• When: 080721
  • QIC: Whatdid
  • The PAX: Cola PAX: Billy Bob, McNugget, McLovin, Fountainhead, Crab Daddy, Hawg, Betamax


Growruck 24

First, thank you to Billy Bob for being persistent in asking Cola PAX to join him in this event. I know many men have given a good, full summary of the event and I appreciate them taking on that task. For me, this event was a chance to train for something, again, which I haven’t done for about 2 years. Since then I’ve had bicep tendon repair surgery as well as spending 7 days in the hospital with Covid so I was hoping to see if I still had what it takes to handle a GrowRuck event. It was good to get back to training although I didn’t think I trained as much as I needed to before this event and was very anxious the week leading up to it. I was glad to have 6 other Columbia PAX coming with me and the fact that this was the first ruck event for 3 of them helped me to at least have to act like I was confident in how it would go. The surprise at GrowSchool that we were starting 2 hours early was exciting and fun. Having to arrive 2 hours earlier than expected to the start was a blessing and a curse as it gave me less time to stress over if my gear was packed right or if I was wearing the right clothes or the other silly things that wouldn’t matter once we got started anyway, but it also gave me less time to get a longer nap…and then there was the 2 extra hours of sun on that field that took 3 of my buddies from the event and made me question if I wanted to continue after the PT failures. I failed the merkins and wasn’t even close on the run…training solely in the early mornings was a mistake. But Fountainhead told me the cadre were gonna f@$% with my head when they took us to the side so when the cadre said we would have to redo the PT test and pass at some point in the event and asked us if we wanted to drop I said ‘no’ despite feeling somewhat otherwise. F-head kept me in it at that point. The rest of the Welcome Party was lousy, too, and I got light headed several times. At one point after running back and forth across the field a few times Dredd looked at me as he was walking our line and said ‘What’s the matter, Betamax?’. When I told him I was just a little light headed he was kind enough to tell me to sit down for a minute (made me nervous that he was nice) which I declined but in hindsight I wonder if he knew my guys were already having a struggle with the heat, too. I just caught my breath, took a sip and kept going. During the gear inspection I broke one of my water hoses to a bladder and was down to one 3-liter bladder for the rest of the night which turned out to be fine. After the Welcome Party when we were getting ready to leave the school is when I heard one of the Columbia guys, Crab Daddy, was out for a medical pull. I was sad for him since it was his first event but glad he was ok. Then McNugget came up and told me they pulled him due to dehydration which was tough, too, since he’s a badass who can easily run circles around me at any workout. But when F-head came up to me with those sincere, no bullshit eyes and told me they had to pull him it hurt a little different. I’ve admired F for many years and he’ll always be my Nantan since he was the first for the Columbia region and I’ve had the honor of spending many hours with him working out and days with him in Haiti and he’s easily the best of us. But it was time to move out, anyway, with the Green platoon so move out we did. The creek was horrible and we saw another PAX drop there but we kept going. We got to the logs and it felt like home. Being under a log just seems like what ruck events are really about…it’s a comfort zone. And getting cat–called by the club-goers of downtown Charlotte was one of my favorite parts of the night. I almost dropped at the top of the MotherShip when an ab cramp set in and wouldn’t let go for a couple minutes. I was rolling around cursing on the ground with our support staff (amazing support staff!) bringing me water and helping as best they could to keep me in it. I was on my stomach trying to meditate and it started to release, but when I rolled back over and McNugget and Fountainhead were standing over me making sure I was ok I knew I’d be just fine for the rest of the night. We dropped another PAX from our platoon before we left the MotherShip and found those Dutch babies (thanks for NOTHING, Forge). We figured out a good-enough routine as we walked past a thousand mini-mansions with those stupid, weighted skids. As always, when the sun came up I felt renewed and, although I was pretty pissed when Blood Hound starting killing dudes on the final push while we were still negotiating that Dutch crap it was good to see the PAX pushing hard and not giving up. And when I sneaked a peek at cadre’s watch after we had gotten into final formation at the school and saw it was 8AM I knew we had made it. I’m very glad I signed up, showed up and completed and swore I was just going to burn my rucksack and retire when I got home…but I washed it this morning in the front yard. See y’all in the gloom. -Beta

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