Suffering with a Smile

“You learn more about yourself in the first twenty minutes of a GoRuck Challenge then you will in four years of college.”

[infobox] Ray Ray Pine is a big haired GoRuck loving endurance runner that loves long (very long) walks on the beach and anything that gives him an excuse to wear his ruck. Between doing burpees and feasting on everything the great city of Philadelphia has to offer, Ray Ray also spends his time writing music and tirelessly making sure no one is ever too serious. His single life goal is to perform ‘the perfect cheer.’ [/infobox]

I’ve never crawled through glass before. Not that I’ve imagined the idea of crawling through glass often but, I believe if I did, it certainly wouldn’t be something I’d be doing for any other reason than by accident.

But here I am, with some sense of purpose, crawling through glass

…with a 40lb ruck on my back.

At 0300 on a Saturday “morning” in October.

Welcome to Good Livin’.

There are hundreds of cut scenes that replay through my mind when I think about my first taste of GoRuck, but they always come back to one moment: the moment I wanted to quit.

My quads and hamstrings are so weak that I can’t keep my knees off of the ground while we continue our arduous progression toward a set of stairs that I know I’m going to have to go up (and back down) in a bear crawl or crab walk.

My arms are starting to give way. I’d say there isn’t a fat guys chance in a pull-up competition that I can convince my body to do another pushup let alone go back into the “resting” plank position.

My mind is continually going over the events leading up to this day:

• My high ankle sprain 4 weeks ago that put me on ice for a month (did I train hard enough?)
• The moment I opened up my GoRuck FEDEX box to see my ruck. (was this really for me?)
• When I saw my best friend doing pushups on these same stairs five months earlier. (can I be as strong as she is?)

No one had ever taught me what it would feel like to run on empty (well, maybe Jackson Browne) but, here I was. Empty. Glass in my hands and knees. Empty. Crawling through glass because my legs won’t support me and the route we took up these stairs was unquestionably stupid (which Cadre Stokes points out to us more than once). Crawling through glass because I signed up for an “endurance challenge” (sure…) I didn’t really understand. Crawling through glass because I’m too stubborn to quit twenty minutes into this.

I had counted down the moments the minutes to this challenge. You can ask anyone I know about that 5 month countdown about my level of excitement. It was probably the only thing I talked about. I was a hyper machine of positive energy and fitness. I crossed off each day in my head, jubilantly preparing for what I knew was going to be the greatest test of my life. During this period of working out and mental training, there was one thing I knew I wasn’t going to do:

Quit.

Twenty minutes in and my willpower was shutting down. “Was this really for me? Did I have the physical strength to do this? Was my mind strong enough?” All echoes that seemed to haunt me during each evolution.  As each exercise was thrown down upon us and I felt my lungs shake from the intake of breath, my body screamed at the top of its lungs, “Give up!”  Chest to deck and legs to squats that rise to the sky with everything they had left. “Give up!”

Twenty fucking minutes in? Really?

I had never lied to myself leading up to GoRuck. I am not a physical beast. I am not an athletic specimen or muscular phenom. I enjoy staying in shape and I do my best to take care of myself but, I’m not a gym rat. Most people, at first glance, would probably categorize me as “average build.”

My average build didn’t matter. My high ankle sprain didn’t matter. Not to my team and certainly not to our cadre. All that mattered was finishing this evolution so I could move onto the next one. Just one more until the next one more until the next one more until the next one more—I thought I was at least an hour strong!

You learn more about yourself in the first twenty minutes of a GoRuck Challenge then you will in four years of college.

Survive those first twenty minutes. That first hour. The first giant mind fuck (you’ll know it when it comes, trust me) and you’re going to make it through. The biggest battle is always going to be “you vs. you.” No one can say how much effort you’ve put out except for you. It’s all a matter of how much you believe you can take.

My best advice before showing up?

Go live.

The best practice for suffering with a smile is life. So just live it hard and show up ready to smile.