This should not be news, but I feel the need to say this again: I am not a Rucker.
If there was a line of dudes that needed to be arranged in order from Most Rucking Heckler to Least Rucking Heckler, I would be oriented towards the front of that line. I’ve shouted stuff to ruckers like: Hey fellas, study hall is that way….or bring me back a latte too eh?
But I’m a big fan of the F3 Podcasts (you should be too). I listen to them like they are manna from above. And all of them talked A LOT about Growruck. There’s a promo video to get your blood pumpin. JRR Tolkin (the f3 one, not the real one) even made a documentary of the one from Pinehurst that’s kinda long. Yeah, I’ve watched it call me a sucker. Twice. Take my money, etc. But the point is that something a year or so ago hit me: I needs to try one of these. Looking at the schedule, I recall hearing that one was coming to SC. It was announced that it would be in Myrtle Beach (enter sad trombone). Sorry not sorry MB. I’m not a fan of the beach….really not a fan of Myrtle. If I’m being honest I did not want to dust off my jorts and wife beater to do that ruck. But alas, I signed up anyway. Then family life snuck up on me. My 2.0 had prom that weekend. Yeah, it’s a fairly weak excuse, but the M and I talked about it and decided that it was in my best interest to defer to another GR, stay here, and watch Truffle Shuffle get dudded up and trip the light fantastic.
If anyone from Growruck Corp is reading this, the deferral process is awful. Please fix that junk. I emailed at least 4 dudes about changing from MB to Metro. One dude even gave me the “yeah yeah, we got you”. Then I got a link to fill out. Emailed again. Cricket City. Finally 2 weeks before Metro started I got word that I was officially on the roster. In hindsight, it was fine. I was coming anyway.
On the actual weekend. Disclaimer: I may accidentally or innocently reveal something Behind the Curtain that I’m not supposed to. If I do, just pretend like you don’t know it’s coming ok?
Friday night:
Let’s call it a Social. Or a mixer. You remember those from back in the day? Bunch of dudes. Keg of beer. Man food. No chicks….so a lot like every party ever at State. Also, it was fun to check everyone out. There’s the Rucking Pro. Already geared up in their GoRuck stretchy pants & GoRuck tee (yeah, that GTE001 was dope, am I right Eggplant?). Couple of thick wristbands. Maybe a spritz or two of hair gel – I mean come on, we’re in Charlotte after all. These are the peacocks of Growruck. Then there’s the dudes from the outlying regions: Foothills, Gastonia, Kinston, Chattanooga, etc. Most of us were huddled together with familiar faces for safety. One or two will wander off and talk to Dark Helmet, Gnarly Goat, or another famous F3 Pax. Couple of others in even smaller groups looking for another small group to huddle together with. We can group all of those dudes in the Prairie Dog group. Safety in numbers. Then there’s the royalty. Roll in solo. Pretty sure I saw one of them being carried in on a guilded chair by 4 dudes. You know what I mean: chair with 2 poles underneath it on each end. Sorta like how they carried around the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then the regular dudes of Metro. Yes, there are some non hair gelled dudes there. Likely grew up in Shelby and moved to the big city for a taste. They’re the Unicorns of the crowd.
I kid I kid because I had a blast that night. It was good to see everyone. All of the guys there are good peoples, hair gel or no. Got to hang w/ one of my frat bros. The relatively famous Coach. Coach, I know you’re not reading this but if you are: Mazda, homie. Mazda.
The night ended relatively early. We were back to our hotel around 8:30 or so. Couple dudes were up for One More Beer, so we met in the lobby. Cause who doesn’t love a good hotel lobby beer, am I right? Anyway, we basically busted up a meeting of the Cadre. Dredd, Shredder, Linus, Bloodhound, Repeato, and Gobbler were all finishing up their plan for kicking us in the figs the next night. We all chatted for a minute. Good peoples. Off to bed. Current Shit the Bed Level: 10+
Saturday:
Up the next am after a horrible night’s sleep. Even had my own room but that didn’t help. The Pre Race Jitters had a hold of me real good.
One hour workout the corporate heads call Kingbuilder. It was harder than I thought it was going to be (TWSS), but primarily because we did more Bearcrawls that I care for. And I do not care for bear crawls one bit. It was raining and a bit cool, so it did feel good. Got dirty. Got sweaty. The Q’s were spot on. Overall, I’d say it was good. Italian Job and GMO did a great job leading us through the workout. We had a few (3?) FNG’s. 120’ish dudes at the workout. Seeing that many dudes working out together is special. Hope one day the HKY has a convergence w/ that many cats. One day.
Straight from the workout to breakfast at Johnson & Wales. Yes, the culinary school where folks learn how to make creatively delicious food. Your boy was a bit amped about what spread lay ahead of him. Options included such treats as yogurt. Whole fruit. Old assed muffins. Couple dozen bagels. Giving that effort a D- fellas. Note: next time tell us that breakfast is just going to be Leftovers From the Hotel’s Breakfast so my refined palette isn’t disappointed.
Rolled right into GrowSchool. This was awesome. Lots of head knowledge as they say. Only way I can describe it is that it is a deep dive into Q Source…please tell me that by now you’ve heard of Q Source. This lasted until noon and ended with the weekend’s biggest Mind F. My boy Repeato finishes his speech by telling us that we GTE starts 2 hours earlier than scheduled at 4:00 pm. Well played gents. Well played. That time change got into my head real good.
Off to lunch at French Quarter. Good place. Plank and I made the baller decision to forego walking the 0.5 mile hoof back to the hotel and got us a Lime scooter. Man that was fun. Almost got hit by a car. So did Plank. Would have been worth it.
Back to hotel to “rest”. Zero chance that I’d get some actual sleep. Tried to shut it down, but that just wasn’t happening. Oddly enough, I never felt tired throughout GTE. Don’t confuse tired with beat down and worn out though. There’s a difference.
Roll to AG Middle School to start getting ready around 3:30. Cool part of the start is that is where F3 started so for us out of towners, that’s like traveling to Mecca. It’s the OG AO. Not Organ Grinder, but the Original AO.
Started right on time at 16:00. Dredd goes balls deep into What Did – the Q of GTE Metro. “Why aren’t these men in formation?”. I think it’s because no one knew where we were supposed to be. Which is because no one told us where to be. And I’m 100% certain that no one told What Did about where we should be either. Dredd just wanted to yell at him. Set the tone. You remember that scene in Sicario where Benicio Del Toro walks up to a terrorist that’s tied to a chair and figuratively puts his ballsack in the terrorist’s face as a show of ‘this is my house, son’? That’s pretty much what Dredd did. Without the balls in the face and all of course. But still…he went Balls Deep.
Then they yell at us. Get in formation. Plank (the exercise, not our own pax: Plank). Who told you to stand up? Get off your knees. Straighten that back out. Roll call. Mass confusion. Cluster F. Keep planking. Finally got us 12 deep in formation. Start the PT test. Minimums are 40 hand release merkins in 2 minutes, 50 cross fit sit ups in 2 minutes, 2 miles under 18:00.
Ole Cuz Ed pulled a Soup Sandwich on the merkins. My man Dark Helmet was my moderator. To call that embarrassing was an understatement. Oh well, I’m a grown ass man. Take my lumps and move on. I’m sure DH was searching for a Jazzercise location that I could retire to.
This process took a while, so while I was waiting for the next round (sit ups), I was feeling pretty shitty about myself. How can I not do 40 HRM? Fluxed between a being ticked off and having a Pity Party, table for One please.
Passed the sit ups. Whew.
More waiting. Passed the 2 miles. I think my time was 15:40, so I felt good about that.
Note: it was so damn hot. Dudes were dropping like flies too. One guy got hauled off in a stretcher. Amber Lamps came and picked the poor guy up. I don’t know the numbers, but by the time the PT was over, there were a lot of guys that were already tapped out. No shame either. Reference that quote from my boy Teddy Roosevelt. Something about there’s no shame in the man that steps into the ring and tries and fails b/c at least he tried and wasn’t a punk ass B for not trying. (Nailed it).
Anyway, more hazing. Show me your weight. Go here. Hurry up. Go there. Show me your water. Take your water to Bloodhound. Bloodhound says drop your water and go see Linus. Linus says Where the F is your water? Huh? What? Du what? Who’s on first? Group lunge walks. Running w/ (poo) over your head. Run there, run here. One dude crapped out. Another guy pulled a Retread on BRR and turned grey & had to sit down for a minute. Turned around a minute later and he’s gone; sitting on the bleachers with a cool wet towel around his neck. The heat. Dear Lord, the heat. Hello Kitty sticking a camera in my grill. Repeato was perched up on a cherry picker/scissor lift thing taking pictures of my shitbox form. I found out later that there was a crowd of Redwood Originals out there to watch the spectacle. Just hanging out drinking a beer. Maybe pulling on a lung dart. Then more yelling. At me. From across the way at other dudes. Just chaos. And that’s the point. They’re breaking us down to build us up later.
We divided into 4 groups; Red, White, Blue, Green platoons. Within each platoon there is a Platoon Leader, Assistant Platoon Leader, and (4) Squad Commanders. Yeah, I’m with you. I also think that the whole toy soldier thing is a bit odd, goofy, I’m Too Cool For that, etc. But don’t let that part of what happens stop you from considering one ok? You’re not that cool, after all. It’s just a way for you to know where to line up and who you should listen to.
Part of tonight is to learn how to fall on your face and get better. Turns out it was my turn to do that first. My first time doing one of these things and they tell me to lead these guys in formation. No idea what to do. Going to have to wing it. First order was to collect our coupons: 60#, 80#, 120# sandbags, (3) ~20# water bladders, and an ammo box filled w/ lead. Next order is to follow the dudes in front of us. Seems pretty simple so off we go. Then came the questions: who’s carrying what, boss? do we rotate who’s carrying what? which squad starts with what? Huh, WTF? I don’t know, man just pick (poo) up something and carry it. That’s not the point. So with the help of my new best friend Whaler, we got going with the organization. Whaler was a huge help to This Guy. Thanks much holmes.
Couple of stops. More talking from the Cadre. Formation this. Line up that. Drinking information from a fire hose. Shoulders feel like mush. No idea where we are. No concept of time. Another Mind F and a huge one at that.
More rucking. Ended up at Freedom Park. There’s a rather large pond. Get in formation in the pond. Water felt good. Squats. Box cutters while you floated. It felt so good on my shoulders. We were in backwards formation though. Werps. Got a lil talking to about that.
New platoon leader. I picked Tormand. You may know him from such things as Mortimer 100. He’s been on the Boone/Metro team for the last 2 years. That lil dude is a beast. He did a much better job that I did at leading us out. Kudos to that wee man.
More rucking. Rucked down to a creek. Get in the creek. Start walking. Under foot bridges. Only the flag can go over the bridge. We apparently did that for 1. 5 miles. I had no less than 10 lbs of sand in my shoes. Note: the belly float under each bridge was a 10 second stairway to heaven. Glorious. Pissed my pants too. Also glorious.
Get out of creek. Ruck to Metro’s homeless shelter AO. Logs were waiting on us. Here’s the really shitty part for ole White Platoon. When we roll up in Extreme Last Place (we were a slow moving group…Appropriate for me I guess), everyone else appeared to be chilling. No rucks on. Full lounge mode. I think I saw a few guys pulling on a ciggy. One dude off getting a haircut. But when they saw us waddling up, Cadre called Ruck Up, Log up. Many many curse words came to mind and mouth. I would have eaten someone’s liver to take a break. I was a beat man and it was only 01:00’ish.
Somewhere between the creek and our next stop (I think), there was The Hurling. It took place in someone’s very expensive front yard. The culprit was Italian Job. (sidenote: IJ is currently jacked up. The good kind of Jacked up too. Some may say he’s a Swoldier). Anyway, we were ambling down a sweet, ritzy neighborhood…all of a sudden that dude pukes his entire body weight. Violently too. Multiple times. Loudly. Again and again and again. Nothing for us to do but keep on keeping on. There were dudes that would help him out. Hate it for the fella too, because I know he worked his tail off to prepare for this weekend. But the sound. Dear Lord, the Sound. I don’t think anyone will soon forget what that sounded like.
Pick up logs. Ramble on. That homeless shelter is somewhere downtown – neh Uptown. (Dear CLT, you also aren’t that cool, can you just call it Downtown like everyone else? Signed, Everyone Else.) All pax knew where we’re heading. To the Muthaship. I’ve seen pictures of her. I’ve dreamed of her. It’s the ER parking deck’s significantly bigger brother. 12 levels of sheer nastiness. Guessing it was a few miles to get there. Bars were still open at this point. The drunks were out in full force. Almost positive I saw a Beav. Cars honking. Dudes asking for a light. Trannys checking Markup out. The line to get into the strip club was long. You can only imagine the ample opportunities for That’s What She Saids as we toted a 25′ L phallic symbol towards Mutha.
Note: I love being taller than average. It has a lot of benefits. Carrying a log is not one of them. You see, we can’t just all get under a log and start walking. We have to organize from shortest to tallest to try and even that sucker out. It sucked for everyone, but I’d still bet that the Tallies got the heavy part of that stick. Note: Shorties will likely disagree with me on that. Probably something about inches to pounds carried ratio.
Up the ramp we go. Late to the top. Again. This time worked to our advantage b/c we missed a God Awful looking log passing race. Dudes were falling all over the place.
Then something bad happened. Apparently Cadre frown upon losing a guy while carrying a log up a ramp. We were short one fella. (Note: we had One Short Fella with us, but that’s not what I’m talking about). F3’s only employee: Scratch & Win was missing. Lil Sweet took a few dudes to find him. After a few turns down the cork, we saw him. He did not look fresh. In fact, he had had a bad case of The 1,000 Yard Stare working since it got dark. Frankly, I’m surprised he made it that far. Anyway, we dusted him off and headed back for a good tongue lashing from Linus. He wasn’t happy. No man left behind and all. Run a lap down stairs and back up. Re-log and head down the corkscrew. We heard something about dropping off the log….steps quicken. We’re still in last place.
Get to the bottom. Dudes chillin. Filling up on water. Rucks off. More haircuts. Lounging. 99% sure I heard someone shaking a martini tumbler, Kitty and Repeato napping like champs. Luckily, we had just enough time to fill up water and relax for about 5 minutes. Chugged a Cliff Bar. Slammed some apple sauce. Dumped 9 lbs of the 10 in each shoe. Even got to change socks. That revived me a bit. Shoes still had some crunch when I walked. In summary, The Mutha lived up to all my expectations. We needs a road trip down there to spend more time in her (TWSS).
Ruck up called. Only had that stupid bullet box & Scratch/Win’s weight to carry. See what we did there? No one wanted to see S/W go belly up, so we lightened his load. Carry each other’s bourdon so he can continue. Note: 1,000 Yard Stare still intact. Mood seemed to improve a bit. We all knew the end was nearing. But a few crusty veterans knew better than to have high hopes. They knew that the boot was about to be firmly placed on our proverbial necks.
Next stop, get some water. Wait here. Cadre and platoon leaders were staring at something. Came back w/ the news that we had to carry something. Can’t be as bad as the logs, right? Wrong. Worse. Much worse. What’d they call these bastards? French Horns? Dutch Boys? That’s not it, but close enough. Either way, those bastards were heavy. And no easy way to carry them either. Same height rules apply for logs when carrying a 300# pallet. More suck. Much more. Lots of right angles to dig into our shoulders too.
This was surely the end though. Nothing was going to get worse than this.
Then someone (not naming names, am I Lil Sweet?) kept walking in the road. Cadre: get out of the road. Someone (LS) would wander in the road. Cadre: Get out of the road. For shits and giggles, let’s say that happened about 3 times. That really doesn’t matter. What matters is that it was 1 times too many. Linus lost his shit on us. Drop the Dutch Boy. Had us a nice little workout w/ Turkish Getups, merkins, and burpees. Pick up DB again. Stop at Myers Park CC.
Sunrise service. That was really good. Great words by dudes. If I’m being honest – and I’m being honest – I don’t remember much of this. Whole body was telling me to go kick rocks. I felt like and looked like ass. But things were looking up. I jettisoned 3 of my 6 liters to shave some weight, only to get busted by Linus. Werps. Fill’r back up. Everyone knew we were close to AG Middle. Apparently the Cadre did too. Last push was maybe a mile or so. Everyone was carrying either something or someone. Chaos ensued. Thankfully it was only about 30 minutes of chaos. The veterans warned us to not relax and/or get comfortable. Apparently during GTE Louisville, the pax got back to the starting point and had another hour of bootcamp waiting on them. I was not trilled about that prospect. Someone brought out the patches for everyone to see. Was that the final Mind F? Would we be staring down the barrel of more planks? merkins? boxcutters? My mind was scrambled. In other words, the Cadre had me right where they wanted me. Eating out of the palms of their hands.
Turns out that was it. Everyone did some talking. I was struggling to stay upright (TWSS). But all were proud of us. We did good by them. We did this for the dude to our left and to our right, not for us – truth nugget. Get that patch. Move Dutch Boy one more time. Throw ruck in Swanson’s truck, grab beer, snag a t-shirt, enjoy.
This is a long BB. High chance that not many read this all the way through. It took me close to a full week to let everything sink in. 16 hours of anything isn’t easy and this was anything but just anything. I was lucky enough to have 2 other pax from Foothills with me, plus Coach. We laughed about the Good Ole Days. The other fellas in White Platoon were fun to get to know. Too many to recall, but all great dudes for sure. As soon as we were done, I think my first words were “I want to go somewhere and die”. Quickly followed by “aint no way I’m doing that s*** again”. I’ve famously been known to say that about a lot of things: The Bear, BRR, Iron Pax, Eleanor x50, Hibriten Mtn x3, 50K. But I always seem to do them again. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? I think that will apply to GTE24, but in full disclosure my plate weight is currently sitting in our shed if anyone is in need of a big assed paper weight.
Out
Comments are closed