle). Our next spot was Marshall Park. Each of our movements happened to be around 2.2-2.5 miles, with a 20 min/mi pace plus 10 min of buffer allocated. We made it with less than a minute to spare, taking whatever light we had at intersections, and doing a little diagonal through a parking lot. We were fortunate to have a couple of navigators who knew the area.
We got a history lesson, and near the end, the flag fell because it wasn't very secure in the ground. Three cadres, 14 participants, one dropped flag. It was pretty far into the night. Everyone was anxious about what was about to happen. We got the flag back up. We looked at each other for a few moments. Then Cadre Aaron said that we should do something to apologize to the flag. I was getting ready for PT, but he suggested having us say the pledge of allegiance, so I led that as TL. We stuck around a while longer, listening to the Cadres share some interesting stories about their time serving, and then we got a new TL and continued on.
We made our way to Bryan Neighborhood Park. We took the time to introduce ourselves. While I was introducing myself, I stuck my hands in my jacket pockets and discovered the egg that Fagan had handed out at the beginning of the event. I had forgotten that it was there, so it was surprising to find it. Somehow, it was still intact.
The temperatures continued to drop as the night went on, so it was chillier than ever. It got a little cold during the intros. We had missed our time hack for the movement. During that movement, we had looked for water at spigots, and finally found one and stopped for a while to refit there. They stop the clock for that kind of thing, but we were getting more tired and had to swap litter teams more often. To pay for the missed time, we had to do 19 laps back and forth along the football-sized field... it was a lot of running, but I was very happy to be running instead of carrying a ruck and other heavy things. It warmed us up nicely. Two of the other three women actually smoked me on the run... one was an Ironman-in-training and another one does marathons.
We got our last TL and went to Frazier Park for an in-depth lesson on the raid. Cadre Dan used rucks to explain the layout of the POW camp and the strategies that the US and its allies used to hold off the Japanese and take down the camp. It had been a brilliant plan.
We were going to have to go into the creed to sing Baby Shark, but we were given the option to low crawl instead, so we did that. Then, we had to pretend like someone got shot and we had a casualty. I was picked, so the team carried me the half mile back to the parking garage. I kind of felt like baby yoda floating in the crib.
At the garage, we switched casualties to a much bigger guy, and we started carrying him. I guess progress was slow, though, because the casualty came back to life after a little while, and we were allowed to take the stairs up. We got to the top a few minutes before 9am.
So, this event did go a little better than my previous Tough in December where I was limping with nothing but my ruck in the last 5 miles. I was wearing my trusted Salomon X-Missions with arch supports, and not the MAC-V1s, which I think was the biggest factor. It was nice to have some redemption.
The rest of Saturday, I washed my ruck and did laundry and napped. When the Light class did their live feeds, I watched from the comfort of my dry and warm bed. I had seriously considered going back out for the Light in the morning, because the Tough had been a great event, and I was in OK shape, but I decided to save it.
10K STAR COURSE SPRINT
The briefing was at 8am, the 15K kicked off at 8:30am, the 10K at 9am, and the 5K at 9:30am. I got there early to pick up the flag, which we ended up using for the Star Course event. I like going places early, so that there's plenty of time to prepare.
The feel of the event was somewhere between the start of a 5K and the 50 Mile Star Course, leaning more towards the 5K. There was a healthy-sized crowd out there, and it was fun seeing everyone. Many experienced GRTs picked the 15K distance. Teams checked in and got a run-down of the rules. There were no print-outs of the waypoints here, but we took pictures of them and started plugging them in. The route was all set by the time 9am rolled around for us.
My teammate had done the 26.2 mile Charlotte Star Course that had ended up being 30-something miles, so he had experience. We decided that he'd be Comms, and I'd be Navigator. Fortunately, I got a new phone to replace my 2-year-old one with degraded battery like a week before, so I was actually able to navigate.
It was my first time at an event with the texting format for checking in with HQ. I suppose it's a little quicker and easier than Instagram, since you don't have to tag @goruckstarcourse, but I do miss being able to share progress publicly for friends to follow along. I can see it being easier for HQ to manage, although it's a very fast-paced event, so we actually didn't get confirmation of us finishing until a long time after we had finished.
We set off running. The start point waypoint was officially the Shell stage, which was like a quarter mile from where everyone had parked and kicked off. We might've been the only team to read that detail and actually go to the Shell, while everyone else went straight for the first waypoint, but we were the only team running, so we made up the extra distance quickly.
Half a mile from the Shell, we caught up to the team that was in first at the time, but they weren't in a rush.
We continued 1.5 mi to Sycamore Brewing, mostly along Park Road, with a tiny stretch on the rail trail. We ran into some 15K friends near Sycamore.
We had another 2 miles of zig-zagging through streets to get to the Sugar Creek Greenway Stones. We knew that nobody else was close, but we still wanted to keep pushing. Our goal became to keep up a sub-10 pace even with the stops for pictures and traffic.
We went another 0.8 miles to Duke Mansion, our last waypoint.
We now had 1.5 mi to get back to the start. While we were going, I suddenly wondered whether I had the right amount of weight in the ruck. I had assumed that it was the same as the 50 Mile Star Course weight, so I checked the event page as we ran, and yes, it was 10/20. It was then that I found out that my partner had been hauling around 30# the whole time, because he didn't know that it wasn't Tough weight. That makes his pace even more impressive.
We sprinted to the finish. I was going hard enough that I felt a tiny bit like puking up whatever I had for dinner in the last bit. We got there and surprised the Cadres. We had finished in an hour plus a minute.
We hadn't gotten official confirmation from HQ about us finishing yet. During the event, we got some feedback, like needing to hashtag properly, and a "good gracious" at one point. The cadres went ahead and gave us patches while we waited. It was at least 24 minutes according to my watch until another team arrived... the first 5K team, which was "2 Guys and a Baby"... a very cute baby in a sloth costume.
More teams came in. It was fun hanging out and seeing everyone's excitement as they came in and were patched. It was a different experience... fast-paced and low weight. It was fun to push the pace a bit. It's not a competitive event because there are no prizes, but it's still fun to go for it.
I had considered using the Speed Rucker for the event, but I went with the 15L bullet, because it's easier to run with unencumbered. Running shoes were a good choice, too.
My teammate had to go, but I met a couple of long-time GRTs who made this event part of their comeback, and we went out for burgers after the event.
