Earned, Not Given- Chapter 6: The Tough
Sometimes, you just have to show up.
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The most difficult part about completing a GoRuck HTL is showing up to the Tough event. You finish a grueling 24 hour event and get the luxury of a 4 hour break until the Tough starts. During those 3-4 hours, you find comfort.
The level of comfort that you feel after doing a heavy is nice. The bed feels great, the sheets are soft and cool. Every ounce of your being wants to stay in bed.
The real challenge is getting out of bed. Isn’t that an analogy for life. After we do something that we perceive as hard, we think “I deserve a break.”
It’s the mentality to have a cheat meal because you worked out once. It’s finding comfort after the discomfort. Our threshold for discomfort is constantly changing. Anytime we find something that is uncomfortable, we seek to find that comfort. When we find that comfort, our threshold for discomfort resets and sometimes dips below where it should. If you are comfortable all the time, any little amount of discomfort will make you uncomfortable.
We left the hotel and took an Uber back to the start point at Soldier Field. I was hobbling along in the worst physical shape I’ve ever been in but all I could do was smile.
Why was I here? Why was I doing this? It felt ridiculous to be here. I was in terrible shape. All the muscles in my legs still felt like jello. I did it. I showed up. I made it to this event.
The Tough class was a lot larger than the heavy class. We had about 40 people show up. Even though our bodies weren’t fresh, we still had about 34 other people who had fresh bodies.
Mike, Ayn, Teresa, Harrison, Jason and I were the only ones left from the Heavy.
The Tough event is a little different than the Heavy. In a Heavy, you carry a lot of weight. In a Tough, you do more PT and rucking. Rucking speeds are typically faster, time hacks are faster and the team is prompted to move.
There won’t be as many breaks during this event like a Heavy. It was okay though. All I had to do was make it until the sun rises.
The mentality became to make it to the next point.
Compartmentalization is a critical mental skill to have when doing something hard. You cannot think about the totality of what you have to do. You have to break it down, one piece at a time. If you do not break it down one piece at a time, your mind will become overwhelmed by it. Honestly, what’s the point of thinking about the entire thing? What good does it do you? The only thing you can focus on is what is right in front of you. There’s nothing else to focus on but the present moment. You don’t know how you’re going to feel in a couple hours. What you do know is how you feel right now.
Our first stop was a ruck to the baseball fields in Lincoln Park near North Avenue beach. Chad had us do wind sprints back and forth on the field along with PT.
This was brutal considering what kind of condition I was in. I was not in shape to do explosive workouts but I had to dig deep to keep moving.
My mind was burnt out. I was struggling and falling behind the group. One guy offered to carry my ruck for me for a little bit and that helped me so much.
I cannot remember the guys name but he saved me during this event. Without him, I’m not sure if I would have finished.
I was having some dark thoughts during this time. There were parts of me that were thinking that I should roll my ankle and injure myself on purpose. If I was injured, at least I can walk away with dignity and wouldn’t feel like I quit.
It’s sick what kind of thoughts the ego will create to protect itself. Why? Why would that make me feel better?
The truth is that it wouldn’t. The ego is often a lie that we tell ourselves to make us think that we are more than what we are. The trap the ego loves to put us in is one built on the unknown.
If I did get injured, even if it was self inflicted, the ego would have told me, “you could have finished this event if you didn’t get injured.”
It loves to leave things open ended. It loves when we quit without giving our 100%. If we do not give our 100%, it can tell us that we didn’t give it our all and we could have done it if we had.
The frightening part about giving a 100% is that it makes us vulnerable. It shows us who we really are. When you give 100%, you either find out if you are good enough or if you are not.
If you’re not, it really hurts. It makes you feel like a failure. But at least you didn’t allow your soul to be eaten away at the lies you told yourself.
The guy who carried my ruck for 20 minutes allowed me to mentally get myself together. After that, I let those thoughts pass through me. If I was going to get injured during this event, it would be for real. It wouldn’t be from my own doing. There was no way that I was going to stop now. I was going to keep going no matter what happened to me.
I ended up making it through the event. The sun came up and I realized that I was going to succeed.
I got another congratulatory handshake from Cadre Doug and he said, “I’ll see you in a few hours.”
Indeed he would see me. I can taste the finish. I’m going to get to the end of this.
See the next part of this story in the link below. You can also find the ebook of this story here.
