St. Paddy's Day GORUCK Light 670 AAR

This event was my second GORUCK Light; the first was a September 11th remembrance event that I did last year. As a reminder, a Light is billed as 4-5 hours and 7-10 miles. This Light was roughly 4.5 hours, and I think we covered somewhere north of 6 miles. The reduction in distance was more than made up for by an increase in PT and pretty much the worst weather conditions you could imagine. It was also unusual because it was at the tail end of an HCL, which meant that 8 of the 20 people in attendance had just completed a Heavy and a Challenge prior to starting the Light. All of them finished, completing HCL class 009 as Boston broke the all time snow record for a single season:

This was a fun event, and after completing a Challenge in October I came into this without being too stressed out, and just looking for a fun afternoon and a good workout with friends. Cadre Aaron and Cadre Andy delivered, with some bright green logs, a game of charades, and another game that involved forming letters with our bodies after bear crawling and low crawling across a field.

By the end of these games we were all wet, cold, and tired - during our time at the field it rained, hailed, and did some other things that are difficult to describe. We ended up huddling together for warmth before rucking back to the start point:

When we got back to Boston Garden we held a relay race around the gardens that got pretty intense. My team lost by a few steps, edged out on the final lap by an incredible last minute effort.

The event closed with more PT and a reminder of why we do these events from the Cadre. It was a powerful message, and emphasized the point that Light ≠ Easy. It's never too late for poopy faces, and we were all hurting by the end of this - especially the HCL folks who had been going for 45+ hours at this point.

Finally it was time to get patched, take one final picture, and then try to restore feeling to our feet.

This was a really fun event, and helped remind me why I love GORUCK so much. The Cadre are incredible, the community is amazing, and even at a Light you can get a pretty strong sense of accomplishment. Doing this event made me want to sign up for every Light in Boston for the rest of the year - it's a fantastic way to spend a weekend afternoon. As an added bonus, I got to add another special patch to my collection: