GORUCK Light, Seattle November 2014

A few of us met up at Martha Washington Park on Lake Washington this Saturday for this event. It was not at all what I expected…it was way cooler! This is one challenging event. It started with a “Warm-up” led by an Active Duty Green Beret. This “Warm-up” was reminiscent of a P90X or Insanity WORKOUT! We were lugging around 20+ pounds of bricks as well as other gear in a Ruck Sack. My pack weighed about 35 lbs, which doesn’t sound like much until you are doing push-ups with it on, and squats, and riffle movements, and pistol movements, and bag curls, and, and, and… you get the point. Oh ya! We also had someone show up late which gave us the privilege of a 75 yard uphill bear crawl that kicked everything off.

Once the warm-up was done we did lunges down to the lake where we were told to get in shoes, cloths, ruck, and all. We then sat in the lake to introduce ourselves. Once done we got into push-up position and did some very wet push-ups followed by very wet flutter kicks and lastly a full submersion push-up. There ended the first 30 minutes or so…did I mention it was about 35 degrees. We then began timed maneuvers in our wet cloths through Seattle with challenges along the way such as Honda Fit spotting, “Casualties” that required us to carry a team member until told they were alive again, and periodic fitness challenges for breaking the rules.

We did about four movements like this and each time became a better and better team, learning each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We also began to fall into sink which made us react faster keeping us out of trouble. We ended the last maneuver with a Mogadishu Mile which entailed four casualties (there were only 10 of us). Four Ruckers carried the 4 casualties while the other two carried as much gear as they could handle while maneuvering uphill for about ¼ mile then downhill and back to Lake Washington. This was a challenging exercise considering we had already traveled 9 miles over about 5 hours with a lot of other physical challenges along the way. We all made it though and made it with smiles!

The final task was to get back into the lake and wrap up with some very soggy squats. Now while you may read this and ask yourself why on earth anyone would do an event like this I have to tell you I would do it again in a heartbeat! This was a tremendous team building exercise that required mental grit and was a true test of my endurance. It is completely different than an OCR but was equally as fun. I encourage anyone to do this event. You will come out of it a better, stronger, and more confident person. Check GORUCK out at www.GORUCK.com.