Always Beside You

[infobox]”…I promised to him that I would complete this heavy for him, and that I would get that Heavy patch to his wife, and one of my bricks to his sister.  Small tokens to honor a great man.”

June Chung’s After Action Review of GoRuck Heavy Class 014[/infobox]

Why GORUCK Heavy?

I write this not for glory, or for recognition, I write this for a friend.

I dedicated this Heavy in honor of my friend Art.  He was an amazing friend, and a leader among men, not to mention a physical stud.  If I told him about GORUCK I have no doubt in my mind he would have been there, standing with me, right by side. Unfortunately a skiing accident took his life this year. He left behind a legacy of selflessness and compassion for his fellow man, and a wonderful wife and family.

I promised to him that I would complete this heavy for him, and that I would get that Heavy patch to his wife, and one of my bricks to his sister.  Small tokens to honor a great man.

Training for GORUCK Heavy

I had the Military Fitness GORUCK Heavy Training Plan and highly recommend it, along with lots of cardio that’s not in the plan (intervals, etc.). If you can do lots of GORUCK Challenges for that mental/physical preparation, do it.  Although it’s not the same event (The Heavy), doing Challenges will get you in that right frame of mind. Just don’t do a Challenge the week before, or you might not be 100%.  Yes, I did this, and regretted it (sort of).  Some people can afford this physical toll on their bodies.

The Event

Shuffling, Running, PT, lots and lots of water torture, lots of cool guy stuff (bounding, flanking, eliminating the enemy, being aware of your surroundings, and getting to objectives on time).

Our food was also yanked at the beginning, and we were rewarded with it only a few times when we met time hacks.  This definitely helped with the “Walking Dead” Effect.

I faced so many demons at this Heavy.  The fact that I had failed a previous Heavy at Fort Bragg ate away at me, and to fight every demon I thought of Art.

I believe that doing the 9/7 challenge in New York dampened me physically.  While doing our 5 mile run for the “PT test” I felt my hamstrings seizing up on me and I wondered if I would be a detriment to the team. If for one second I felt like I would slow down the team from reaching a time hack I would quit.  I started to hate myself for not being as strong as I wanted to be. “We all have our weaknesses” somebody told me, and we faced them together.

We lost two members at this point the 5 mile Run, 2 mins of Situps/pushups.

We were constantly facing heavy evolutions of PT, surf torture, and time hacks that we all thought were impossible, but began to learn that Cadre Jason never gave us a time hack we could not meet.

The ocean surf torture at night/day was my weakest moment, and I fully believed I would quit, especially after seeing somebody give up.  The whole idea of seeing someone else quit brings that weakness into your mind. Shivering my ass off on the cold sand of Lake Michigan as we low crawled through it sapped my warmth and desire to continue. I could feel the presence of my buddy saying “don’t quit!”, and urging me to hold on.  This lifted me to greater heights.

We faced one more beach PT session during the day that was just as brutal. We made many long movements to clear Chicago of the “terrorist threat”, and completed our objective.  It was now time to get to the exfil point.

The team was strong and we proved to ourselves how strong we were. “You have 96 mins to make it 8 miles to Soldier Field for exfil or you will have to travel to alternate locations along the beach” we were told. Everyone was hurting and believed we would fail.  The look of pain and defeat was evident on people’s faces as another team leader and I briefed our next objective to the team. “How is this possible?”, “We can’t make it!”,  “There is no way we can make that!” … just the sounds of failure all around.  People were obviously hurting, having limped their way to Wrigley Field. One person dropped at this point for good measure, as he was on the verge of real injury.  Most looked at us in disbelief, felling that we were given an impossible task given our current state.

We pushed our group to the very end despite this – step by step, and we moved as fast as we could.  Surprisingly at a faster rate than it took us to get to Wrigley Field!  Everyone limping, feet burning, muscles crying for release… and we SUCCEEDED.  The strength and willpower to overcome great amounts of pain was mental over physical.

25.5 hours and 49 miles after we started this journey, we were done.  Heavy Class 014 was complete.

Thank you Cadre Jason for delivering a beyond epic event and for teaching us what we were capable of.  Thanks to all those I reached out for advice, and a special thanks to Chris Way and David Kim.

To Heavy Class 014 – Love you all.

God Bless and Rest in Peace Art.