GORUCK Heavy promises 24+ hours of intense GORUCKness and it sure as shit delivered. I picked up my Heavy patch in Austin earlier this year. The numbers since that’s what all you people seem to care about:

26 hours. 32 miles. 100+ degree temperatures

This plus Cadre Jason translated to 14/19 people finishing.

Nowhere near the finish (I was hoping so hard this was the finish) but a man can dream!

Not that a Heavy is what JFK had in mind but his quote has stuck with me:

“We choose not to do these things because they are easy but because they are hard.”

It started back in February/March when Eric called me out by saying that the hardest part about Heavy was signing up (he’s a liar). I started training for Heavy back in March by increasing my running mileage stupidly (tripled in a month) and then proceeded to get tendinitis two days before my first Light. I focused on deadlifts, squats and shoulder work and my rucking schedule from April through June was a Light (Dallas), Challenge (Wichita), shadowing and then another Light (Shreveport). That was the only rucking I did. I was better prepared physically and mentally for the Heavy I missed out on in Dallas than I was for the Heavy in Austin. I assumed prior to Heavy that those three times I rucked would be good enough and well, I wasn’t wrong but maybe I wasn’t right. I’m not going to lie, it was Heavy and it sucked but my shoulders weren’t really taking too much of a beating and although I didn’t love the weight, it never really became a burden. By focusing on lifting heavy the past few months and not doing much cardio (I’m going to change this as I can’t run far or fast at ~11’/miles), I basically screwed myself with my training. Cardio is not my friend and I chose not to worship at her altar with my preparation for this Heavy. Guess what this Heavy was…long movements and lots of cardio when I was expecting (hoping?) lower miles and lots of heavy shit. I was wrong and paid the price and it was awesome.

We started our Heavy with the APFT which I failed the hell out of and then we went for a 5 mile timed run which immediately brought out those inner demons they love to talk about on GORUCK and this was only a few hours into it. My friend Candace fell back beside me and offered some encouraging words to keep me going which was nice. I had no intention of quitting but at the beginning of each one of these events (both Challenges and both Lights) I will get inside my own head and think about how awesome it would be to quit. I have yet to give into these thoughts but when you’re sucking wind it’s always nice to think about the other side and how easy it would be to not do this. We didn’t finish the run due to getting lost and we did some more PT because we certainly weren’t a team and weren’t in danger of becoming one for the next few hours (more like 20+ and I don’t know if we ever became as much of a team as we have in other Challenges but we got close)…

[I wrote this right after Heavy so if something is off…let me know via snail mail]