HTL = Heavy/Tough/Light, basically 3 of GORUCK's events done back-to-back-to-back: 24 hour Heavy, 12 hour Tough, 6 hour Light. (Duration is approximate)
AAR is an after action review, it's pretty much like a race recap.
Briefly, GORUCK is an American organization that puts on events based on Special Forces training. They are team events (ie no finish lines or fixed distances) led by current or ex-members of the Special Forces (Green Berets, Recon Marines, Army Rangers..)
**Definition of rucking as per GORUCK
I decided to attempt the HTL on a holiday weekend, after surviving the Fort Bragg Heavy back in February. Most of the time, HTL's land on a Thursday-Friday-Saturday schedule, but for Canada Day, the Heavy started on Friday at 5pm which was favourable for me.
Leading up to the time I had to leave for the event - some jitters and doubts naturally creep up. I didn't ruck that many miles in June! I took the month of May off rucking, will that undo all of my previous training? Are those squats I did over the past couple of weeks really going to help?
Come whatever may.
Canada Day Heavy - Friday, June 30 5pm
Cadre Nick, Cadre Jake
Rucksack weight: 25+ lbs
The start point had changed a couple of times leading up to the event, finally the same location was decided for all 3, given the massive traffic expected for the long weekend. A small crowd of familiar faces is gathered around Stony Smith's green pickup truck. One GRT, John Barduhn, is giddy like a kid who's eaten too much sugar. I guess that's not a bad thing, being super positive.
We put our rucks on, grab the flags and head to the start point. We've given ourselves plenty of time for last-minute bathroom breaks, cooling off in the shade, greeting other GRT's...The Cadre show up and we get called over for admin.
Cadre Nick already isn't too pleased with us because we've arrived empty-handed (who does that?!) There's about 5 minutes left before the start and a couple of guys hurry off back to pick up the team weights (2 street hockey nets whose posts are filled with sand and rocks; 18 hockey sticks; and a military-looking stretcher aka The Litter) Five 20kg sandbags are also added by Cadre, and look to have been purchased at a gardening centre.
Admin and gear check done, we start off with some PT. Cadre Nick flashes us a crocodile grin that guarantees punishment for: initially showing up with no team weights; 1 guy leaving his epilepsy meds in his car (they are daily dosages but Cadre still want to take no chances); Stony literally having signed up the night before, hence why he doesn't appear on the printout list of names.
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| Canucks, meet Cadre Jake |
Cadre Jake unleashes a real doozy that will haunt us for days to come - low crawls, belly touching the ground. It's doable with our rucks on, but it's never just one version..
"First formation: on your faces! Second formation: on top of the first formation!"
...say what?!
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| Embracing a lot of suck |
After taking turns being the crawler and the one on top, we move onto the PT test. Two minutes each of push-ups and sit-ups are counted. I bang out the minimum 55 for the push-ups, but fall way short of the 65 sit-ups. Those things have been my nemesis since elementary school.
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| Cadre Nick wondering when the crazy Canadians are going to get their act together (great photo taken by Katie Toomsalu) |
Cadre Nick dunks our rucks in the waters of the marina before we march out - it's kind of refreshing...except for the part that runs down the backs of our legs.
We head out and find time to play a bit of ball hockey, Canada vs. USA, on a quieter stretch of access road. Cadre Jake (he's British) looks on with amusement as the game is typically punctuated with "CAR!" followed by a scramble to move the nets. A police car pulls up close by and tells us to continue playing.
Canada wins 5-0 and we continue marching onward. The night has set in and we figure out how to carry the nets in a more effective manner.
The initial enthusiasm and energy of swapping out coupons finally dies down to focused silence as we navigate bike paths and trails, some of which have sizeable puddles and some mud to cross.
Want to add a bit more *ahem* fun to this ruck march with hands full of heavy things? Bring on the mosquitos.
We ditch the nets, refill our water and begin the next part, the 12-mile ruck march. Cadre Jake gives us 3 hours to complete it (insert horrified look) while carrying the hockey sticks and the empty stretcher. A little drizzle has fallen but the humidity hasn't changed despite it being almost 2am. We set off at a good pace initially, swapping out regularly to carry The Litter. Along the way we have a few places and details to identify, including the 3 bus numbers at a bus stop.
The pace gradually slows and the quiet struggle begins. Hockey sticks double as good canes, by the way, especially for the uphills. One guy quietly drops out and we find this out while doing a head count at a red light. We are not even close to making our time hack, but still we plod on. The humidity has multiplied our collective ruck funk by at least tenfold, and it would probably put Febreze out of business.
The sun has come up by the time a defeated-looking, very damp and funky-smelling Heavy class trudges up to the end point of the 12 miles. Cadre Nick has likely seen the flashes of despair in our eyes and allows us to refuel and take care of our feet. We also see our second drop of the event.
A new component has been added to each GORUCK class - community service. Our initial project was helping a shelter build a soup kitchen, hence why we have sent bags of tools along with the shadows. Cadre Nick tells us we are behind due to our ruck march that was finally 4 hours long, and we need to continue. He gives us a time hack to cover the 7 or so miles to arrive at the community center for 9am, otherwise serious punishment will follow.
Perhaps the biggest test so far of this Heavy was this speed ruck that pretty much needed to be performed at GORUCK's standard minimum pace of 15 minutes/mile. We push and push, Cadre Nick trying to keep us on pace by occasionally tossing in, "You're off by 30 seconds...you have to pick up the pace!" "You're about 5 seconds off...you're so close!" Someone breaks out into O Canada as we're hustling and it's a very choppy-sounding one as everyone is breathing hard.
(For the speed ruck, I found I was able to keep pace with the rest of the class, however that all changed once I was on stretcher carry and had to shuffle...it kept me off my pace just enough to get me frustrated and use some choice words once we went stopped shuffling.)
I could see my vision tunneling as we kept pressing onward for what felt like forever. Long strides, shuffle, jog to close the gaps - I've never rucked so fast. I chose to focus on the ruck in front of me (Stony's, thank goodness) and tried not to let it get away.
"Keep going!"
"Shuffle!"
"Long strides!"
"SHUFFLE!"
Again, I can't remember seeing much during this part. 2 class members are struggling so their rucks have been passed off amongst the team.
The demons in my head are battling it out and gleefully whispering stuff like:
- do I really want to do the Tough after this? No, maybe I'll HZL it (Heavy, sleep, Light)
- Wait, this means we have to speed ruck back right?
- Think about that bed waiting for you at your AirBnB...you want it don't you?
To try and shut up the demons, I pretty much lock a song in my head and play the snot out of it - this helped me get through my first Tough/Light last year. For long stretches, I'm repeating How Far I'll Go from Moana (don't laugh! I'd watched on Netflix the weekend prior), and it alternates with King of Pain by Sting, because I'd recently heard it on the radio.
Other songs that come up:
Something Just Like This - Coldplay & the Chainsmokers ("doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo..." hey that is fun and distracting)
Waiting for Love - Avicii (how? I haven't heard this in months!)
Victory - Two Steps From Hell (ah, the song that got me through Tough Ruck)
Everybody Hurts - R.E.M (a good reminder to stop feeling sorry for myself, but seriously brain...stop.)
We make our time hack and everyone pretty much collapses like a house of cards. Someone is audibly dry heaving; others go horizontal trying to catch their breath and regain themselves. My muscles seem to have seized up and turned off and I can barely get my rucksack off, or walk for that matter. My traps feel like someone's pounding them with a meat tenderizing hammer.
Turns out the soup kitchen project was a no-go at the last minute, so Cadre are trying to figure something out while having us get a bathroom break at a nearby park. Most everyone seems to be in a dazed, catatonic state, myself included. It's just past 9am and the effects of the speed ruck still linger.
More demons that are playing tricks with me:
- My upper body feels like a power outage, how the hell am I going to get my ruck overhead later on?
- Can I still ruck back on these dead legs?
- Your Achilles hates you...now! "OW!" You like that, punk? "OW! OW!"
- You want that bed...(which I counter with picturing the HTL patch)
We play a bit of hockey in the nearby rink; puddles make the playing surface extremely slippery. One guy, Dave, has two spectacular wipeouts but he's saved by his ruck and an audible klunk thanks to the weights inside. Canada wins a close one 5-4 but victory is achieved when we make Cadre Nick slip and fall in a puddle.
Never assume that an out-of-towner is a newbie at ball hockey. Cadre Nick had played when he was in Germany (I heard) so there were quite a few surprised looks when he jumped in and didn't look out of place.
Nearby is a kiosk (Soup Bar by Feed it Forward) that serves meals paid forward by customers. Jagger the owner is in need of a bit of landscaping as foot traffic has more or less destroyed the grass.
Did I mention Stony Smith is legendary? First of all, besides being a GORUCK Selection finisher (and the only Canadian one), he is a fantastic team member and seems to run on a superhuman set of batteries. While I'm trying to muster energy to just walk around during community service, Stony is fully into it, using a pitchfork to break up the dirt, seemingly as fresh as a daisy. I tell myself to just follow this guy.
Jagger has brought us some Tim Horton's coffee and it is the best-tasting cup of coffee of the weekend. Re-energized, we shovel dirt, wash dishes (the whole kiosk needed cleaning and reorganizing), lay down some new grass and tiles, and eat ice cream from the booth next door.
The soup bar is operational and Jagger happily brings out pastrami sandwiches, and coconut and melon soup. With some proper calories in our bellies, we march back towards the start point, but not before Cadre Nick proposes a beer stop to have some "Canadian beer". We exchange slightly stunned looks as I'm fairly certain hopping into a bar isn't what usually happens during a Heavy.
Being a small Asian person does mean I'm not completely immune to the red-faced Asian glow, especially since I haven't had a proper meal since Friday afternoon. I'm just hoping not to hurl when we get back to start point. Somehow, the liquid beer calories are quite refreshing. And no, I didn't turn fire hydrant red.
We make our way back to the spot with the trees and grass, get into formation and are informed by Cadre Nick to wait for Cadre Jake to arrive (he's parking the car). It starts to rain on us, and we hear thunder in the distance. Should we be standing in a grassy field holding metal flagpoles? We brace ourselves for the ensuing shark attack of endex PT...
"CRAWL!!!!!"
Cadre Jake comes sprinting out of nowhere barking out "CRAWL! NOW!" It feels a bit different in the soaking wet grass. At this point we're pretty smoked and grabbing handfuls of grass to help propel ourselves along - hey, it works. The elbows are not happy. (More on those later).
The class gets split into two and more PT follows - bear crawls, walking lunges..My team gets Cadre Jake and we get a different spin on PT. It's quite draining trying to run and push past the rest of the team when they're all bunched together pushing back at a 110%. I channel a couple of rugby memories from my college days to get through.
At one point a grappling match ensues between Stony (still wearing his rucksack) and Cadre Jake - Cadre goes for an arm bar but since it's raining, the arm slips out. Stony is on the verge of executing a scarf hold for a count but with two well-timed hip thrusts, Cadre Jake breaks the hold. We get yelled at for stopping and watching (how could we not?), then continue with another exercise, which involves running full tilt at each other but not dodging. I get caught not looking, get bowled over and skid on all fours.
We blink, get into formation and we're done. The rain has let up and 16 out of 18 signed up get patched. Cadre ask who's returning for the Tough and at least 10 hands go up. We'll see in 4 hours...
Part two of HTL weekend - here's my AAR on the Tough
We head out and find time to play a bit of ball hockey, Canada vs. USA, on a quieter stretch of access road. Cadre Jake (he's British) looks on with amusement as the game is typically punctuated with "CAR!" followed by a scramble to move the nets. A police car pulls up close by and tells us to continue playing.
Canada wins 5-0 and we continue marching onward. The night has set in and we figure out how to carry the nets in a more effective manner.
The initial enthusiasm and energy of swapping out coupons finally dies down to focused silence as we navigate bike paths and trails, some of which have sizeable puddles and some mud to cross.
Want to add a bit more *ahem* fun to this ruck march with hands full of heavy things? Bring on the mosquitos.
We ditch the nets, refill our water and begin the next part, the 12-mile ruck march. Cadre Jake gives us 3 hours to complete it (insert horrified look) while carrying the hockey sticks and the empty stretcher. A little drizzle has fallen but the humidity hasn't changed despite it being almost 2am. We set off at a good pace initially, swapping out regularly to carry The Litter. Along the way we have a few places and details to identify, including the 3 bus numbers at a bus stop.
The pace gradually slows and the quiet struggle begins. Hockey sticks double as good canes, by the way, especially for the uphills. One guy quietly drops out and we find this out while doing a head count at a red light. We are not even close to making our time hack, but still we plod on. The humidity has multiplied our collective ruck funk by at least tenfold, and it would probably put Febreze out of business.
The sun has come up by the time a defeated-looking, very damp and funky-smelling Heavy class trudges up to the end point of the 12 miles. Cadre Nick has likely seen the flashes of despair in our eyes and allows us to refuel and take care of our feet. We also see our second drop of the event.
A new component has been added to each GORUCK class - community service. Our initial project was helping a shelter build a soup kitchen, hence why we have sent bags of tools along with the shadows. Cadre Nick tells us we are behind due to our ruck march that was finally 4 hours long, and we need to continue. He gives us a time hack to cover the 7 or so miles to arrive at the community center for 9am, otherwise serious punishment will follow.
Perhaps the biggest test so far of this Heavy was this speed ruck that pretty much needed to be performed at GORUCK's standard minimum pace of 15 minutes/mile. We push and push, Cadre Nick trying to keep us on pace by occasionally tossing in, "You're off by 30 seconds...you have to pick up the pace!" "You're about 5 seconds off...you're so close!" Someone breaks out into O Canada as we're hustling and it's a very choppy-sounding one as everyone is breathing hard.
(For the speed ruck, I found I was able to keep pace with the rest of the class, however that all changed once I was on stretcher carry and had to shuffle...it kept me off my pace just enough to get me frustrated and use some choice words once we went stopped shuffling.)
I could see my vision tunneling as we kept pressing onward for what felt like forever. Long strides, shuffle, jog to close the gaps - I've never rucked so fast. I chose to focus on the ruck in front of me (Stony's, thank goodness) and tried not to let it get away.
"Keep going!"
"Shuffle!"
"Long strides!"
"SHUFFLE!"
Again, I can't remember seeing much during this part. 2 class members are struggling so their rucks have been passed off amongst the team.
The demons in my head are battling it out and gleefully whispering stuff like:
- do I really want to do the Tough after this? No, maybe I'll HZL it (Heavy, sleep, Light)
- Wait, this means we have to speed ruck back right?
- Think about that bed waiting for you at your AirBnB...you want it don't you?
To try and shut up the demons, I pretty much lock a song in my head and play the snot out of it - this helped me get through my first Tough/Light last year. For long stretches, I'm repeating How Far I'll Go from Moana (don't laugh! I'd watched on Netflix the weekend prior), and it alternates with King of Pain by Sting, because I'd recently heard it on the radio.
Other songs that come up:
Something Just Like This - Coldplay & the Chainsmokers ("doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo..." hey that is fun and distracting)
Waiting for Love - Avicii (how? I haven't heard this in months!)
Victory - Two Steps From Hell (ah, the song that got me through Tough Ruck)
Everybody Hurts - R.E.M (a good reminder to stop feeling sorry for myself, but seriously brain...stop.)
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| No surprise, Stony is the last man standing |
Turns out the soup kitchen project was a no-go at the last minute, so Cadre are trying to figure something out while having us get a bathroom break at a nearby park. Most everyone seems to be in a dazed, catatonic state, myself included. It's just past 9am and the effects of the speed ruck still linger.
More demons that are playing tricks with me:
- My upper body feels like a power outage, how the hell am I going to get my ruck overhead later on?
- Can I still ruck back on these dead legs?
- Your Achilles hates you...now! "OW!" You like that, punk? "OW! OW!"
- You want that bed...(which I counter with picturing the HTL patch)
We play a bit of hockey in the nearby rink; puddles make the playing surface extremely slippery. One guy, Dave, has two spectacular wipeouts but he's saved by his ruck and an audible klunk thanks to the weights inside. Canada wins a close one 5-4 but victory is achieved when we make Cadre Nick slip and fall in a puddle.
Never assume that an out-of-towner is a newbie at ball hockey. Cadre Nick had played when he was in Germany (I heard) so there were quite a few surprised looks when he jumped in and didn't look out of place.
Nearby is a kiosk (Soup Bar by Feed it Forward) that serves meals paid forward by customers. Jagger the owner is in need of a bit of landscaping as foot traffic has more or less destroyed the grass.
Did I mention Stony Smith is legendary? First of all, besides being a GORUCK Selection finisher (and the only Canadian one), he is a fantastic team member and seems to run on a superhuman set of batteries. While I'm trying to muster energy to just walk around during community service, Stony is fully into it, using a pitchfork to break up the dirt, seemingly as fresh as a daisy. I tell myself to just follow this guy.
Jagger has brought us some Tim Horton's coffee and it is the best-tasting cup of coffee of the weekend. Re-energized, we shovel dirt, wash dishes (the whole kiosk needed cleaning and reorganizing), lay down some new grass and tiles, and eat ice cream from the booth next door.
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| Cadre Nick likes his ice cream (& check out the Smurf crew in the back!) |
Being a small Asian person does mean I'm not completely immune to the red-faced Asian glow, especially since I haven't had a proper meal since Friday afternoon. I'm just hoping not to hurl when we get back to start point. Somehow, the liquid beer calories are quite refreshing. And no, I didn't turn fire hydrant red.
We make our way back to the spot with the trees and grass, get into formation and are informed by Cadre Nick to wait for Cadre Jake to arrive (he's parking the car). It starts to rain on us, and we hear thunder in the distance. Should we be standing in a grassy field holding metal flagpoles? We brace ourselves for the ensuing shark attack of endex PT...
"CRAWL!!!!!"
Cadre Jake comes sprinting out of nowhere barking out "CRAWL! NOW!" It feels a bit different in the soaking wet grass. At this point we're pretty smoked and grabbing handfuls of grass to help propel ourselves along - hey, it works. The elbows are not happy. (More on those later).
The class gets split into two and more PT follows - bear crawls, walking lunges..My team gets Cadre Jake and we get a different spin on PT. It's quite draining trying to run and push past the rest of the team when they're all bunched together pushing back at a 110%. I channel a couple of rugby memories from my college days to get through.
At one point a grappling match ensues between Stony (still wearing his rucksack) and Cadre Jake - Cadre goes for an arm bar but since it's raining, the arm slips out. Stony is on the verge of executing a scarf hold for a count but with two well-timed hip thrusts, Cadre Jake breaks the hold. We get yelled at for stopping and watching (how could we not?), then continue with another exercise, which involves running full tilt at each other but not dodging. I get caught not looking, get bowled over and skid on all fours.
We blink, get into formation and we're done. The rain has let up and 16 out of 18 signed up get patched. Cadre ask who's returning for the Tough and at least 10 hands go up. We'll see in 4 hours...
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| Endex - wet, tired but still smiling |
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