CSAUP

“This is different than I thought.” — Titanium, June 3, 2018

Quick Stats
Event Type: GORUCK Light
Location: Naperville, IL. Jackson Park, one stop west of the nationally famous F3 Dark Tower original Naperville A.O. Naperville had to once again count as “Chicago” because downtown events aren’t happening for now, and the 630 Ruckers group is small but proud, strong, and connected. Hence the “Chicago” Heavy that was also there Sept. 4-5. There were a few protests and an Oktoberfest Saturday that derailed some plans but also kept us off that hill at Dark Tower.

Cadre: Cadre Steve. Current Green Beret, 17 years in. Chicago native (Lane Tech grad, I believe), lives in Tennessee now, I think. Not easy (brought a 120-pound sandbag to a Light), not overly mean or difficult either. I met him in Naperville last August when he wasn’t yet an official cadre, but he needed practice running a Light, so 18 of us took the invite from Cadre DS for an off-book, patchless Custom Light to help him earn his way to Cadre status. It was interesting to do an official event with him 14 months later. The odd thing about this event was that it was Light-only. The scheduled Tough was canceled more than six weeks ago, but he made an effort to deliver a taste of Good Livin’ anyway.

Coupons: Two flags, 11 weights — team weight (weighted Army boots) and 10 sandbags (A 120, 3 80’s, 3 60’s, 3 40’s).

PAX: 40. This was the last Chicagoland event for a while, and more than a few of us were there on free codes. It was a nice mix of newbies, a few NWI folks, some Milwaukee dudes, some Chicago people, and a few of the Naperville regulars.

First-time event participants: More than half, including 10 CrossFit coaches looking for a challenge.

Females: 10. Everyone’s BFF Red Bull was among them. Several potential Kato dates. One girl was running late in the parking lot and said, “2 p.m. is just the check-in.” She was on time and didn’t become a Blue Falcon. Many of the ladies chipped in on sandbags just to say they did so.

NWI Pax: 5 — me, Optimus, Ansel, Ansel’s client Denise, and a solo Dyer guy who’s in the National Guard and being EH’d now named James Cotts. Yes, Kato and Atticus, he IS cousins with former White Sox reliever Neal Cotts. Unassuming and not well-outfitted, he had the 120-lb sandbag more than anyone else. 

F3 Naperville Pax: 3. Goldberg, Webelos and someone else with a generic name, all joined in the last 10 months (so no GrowRuck 16), all doing GrowRuck 21 in Louisville this weekend. Goldberg was the only one I talked to, as he had a small F3 on some CSAUP patch that was his only giveaway badging. 

Pax who smoked cigarettes DURING the event: 1. At first he snuck one on a snack break, but later he was smoking on the ruck march. We were incredulous. Dude was in the National Guard, too, and he had a crew with him, but none of them had much tactical gear or seemed to fear a real beatdown. I was hoping we’d get lit up just to see how he did.

Weather: 48 degrees and drizzling.0

Time: We kicked off promptly at 2 and were patched around 7:45. 

Distance: We covered a total of 8.91 miles on Strava via my phone, not including some running to bathrooms, gear check and back, and the distance back and forth to the cars. Essentially nine miles with weight.
THE THANG: Unfortunately there was minimal PT. Admin contained time hacks that we all made miraculously. Drop your rucks in a pile, run back to formation, run to your rucks, grab your plate, hold overhead, etc. Same with IDs, cash, checklist stuff. During Admin I realized since I was using my JV ruck, I didn’t have reflective strips AND my ID had fallen under my seat as I left the car. Luckily we had a lot of people and I held up my Debit Card behind my $20. Many people had very odd gear. We met our guest speaker, Sgt. Mike Goodale, a Ranger who was on the ground at the Battle of Mogadishu and knew several of the casualties very well. He entered the action sliding down a rope from a helicopter and later in a firefight in a lunge position took an AK bullet that entered above his knee at the hamstring and came out of his glute. He introduced himself and part one of his story and then we time-hacked about 3.5 miles to another point for more story, including waiting out the evening in a strange family’s house while relaying intel through the radio. I had my hand raised for a question about whether the guy from the story who lost a pool of blood from a kneecap shot made it (he did), and he was cut off and later answered me off to the side and chatted with Optimus and me about how he was a high school history teacher and some other cool stuff that was a really nice touch.  At this point we incurred our only PT penalty as some girl went to the bathroom without a battle buddy. The second team leader consulted some of the vets on a proposed punishment on the next 3.5-mile hump, but his plan was lame so Cadre Steve had us do 18 brickyard man-makers (ruck clean, into ruck thruster, into overhead press, into lunges), one for each casualty of the battle. We weren’t in sync on a few, so we really did 20. That was at a soccer field, followed by more story, sudden sunset/darkness, then a 1.9-mile, 38-minute hump back to the start point, where we had final Q&A with the guest, passed some Three Rangers Whiskey bottles around, drank 312 or Bud Light, got patched, took pics, and said goodbye. After-party at Empire Burgers was not meant to be thanks to the rain and Illinois COVID restrictions on restaurant capacity. Optimus and I peed on the DuPage River shore and headed home.

MOLESKIN

Great time considering everything. I suggest people try a Light because, say it with me, “It’s not easy, but it’s fun!” It wasn’t hard or extremely easy, but it was Good Livin’ on a Saturday evening, about what to expect from a Light. There probably would have been more PT without the special guest speaker, but it was obviously a worthwhile tradeoff even for the people who like to get beat up a little and instead got back to the old roots of GORUCK as discussed six days prior with Wedge — building better Americans and connecting the military and civilian communities. The load-out of sandbags made it worth the trip, as some of us, including F3 brothers Optimus, Ansel and I, chose to mule them often. The free codes will continue to come two at a time each month, so anyone who wants to do one of these should definitely consider it. 

Thank you for reading. SYITG.

–Editor