Earned, Not Given- Chapter 5: The Heavy
The first 50% is always the hardest.
Previous chapter:
We took an Uber to Soldier Field, meeting on the side right outside the Field Museum.
There was around 30 people at this event which would be considered a medium sized class. We met our Cadre, Chad, who was tan with a black beard and his hair slicked back like the Fonz. Chad came off as a little bit of a bad boy as he was smoking a swisher when we arrived.
We had a special guest at this event as another Cadre. It was Cadre Doug from the Heavy we did out in Portland last year.
Our team weight was a sight to behold. We called it the “Ark of the Covenant.” The weight ensured that we could never drop the flag and was a perfect representation of 9/11. We were honoring those that fell in 9/11.
Part of a GoRuck event is carrying an American Flag with the team. If the flag touches the ground, the event is basically over. Every GoRuck event I have been to, the Cadre will tell you that they gave up too much for that flag. If it touches the ground, they will make everyone do PT until we all quit.
Chad gathered all of us and told us to get our team weight and rucks together. We were to form two lines and move the weight into Soldier Field.
In a GoRuck event, usually you expect the unexpected but I did not expect us to have access to go into Soldier Field. The field is owned by the city and somehow we had private access to get inside.
After we got all of our gear inside, we lined up. We had a feeling of what was about to happen. The only reason that they would bring us inside this stadium would be to do stairs. Why else would they bring us inside?
Cadre Chad spoke to us about the importance of 9/11 as an event. A lot of people were heroes on this day. All of us before this event were asked to bring a story about someone who died on 9/11. When I was reading through many of the stories, you begin to realize what heroism is. Heroism is putting the safety and needs of others above your own. A lot of people on 9/11 were heroes and we didn’t want their stories to be forgotten.
How did people get out of the World Trade Center after the planes hit? They had to use the stairs.
Chad told us that we were going to climb 110 flights of stairs. That was how many flights of stairs the World Trade Center was and we were going to do this in memory of those who had fallen.
We split off into about five groups of six to climb the stairs. The stadium steps at Soldier Field are steep. It felt especially steep carrying a 40 pound ruck on your back.
We weren’t going to run up the stairs or do it for a dedicated time. The only catch was that we had to keep going. The Cadre didn’t want us to take any significant pauses during our climb.
That’s the beauty of a GoRuck event is that since this event is already slated to be 24 hours, we have a lot of time to utilize. Climbing this many flights of stairs will probably take about an hour.
Since you are not allowed to wear a watch or check the time during a GoRuck event, you will begin to lose track of time. There’s two sides to that coin. When you’re feeling beat and broken, not knowing what time it is in the middle of the night makes it feeling like there’s no end.
But when you don’t know what time it is, it can move faster as well. That feeling of seeing the sunrise in the morning lets you know that you are half way done and it’s encouraging to keep moving forward.
About half way through the stair climb, my legs started to feel shaky on the way down the stairs. I always felt like walking down the stairs is harder than walking up them. When you go downstairs, you have to catch yourself from the gravity with every step you take. When you go up the stairs, it’s strongest muscles in your body engaged to propel you upward.
I looked over to another group and saw a guy puking. That’s a bad sign. We’re barely an hour into this event and this guy is struggling. You can usually tell who is going to make it within the first hour of an event like this. The people that come unprepared stand out right away.
I felt bad for the guy but doing an event like a GoRuck Heavy requires more than just being in shape. You have to be built to carry things. I love running as an exercise but if I only did running in training for a GoRuck, I would not have succeeded.
We finished the stairs as the sun was setting. Chad had us roll out back to where we met up to start the event. He told us it was time to do the PT test. Luckily, it didn’t seem like there would be a 5-mile run this time.
The Army PT Test looks like this:
42 Pushups in 2 minutes
53 Sit-ups in 2 minutes
12 mile ruck march under 3.5 hours.
The GoRuck Heavy I did last year had a 5 mile run under 40 minutes added but we were not going to do that this year. I was grateful because the 12 mile ruck march was going to be hard enough.
After the pushups and sit-ups, we were to do the 12 mile ruck march. Chad gave us the option to go individually or as a team. If we went as a team, we had to stick together. After seeing a few people struggle and drop out at the stairs, we opted to go individually instead. The consequences of not finishing as a group could be far worse.
What we decided to do was break into small groups. Harrison, Jason and I would ruck together. Others followed suit.
The objective was to ruck to the end of Navy Pier and back two times. It was about 3 miles one way or 6 miles round trip.
We began rucking and talked about random things. A lot of the conversation topics end up being about different GoRuck events or anything else personal in life.
We approached Navy Pier and it was fenced off. We couldn’t go to the end of it so we did our best and went as far as we could. With it being fenced off saved us about 1/2 mile on each lap.
Cadre Doug made an appearance in a red corvette waiting for us at the end of by the pier. There’s an honor system in GoRuck with some of these events but if you are caught breaking the honor system, the consequences are dire. Doug was there to make sure that no one was cheating the event. I’m sure some people would try.
It’s strange to me why some people would cheat an event like this. You’re signing up for this event to push yourself and prove something to yourself. The only thing you get for finishing this event is a velcro patch. There’s no price money. I guess some people would cheat so they could have the bragging rights that they finished the event. Doing that would not only make them a cheater, it would also make them a liar.
On our way back to the start point after our first lap, my groin muscle on my right leg started to feel weird. It felt there was something inside it that was going to go off. Then it hit me. I was cramping.
I paused for a second to see if it would go away but we couldn’t afford to lose that much time. I kept going.
When we kept going, I was overcompensating to my other leg and that caused my other leg to cramp.
I thought to myself, “at least the cramps are symmetrical now.”
The cramps didn’t stop. They slowly went down each muscle in my leg. It felt like I was slowly blowing out tires.
Eventually, all my leg muscles were cramping. I couldn’t stop. The only thing that was in the way was pain. If pain was the only thing that was stopping me, I was going to push through it. I was physically able to move so I did.
The pain from the cramps went away but actual cramps themselves didn’t. My legs were locked up. They started to feel like muscles do after a hard workout.
Mentally I couldn’t allow myself to get rattled. The first thoughts that pop into your head after a situation like this is that you’re only about 1/8th of the way through this event and you’re already cramping.
How am I going to make it through this? Can I?
Our mind has a way of thinking of things in a linear way. I was thinking that if I feel this way 1/8th of the way through this event, then how am I going to feel half way through? It’s going to be 4x worse!
Often this isn’t what reality is though. I shifted my focus into just finishing the ruck march and I fought on.
We eventually finished the 12 mile ruck march with about 30 minutes to spare. Since we finished early, that meant we had a 30 minute break to wait for everyone else.
I needed this break. It was time for me to recoup, eat some food and take some electrolytes.
While the cramps went away, my legs felt significantly weakened. My calves felt like jello no matter how hard I flexed them but the strange part was that there was no pain.
After everyone in the group finished their ruck march, we carried on. It was time for the real event. This was only the beginning.
Our first stop was to ruck to Ohio Street beach. Anyone who’s done a GoRuck event knows what this means. It means the “Welcome Party.”
The Welcome Party in GoRuck is a piece of it where you do a lot of PT and you typically get wet. All the events I’ve done in Chicago, the Cadres love taking us to Ohio Street beach.
We rucked towards the beach which is about 2 miles and we had a time hack of 40 minutes. This shouldn’t be too difficult considering we do not have any traffic lights to cross.
Normally 2 miles in 40 minutes would be easy but when you take into account that everyone is wearing about 40 pounds of weight plus our team weight, the challenge isn’t so easy.
Rucking in cities for time takes some strategy. You may have to cross a street before you intend so you don’t have to worry about crossing later. Every second counts and losing 30 seconds at a traffic light can derail you from making your time.
After we arrive at the beach, Chad has us gather up into a horizontal row. We all lock arms and march into the water until we are waist deep.
Chad has us pull forward a little bit and we begin to do pushups in the water.
You never know when the pushups will end but you do know they won’t go on forever. The battle in the mind between perception and reality is always on. None of the workouts last forever but you think it will.
Without a concept of where the end is our brain can easily go into panic mode. The panic sets in when we keep something open ended. The way to train for this mentally is to learn to be okay with there never being an end. You have to be okay going until you can’t anymore. When you can’t anymore, you dig a little deeper and keep going. There is a point where you won’t be able to go, no matter how dig you deep. That point is usually way past where we expect it to be.
Doing PT in the water isn’t more challenging than on dry land but it’s annoying. The purpose of the water is to make you uncomfortable. Being soaked is definitely a way to make you uncomfortable.
Water is leaking out of your shoes, your clothes don’t feel right and everything you’re wearing rubs up against you the wrong way.
Water is annoying but it’s a factor when doing a GoRuck event. The entire point of this was to be uncomfortable.
After the welcome party, Chad had us line up and asked for a couple people to volunteer to be a team leader. We were going to start a new objective and this was to get to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial downtown which was about 1.5 miles away.
Before we left, Chad had a fun surprise for us. A few extra sandbags for our team to carry. One of the sandbags to fill up was almost 100 pounds in size. We had one big guy in our group named Mike who ended up carrying the 100 pound sandbag during this first go.
Mike was a mountain of a man. He had to be around 6’3” and weighed about 230 pounds. He looked like an NFL linebacker. Mike was also intending to do the full HTL for this event along with his girlfriend Ayn.
Ayn was a smaller woman in her late 30s/early 40s. She was a talker. It’s interesting seeing how some people interact. Mike was a quiet stoic guy and his girlfriend wouldn’t stop talking throughout the entire event.
We headed off to the Memorial with a time hack of 25 minutes.
Chad started his watch and we headed off. The route we were taking would have to be one that crossed a lot of streets so we had to be careful and turn our headlamps on.
We have heard stories of people doing these events and getting hit by cars so we never mess with safety. We never disobey a crosswalk. Disobeying a crosswalk is a sure way to get what GoRuck calls “coupons” added to your team.
A coupon is adding an extra weight to your team. The Cadre’s typically bring a few extra weights or sandbags with them to the event for such an occasion. If your team has enough coupons added, you may be stuck carrying more weight than your team can handle and you will be slowed down.
We made it to the Memorial in the knick of time. About 1 minute to spare. Chad gave us a break during this time and we took a moment to share some of the stories we brought along with us. This was a powerful moment.
I chose a story about a man named Rick Rescorla. He was responsible for saving over 2,700 lives by evacuating the tower and singing songs to the people evacuating to keep them calm.
Rick was in the South Tower and when the first plane struck the North Tower, he was ordered by Port Authority to stay put.
He told them to piss off and started to evacuate everyone. He was last seen on the 10th floor heading back up to look for stragglers and his body was never found.
Listening to some of these stories reminds you of the heroism that exists in humanity. Most people don’t choose to be a hero, it’s a part of them. Many people risked their own lives to save the lives of others during 9/11. Many of them paid the price for it. They died heroes.
Part of what makes us human is heroism. There aren’t a lot of other animals that would risk their own lives to save another that is not their own kin. Humans are special in that way. We should value all of our lives as much as the next life.
After telling our stories we gathered our things and began to move along. There would be a lot more rucking ahead of us.
The Sun Rises
There’s nothing like seeing the sunrise in a GoRuck event. The sun gives you a glimmer of hope. It’s a reminder that time is moving on.
Our team was starting to work well together. We knew when someone was gassed from carrying weight. We weren’t afraid to speak up when we were struggling and we trusted each other.
Carrying the weight was hard but we knew we all had each others backs. After rucking around the entire city we had rucked about well over a total of 35 miles at this point.
We knew the event was coming to a close but we had a final stop to make. We rucked to a fire station in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago. Chad told the firefighters why we were here and what we were doing. The firefighters decided to give us an old fashioned hose down.
It wasn’t like we got firehose full strength. We stood out there and it was like a fountain spraying on us. It was wonderful to get the dirt and salt from my sweat off of me.
After hanging around there for a while, we started to run short on time. Chad didn’t realize that we were so far away from the start point and told us to get to the start point as fast as possible with any means necessary.
We still had the Ark of the Covenant weight with us. The only option we had to take was the CTA. We had to take the redline to the Roosevelt stop to get back to Soldier Field.
As we were waiting on the platform, the train approached. The conductor of the train told us that we could not take our weight on the train.
The train was at a stand still. People on the train started chanting for us, “let them on. Let them on.”
The conductor gave in and let us on and we were off to the Roosevelt stop.
We made it back to the start point with about an hour to go before the event was over.
We went back to the start point and Chad and Doug decided to give us one last challenge. We were to do crab walks and bear crawls. The catch was we had to do them with a partner.
This ended up being comical. Some of use were grabbing our partner the wrong way and we ended up doing these goofy looking bear crawls. It was the end of the event, we were having a good time.
Eventually the time in the event was over. Chad and Doug lined us all up and gave us the congratulations hand shake of finishing the event.
Stage one was over. We finished the Heavy but we were only 1/2 way to achieving our goal.
Now it was time to get back to the hotel and recuperate.
We all made it back to the hotel room. Harrison and Jason took a nap. I’m not much of a napper. I was afraid that if I fell asleep, I wouldn’t be able to wake back up.
I opened the fridge and we had that rotisserie chicken meat and the cold baked potatoes in the fridge.
I didn’t bring any silverware or plates with me so I ended up eating the baked potato like an apple and washed it down with some water.
Even though it was plain, eating real food tasted so good. There’s no good reminder about how food is supposed to be sustenance than doing something physically excruciating. Food is fuel and when you’re deprived of it, it feels like magic when you do have it.
My body started to feel better. I stayed in the hotel room, showered and stretched out.
Harrison told me before his nap to wake him up at 8pm no matter what. He said to not allow him to sleep longer than that and I held him to it.
At 8pm, we started to get ready. I brought an extra change of shoes but I thought to myself, “what’s the point? They’re going to get wet again.”
I knew the inevitable. I was walking back into arena after destroying myself for 24 hours. If I could do this, what else was possible?
See the next part of this story in the link below. You can also find the ebook of this story here.
