The team I am part of includes a wide range of athletes, ultra runners, GORUCK Toughs, Crossfitters, a little bit of everything, as well as newbes in all of these categories. Seeing that we had more than a few newbies curious about GORUCK challenges, the team put together a custom GORUCK light. I was instantly on board.

Got to the start point, helped some of the newer rucktards square away their equipment, and met our Cadre.

Cadre Mike quickly explained that Lights are fun and he had no intention of crushing anyone’s soul today. We then moved down to the surf of the lake and started the welcome party.

This was my first exposure to the infamous Tunnel of Love- everyone holds down-dog pose side by side, forming a tunnel underneath that everyone must, one at a time crawl through. Which really sucks when dealing with weighted rucksacks.

 

We got through the welcome party, were assigned two group leaders, and given our first assignment: 30 minutes to reach a certain boardwalk a distance up the beach. Just as we are prepping to move out, we hear, “Oh, by the way, who are the two who were late? Yes, you two are casualties.”

Anyone designated a casualty has to be carried by the rest of the team. We took their rucks and started working out who would carry whom. One of the late arrivals was exactly who we would have chosen (and who we continued choosing for buddy carry for the rest of the day). The other was a big lanky firefighter who we quickly changed from one man to two man to four man carries.

We made our time hack, but one of the team had left a piece of gear behind. Leading to:

 

We had to start in low pushup position in a pond and low crawl to a boat trailer parked nearby.

New team leaders, new place to go.

At our next stopping point, everyone’s favorite part of GORUCK. *Sing along.* It’s LOG, LOG, its big,its heavy, its wood…

I was surprised that some motorists seemed to know what was going on and yelled encouragement. We also had to reroute the log carry around a triathlon that somehow was scheduled at the same time and place.

We got the log to the beach and broke into groups doing various forms of PT on the beach and in the surf.

 

 

We then carried the log off the beach and Cadre announced that we were done.

It was a good time, a decent challenge, and a good way to expose some of the team to other types of events that are out there. And I made my goal of not slowing down the team.