“Bee, why are you always at the back of the line?” – Cadre Dakotah
“I lack cardiovascular endurance, Cadre!”
…due to not doing any cardio.
So, having survived three Heavies I can tell you that I am an expert at being dumb. Like, have you ever watched the Kling video and he talks about being one of the top tier people at GORUCK? I’m basically the anti-Kling. Top tier dumb guy is how my video would play out. I’m totally on the opposite end of the spectrum.
On to Heavy…the hardest part of Heavy for me is always the PT test. The rest I can just grind it out mentally and it’s not hard to do but give me some pushups, situps and a 12 mile ruck march with time hack and watch me collapse under the immense weight of doing 48 pushups, 59 situps and 12 miles/3:30. Even with all of that failing, I didn’t hit any low points of “I’m going to quit” like I had at my first (and hardest Challenge) 281. We talked about it but I wasn’t ever serious I don’t think. As for quitting, I find that the more I talk myself into quitting the more I won’t quit. But that’s only at these events. I quit running all the time so I am not some man with sheer iron will or anything. Anyway, if you’ve done one Heavy you’ve done ’em all. It was more weight for me in my ruck, tons of PT, missed time hacks (I’m not sure those can technically be ‘made’), team work failure (with the odd success thrown in), me getting my feelings hurt, etc. Same shit we all know and love.
The absolute best part of this Heavy was the Farewell Party at the end. We thought we were done but we had a nice smoke session at the end with swarming shark cadre where nothing was ever good enough. I seriously enjoyed the hell out of that. I mean, I was dying physically but internally I was all “OMG THIS IS SO COOL!! Just like on TV! Amazing!!” 5 stars would buy again A++++++ Like, literally everything I want out of these events and boom, they delivered after around 24 hours. They ranked it at 8.5 out of 10 on the intensity scale with Selection being a 10 and yes, I paid for this and I didn’t know it would turn out so amazing. It was an intense event. I loved every minute of the Farewell Party. I mean, yeah, it sucks when you’re low crawling through cold, dirty water and they kick it in your face but shit it’s fun.
I especially enjoyed when they offered to let us quit. I kept thinking of the book Inside Delta Force and I got to experience some of it. Apparently they are super nice to you at real SFAS and say “hey come get some warm beans” and get you out of the elements. The nice people at GORUCK offer you a warm car, hot coffee, and donuts when you want to quit – just stop by and leave, no hard feelings, thanks for your time type of thing. Quitting actually sounded amazing when it came up every few hours. Hell I still want to quit a week after the event.
After Heavy was finished, Bert asked “who here is not doing the Chall-?” and before he could finish asking the question I was all “BOOM!! right here! Nope. Done deal.” and raised my hand. I think it was around ~2 minutes into Heavy when I decided that no, I wasn’t going to do the Challenge. I say that in jest but…not really.
So I skipped the Challenge and I ended up doing the Light. By ‘quit’ I mean to quit during the event. We didn’t show up but I suppose that’s still the same as quitting.We had some other excuses to cover it but basically, I just didn’t want to be cold. When we were moving I was fine but when we stopped it was just plain cold. That’s it, tapping out. Maybe next time, coach.
At some point during Light, maybe on our return trip back to the end point, when we’re waiting at a stop light and it’s raining and I’ve been recently promoted to 3 rucks because people keep ending up as casualties, it dawned on me that this is just my regular life now. Work, “workout” (lol), read books, be in a line with strangers at a GORUCK event and I love it. I push myself to the edge of wanting to quit every time and end just hanging out there mentally. I’m not sure if I’m ever seriously entertaining it but that’s what this is for, right? At some point we were doing squats and El Berto asked me if I wanted to quit and I answered “yes” but really I was thinking “hell yeah I want to quit! It’s fucking cold and rainy and miserable. Hell you’re out here you know how cold it is” but then he rephrased it and asked “will you?” and I replied “uh…no.”
This is one event where being fat is actually a good thing. Like, when you get in the water and it’s fucking cold but it’s not as bad as it is when you were preparing for it. We did some hydro-burpees and by the second one I didn’t feel too cold in the water. Maybe that’s part of being dumb.
John Wayne trivia night was here.
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