Sink responsibly.

                Jessica and I couldn’t have asked for a more fair-weathered day for the Tampa Tough Mudder.  It was warm and sunny during the event.  As stated before, Jessica and I were going to use each other for motivation during the 12 grueling miles over 25 military-style obstacles.  I am glad that I had decided to add the extra challenge for myself by adding a little bit of extra weight; a 40 lb weighted vest, water source, and various items for nutrition.  Had I not, I don’t think I would’ve gained anything from the event.  So with our own challenges that lay before us, Jessica and I began our day.

                Let me just put this out there, right up front:  Jessica did an outstanding job.  Had she prepared a little more for the event, she would’ve absolutely rocked the course and she knows it.  And just as in every other facet of life, what you lack in preparation, you have to compensate for it on game day; be it extra heart, endurance, or just dumb luck.  Jessica, aperently, brought a heaping supply of extra heart – without it, she probably wouldn’t have finished with that great smile of hers... or at all.  This, ergo, is one of the many reasons why I adore her so much.   She faced extreme heights, frigid water, mud laced with horse manure, and the very apparent possibility of severe injury.  The credit goes to her, not to me. 

I LOVE this stuff… can’t get enough.  I love hearing people call me crazy – it drives me.  This, once again, is not her bag.  She purposely put herself far out of her own comfort zone and paid to do it!  I challenge all that read this to do what she did and still finish with a smile.  Go for it… I’ll wait.

                By a stroke of pure stupid luck, I found out that a buddy of mine from the Marines, Josh Schumacker, was doing the course in Tampa as well.  We linked up with him and two of his friends and ran the course together.   I could tell that he really liked it as well.  But on a side note, I also ran into a couple of guys, from a collocated camp site of which are signed up for The Spartan Death Race.  I was like, “OH EM GEE, CAN I GETS YO’S AUTOGRAPHS???”  Not really.  But it was a great opportunity to pick their respective brains on what they are doing to prepare and what events they have done in the past.  The three of us agreed that the TMs and Spartan Races are just days of fun.  This made me feel good.  Both guys were Iron Men.  I liked listening to them and discussing some of the obvious, and some not so obvious, differences between multi-discipline races and obstacle course racing.  I found that I still have a long way to go.  Both of them gave me a few beers and props for running the TM with the weighted vest.  One of them commented, “That is, most likely, the worst idea I’ve ever heard of – props to you, man.  Serious props.”  I’m not going to lie, getting a pat on the back from a true athlete like this guy made me puff out my chest a bit.  The conversation went on… training tips… story swapping… I won’t bore you though.

If you don’t like me talking about the weighted vest, well you can go eat a rock.  Seriously… come on over to my house and I’ll let you try mine on.  Just go run a couple of miles and tell me what you think.  Now go run over some obstacles.  Now go do that for twelve miles.  Now swim with it… Wait, what?  Swim?  Oh, yes, my minions.  Swimming was not fun with this on.  I essentially had to allow myself to sink down twelve feet, push off the bottom, throw up a few strokes, sink again, and repeat.  If my dad hadn’t been the ardent swimmer that he was back-in-the-day and taught me how to swim pretty well at a very young age, I would’ve freaked.   Panic in never a good thing.

Thanks, dad!  I anticipated the swimming portion.   So what I ended up doing to offset a little bit of the weight and add a bit of counter-buoyancy, was that I went to Ross and picked up a yoga mat.  I then cut some sections out to align with the contours of the inside of my vest.  To water proof them, I wrapped them in some duct tape.  With a little bit of Velcro and hot glue, I applied the foam sections to the inside of the vest.  They helped offset a few pounds but certainly didn’t make the vest float.  I told the life guards to keep an eye on me.  I wasn’t about to ditch a$200 dollar vest in the water.  I decided that if I was my fate to do some shallow-water drowning and black out, then so be it.  There was adequate supervision so at no time did I feel like I would drown.  At the end, my shoulders were very sore.  I could barely lift my arms over my head but that was to be expected.  My knees also took a bit of a pounding.  All-in-all, I was glad that I did it.  The best part was that, even when I was finished, I still had some fuel left in the tank.

The main reason that I did this was to prove to myself that I could take the beating with the extra weight.  This event, in of itself, was a proof-of-concept for my next challenge:  The GORUCK.  The GORUCK challenge was established by a former Green Beret.  Once he left active duty, he decided to build his own company from the ground up that made mission essential gear.  The Ruck is a type of backpack that is designed to maximize the gear carrying capabilities of the soldier/Marine while distributing the load more equally across the upper body and, hence, making it a little easier.  To test that gear, The GORUCK Challenge was formed.  The challenge is essentially class-oriented, cadre-driven, trek through a city where the challengers are tasked with several feats throughout the day/night.  There is not an allotted time or distance for the event.  So when and where it ends, is completely up to the cadre.  The event is also teamwork driven.  This is probably the biggest thing that the event drives home; that no matter how strong the individual, the team is what has to be successful.  And not only are the challengers tasked with carrying their rucks (which contains six padded bricks, a 300ml water source, and nutritional items), they also are tasked with creating and carrying a “team coupon.”  The coupon has to weigh no less than 25 lbs and has to be something that relates to the city that the event is being held.  For my Raleigh GORUCK, the very topic of what our team coupon was going to be was brought up by yours truly on the event page on Facebook.  Some ideas were tossed around.  Given that Raleigh is known as “The City of Oaks,” we originally came up with idea with an oak log.  However, we are more than certain that the Cadre will have one waiting for us when we get there and decided that we would go in a different direction.  Seeing as how next year marks the 100^th anniversary of the first government supported fire department, one of the guys came up with the idea for a length of fire hose that weighs over 25 lbs.  This is a perfect idea.  The coupon has a good bit of versatility.  It can be carried by one or several challengers at any given time.  This gives us the flexibility to make that choice on the fly at any given time during the event. 

I’ll spare you further details until the next entry.  The GORUCK doesn’t occur until February so there is plenty of time to get into more details.  As always, thanks for reading and I hope that you enjoyed and continue to follow.  Take care.