Operation Red Wings GORUCK Challenge AAR

A couple of weeks ago I completed the first Operation Red Wings Memorial GORUCK Challenge. This year is the 10th anniversary of Operation Red Wings, so there were a number of memorial events going on throughout the months of June and July. If you've seen the movie Lone Survivor, that's the mission this event was commemorating.

The event was led by four SEALs who knew many of the men who died that day personally, and they shared their stories with us throughout the night. This Challenge was special in a few ways, in an attempt to give us a taste of life in SEAL Teams, and also to get it as close as possible to the mission profile of Red Wings. Some of the differences from a traditional Challenge:

1. Everyone, regardless of size, had to have their ruck weigh 40 pounds dry (without food and water)
2. We all needed to bring 6 liters of water
3. Everyone had to build and carry a 13 pound PVC gun throughout the night
4. It was held at Breakneck Ridge, which is extremely steep and challenging terrain
5. It started at 11PM, which is a few hours later than usual

All of the above meant that everyone's starting load out was ~65 pounds, which is significantly heavier than a normal Challenge (especially if you happen to weigh less than 150 pounds). This definitely upped the intimidation factor prior to the event, and there were a lot of last minute drops. 

The Welcome Party

This event was led by SEALs, and so we started on the beach. The theme was "Welcome to BUD/S", so we got to spend a lot of time in and out of the Hudson River, getting covered in sand and doing PT. This was actually one of my favorite parts of the event. It was pure chaos - imagine 4 Navy SEALS screaming at 92 people in the middle of the night who are running in and out of the water, doing burpees, carrying logs, burying their rucks in the sand, and generally getting their asses handed to them. You would spend 5-10 minutes with one Cadre, and then be sent over to a different one to do a different exercise. The constant movement was exciting, and kept it from being a suckfest where you spend hours doing one or two exercises, which can happen at some events.

Dumping sand on ourselves

Mmmm sandy water

Rucking Up the Mountain

After the welcome party we had a 3-mile ruck run while covered in sand to really get the chaffing going. Then we split up into 4 "platoons" and started our main mission - rucking up Breakneck Ridge to an observation point where we could reenact portions of Operation Red Wings. During this ruck the Cadre taught us some really basic SEAL patrol tactics, and we moved pretty slowly up the steep terrain. 

"What should we make them do next?"

This platoon pissed off their Cadre...thankfully it wasn't mine

Observation and Extract

Once we arrived at the observation point, we received additional instruction on how SEALs conduct reconnaissance, and wrote down a bunch of notes about what we saw. The SEALs then acted out one of the scenes from Lone Survivor, complete with a fake goat herder and all. After they agreed to let the goat herder go, we were instructed to run down the mountain as fast as possible.

Yeaaaahhh...

This ended up being pretty sketchy, but it was also a lot of fun to attempt to sprint down a cliff face. I was dripping sweat, and the constant stepping/jumping down ledges with a 60+ pound load did a number on my knees. I'm extremely happy that I didn't twist an ankle or get any other injuries during this part of the event. 

Once we finished coming down the mountain we rucked to a parking lot and waited for the rest of the group to finish. We ended up standing in that lot (with rucks on) for over an hour as people trickled off the mountain. 

Finally 88 out of the original 92 finished the event, and we heard more stories from the Cadre, the mother of one of the men who died during Red Wings, and a few other people who wrote letters to be read at the event. This was a pretty special moment, even though we had some trouble getting organized and had to get a few words of encouragement from the cadre:

Final Thoughts

The point of this event was to honor the men who died during Operation Red Wings:

With the stories from the Cadre, the setting in the mountains, and the physical difficulty of the event I felt like we accomplished that goal. You can never bring back the fallen, but I know that I will never forget this event, and thus never forget the men who sacrificed everything to protect our way of life. 

The event was extremely well put together, and it sounds like it is going to become an annual Challenge. If you weren't able to make it to this one, I highly recommend going next year.

Memorial Day GORUCK Challenge/Light AAR

Similar to my last post about a Challenge/Light combo, this one is going to be told mostly in pictures.

Challenge Summary

There were a couple of major differences between this event and past Challenges I've done:

1. We had to take our shoes off for the welcome party and the first ~3 miles of rucking during the event
2. All of our food was taken away, and only given back after the patching ceremony
3. We went straight into the ocean right after the welcome party and were fully immersed
4. We got to build and carry a lovely contraption you will see below, dubbed "The Pendulum of Pain"

Here are some highlights:

Overall it was a really fun event, and I learned a ton. We all did okay without any food, shoes are a luxury that aren't actually required, and heavy shit was just meant to be carried (you can't outsmart the pendulum). 

Light Summary

This event was basically a mini version of the challenge. We had the same pendulum, went in the ocean, and enjoyed each other's company in the sunshine this time.

The cadre kept it fun the whole time, and I'm really glad I came out for both of these events!

GRC Class 1417 and GRL Class 699 AAR

On April 10th and 11th I completed my first GORUCK Challenge and Light back-to-back. This ended up being an 11+ hour, 16+ mile event followed by a ~5 hour break and then a 5+ hour, 7+ mile event. In general these events were similar to others that I have posted about, so I'm going to provide a short summary of each and then write a bit about tackling two events in a row.

Challenge Summary

Overall this event was slightly shorter than my first Challenge, but it was by no means easy. The mechanics were familiar - run up the hill, run down the hill, do some PT, carry some heavy things. Rinse and repeat:

The team came together extremely quickly, and everyone put out the entire time. The Cadre's only complaint was that we could have moved a little more quickly, but otherwise everyone really gelled and everyone finished.

I faced my own demons at around 3am, when my left IT band flared up and started causing a lot of pain on every step. ITBS is something that I've dealt with quite a bit in the past, but historically it has always been on my right side. Having it crop up on the left during this event was an unpleasant surprise, and made the last 5+ hours of the event a bit of a grind. I was very happy when it finished, but knew that I had to come back for another event in a few hours.

Between Events

Given that I had 5+ hours of rest time between the Challenge and the Light, I decided to go home, shower, eat, sleep, take Aleve, and change out some of my gear. This was a nice break, but made it extremely hard to go back out for the Light. When I rolled out of bed at around 12:30pm I felt completely awful. I was barely walking, could hardly put a coherent sentence together, and seriously considered skipping the Light. My wife Steph encouraging me to stay home and sleep was not particularly helpful either (just kidding, you were great Steph! Just never do that again ;-)).

Once I got moving things started to loosen up a bit, and I was able to get out the door and back to Boston Common.

Light Summary

This was clearly the most difficult of the three lights that I've done, mainly because we only had 10 people and had to bring the larger of the two logs from the Challenge with us the entire time. It would be easy to say "of course it was harder, you had just done a Challenge", but I think it was objectively the most weight per person that I've seen during a Light.

That said, the sun was shining, the weather was great, and there were a few other people from the Challenge class who came back to share in the suffering for another 5 hours. My IT Band was still bothering me quite a bit at this point, so I just focused on moving forward one step at a time, bending my knee as little as possible on the left side, and trying to continue contributing to the team as much as everyone else. Finally the event ended, and it was time to get patched and head home for some much needed R&R.

Closing Thoughts

I assumed that doing two events back-to-back would be pretty difficult, but the real challenge was working through my unexpected IT Band issues. Without that problem I think I would have breezed through these events without feeling too terrible. Still, I learned an important lesson about how much pain I can push through, and I feel like these events helped prepare me mentally for the Heavy I'm doing in August. I've got another Challenge/Light combo in May, a Challenge in June, and then I'll be spending ~6 weeks training hard for the longest event of my life. Completing these two events was encouraging, but I still feel like I have a long way to go before I'm ready to thrive at, and not just survive, a 24 hour event.

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:

GORUCK Challenge Class 1241 AAR

This is an After Action Review (AAR) of the 2014 Halloween GORUCK Challenge in Boston, MA

This event was the hardest physical challenge that I've ever undertaken by a wide margin. First, the stats:

• We started at 9PM and finished at 10:45AM (13 hours and 45 minutes later)
• The Cadre estimated that we covered around 17 miles
• 24 people started, and all 24 finished
• My ruck weighed about 40 pounds, but as you will see I was rarely carrying just that

Having completed a GORUCK Light a few months prior, I figured this would be harder but not substantially different. I couldn't have been more wrong. The Challenge made the Light look like a backyard BBQ. I trained hard, following the GORUCK "Get Ready in 6 Weeks" plan religiously, and adding on top of that extra pushups (to stay on target for my goal), Taekwondo, and Ultimate Frisbee. Even with all of that the event was extremely difficult.

Welcome Party

Every Challenge is a little bit different, but typically they open with a "Welcome Party", where you spend a couple hours doing calisthenics as a team. The worst part of the welcome party for me was the buddy bear crawls. Here's an example from another GRC class. Unfortunately for us, about one third of the crawl was over hard, pebbled ground which tore up my back a little bit and was pretty uncomfortable overall. 

For some of these activities we had a "time hack", which is just a time limit for a given task. We had three of these during our welcome party, and missed all of them. There are consequences for missing time hacks, and for us three missed time hacks meant 1/3rd casualties for our first movement. This meant that 1/3rd of the people at the event had to be carried to the next objective. To spread the load out a little we had the people being carried give their rucks to the people who were not carrying anyone, which meant that every person either had another human on their back or two rucks. 

Movements

This first movement ended up being about three quarters of a mile, and we had a time hack we had to make. Luckily we were able to hit it, so upon reaching our destination we were able to revive four people and continue on with only four casualties. At this point we also spent some time in the Charles River, getting reminded that the Challenge is a team event.

After that we began a series of movements around Boston, typically with four casualties. This went on for a few hours, with one short section where we were able to drop all of the casualties and move under our own power as we tried to get out of a slightly hairy situation with a lot of drunk people who looked like they wanted to start a fight. I was carried during one of these legs, and I have to say that I prefer being on the ground. Riding on someone's back is uncomfortable, you feel useless, and you get cold quickly. 

"The Log"

At some point in the early morning (I think around 2AM) we started carrying a couple of relatively small logs that we found on the side of the road. We still had a couple casualties at this point, so it wasn't easy, but it was pretty manageable. Unfortunately, after a few minutes we stopped to exchange the two smaller logs for "The Log". I'm suspicious that this might have been planted by a previous class or Cadre, because it was conveniently located along our route and unbelievably heavy. It was over 20 inches in diameter at the small end, 12-14 feet long, and by some credible estimates at least 2000 pounds. I honestly thought that the Cadre was kidding when he told us to pick it up. He was not kidding. 

Due to its large diameter and relatively short length, we could only fit 13 people under the log. Because of height inconsistencies we had a limited number of people that could even be effective under that log, so those of us who carried it didn't really get to swap out. I honestly don't remember if people were trading off at all, but I know that I was under that thing for the full time that we had it with us. We handed off our rucks to the other team members to save space, and put the log on our shoulders for about 50 meters at a time before we had to take a break. Because we wanted to put as many people as possible under the log, there was only enough space to step forward about six inches at a time. We shuffled along like this for 2-3 hours, and carried that log over 1.5 miles. People were puking at points, I think some tears were shed, and everyone was pushing themselves as hard as they could.

This was the defining moment of the class for me, because it accomplished one of the key goals of the GORUCK Challenge - showing you that you can accomplish something that you previously thought was impossible with the help of a team. If you had asked me how far I thought we could carry that log, I might have said 100-200 meters. A mile and a half later I knew that we could carry that thing until the Cadre told us to stop, however long that took. 

More Logs and The End

Once we finally dropped the massive log we traded it for two smaller logs, each between 400-600 pounds, with one being slightly larger. This was clearly a favorable trade, but wasn't easy by any stretch of the imagination. These logs came with us for the next 2.2 miles, at which point we dropped one of them, and took the other one an additional 2 miles. We finally got rid of that last log near the Harvard Bridge a little after 10AM. Our final movement took us from there to the finish point, which ended up being Dillon's Restaurant for some much needed food and ACRT. Everyone received their patch, and we got a chance to chat more informally with the Cadre and each other. 

Aftermath

Saturday after the event I was pretty worthless, basically only able to clean my gear, shower, and go to sleep. On Sunday I could walk again but every part of my body was more sore than it has ever been. By Monday I was back to about 80%, still sore but almost entirely functional.

A funny thing happened to me after this event: on Saturday and Sunday I was in so much pain that I questioned why I ever wanted to do this kind of thing in the first place, and had a hard time imagining doing it again. By Monday evening, as I started to feel better, I found myself back on the GORUCK website, looking for the next event and thinking about tackling a Heavy. 

At times the event was miserable, but it was also a ton of fun. Misery loves company, and I couldn't have asked for a better group to share this with. I met a lot of incredible people and incredible athletes, and I hope to see many of them again at future events. We earned that patch on Halloween night, and I can't wait to earn the next one.