GORUCK Triple Heavy 001 Recap Part 3 or 4
After enduring 24 hours, can we survive another 24?
This is the third part of my recap for the first GORUCK Triple Heavy (HHH) event. Part 1 contains a primer on GORUCK events and how I trained and prepared for the HHH. Part 2 is about the HHH’s first Heavy. This part will cover highlights from the HHH’s second GORUCK Heavy.
All seventeen participants who started the GORUCK HHH finished the first Heavy, but only eleven decided to continue and attempt the second one. Back-to-back GORUCK Heavies have never been attempted before (let alone three), so those who remained would be entering uncharted territory. The efforts of the six who decided to drop out must be commended, as they had just finished an event that traversed nearly 40 miles!
We were extremely fortunate and grateful for George Lee’s generosity, as he offered his Bushwick Crossfit gym as a place to recover before the second Heavy started. It started to rain after the first Heavy finished, so it was great to have a roof over our heads while we rested. My feet were pruny and sore from the abuse of the first Heavy, but I fortunately didn’t develop any blisters thanks to my combo of Injiji toe socks, merino wool socks, and Trail Toes cream. I kept my feet elevated during my nap, and they started feeling a little better before it was time to begin the second Heavy.
GORUCK Heavy #2
On October 2nd, 2015 at 1200 hours, the second Heavy of the HHH began in Bushwick Crossfit. We would immediately start with the Heavy PT test.
A Heavy PT test normally incorporates push-ups, sit-ups, and a 12-mile ruck. However, for this PT test we did max deadlifts, max thrusters in 2 minutes, 3500m row, and a dead hang for at least a minute.
It was exciting to try this unexpected challenge, and I was pleased to do well despite having just completed a 24-hour event. After everyone completed the standards set for the second PT test, we prepared to move again.
Now, you may have noticed that there was no 12-mile ruck for this PT test. Some may decry at how much this test deviated from a standard Heavy PT test, but keep two things in mind. First, the exercises we did in the gym were no easier than doing push-ups and sit-ups. Second, not doing the 12-miler became moot because immediately after the PT test, Cadre Chris “Soul Crusher” Sanchez led us on a 20-mile ruck from Bushwick Crossfit to Coney Island Beach. And it was during that 20-mile ruck that our team ran into issues.
It was an hour into the ruck that we got our first voluntary withdrawal. He stated that his hips were locking up and prevented him from keeping pace with us. Understandable, considering that he also rucked nearly 40 miles, but it sucked to see him go. About 30 to 45 minutes later, we had another teammate drop for a similar reason. I was hoping that no more team members would quit after that point. We still had to carry a 50# team weight and two sandbags filled with food and other items, so the less people around to carry these items, the harder it would be for the whole team.
Making matters worse was Hurricane Joaquin storming off the coast. This caused New York to get lots of rain, lots of wind, and colder temperatures. My inexperience with cold-weather events caused some misery during this moment. I was wearing a long-sleeved merino wool shirt, an athletic shirt, a windbreaker, and a beanie, but they were barely enough to handle the weather. I regrettably decided to not pack a light jacket right before the HHH started. Although its inclusion would have added more space and weight to my ruck, it definitely would have kept me warmer during this part of the event.
As the 20-mile ruck progressed, the rain was coming down hard and the temperature dropped further. Two teammates were having a hard time dealing with this weather change, so we ducked into a coffee shop to assist them and temporarily avoid the weather. The break didn’t help as they voluntarily quit the event. We were now down to seven, and there was an unspoken wonder if anyone else was going to quit. Yet, there also was a resolve among the team. Despite the cold, the rest of us appeared to be in good shape, so we maintained an attitude to press forward no matter what.
Before we left the coffee shop, our team committed a grave error that would haunt us later in the event. As I mentioned previously, we were already carrying a 50# team weight plus two other sandbags filled with stuff. We presumed that one of the sandbags belonged to a team member, so we asked one of the departing teammates to take it with them so that we could lighten our load since we had a smaller team size. We would regret this decision later in the event.
The rest of the team continued the ruck through the stormy weather and eventually reached Coney Island Beach. Naturally, we were the only ones there since who else would go to the beach when there’s a storm outside?
Soul Crusher made us do some beach PT and more rucking, but mercifully did not make us go into the ocean as we were already cold and wet from the storm. We reached our rendezvous point where Soul Crusher handed us to the other two cadre leading the HHH, Glenn “Flash” Wells and Daniel Stokes.
What we did next was probably one of the coolest GORUCK experiences I ever had, but unfortunately it will have to remain classified. There’s a strong likelihood that this mission will be repeated again in a future event, so in order to keep the surprise, I will have to stay quiet about it for now. It was an amazing team-building exercise, and I promise to provide details in a future post when the time is right. [Update: No longer classified, here’s the tale about that mission!]
As we rucked through Brooklyn, Flash and Daniel spotted an abandoned organ on the street. I’ll never understand why there was an abandoned organ in the streets of New York City, but you can be sure that if there’s an odd, heavy object just sitting around during a GORUCK event, it’s going to be a team coupon.
We had to carry that sucker up some stairs, across a bridge into Queens, and back down some stairs. Even with our constant carrying rotations, my forearms were smoked from carrying that thing. It didn’t help that it was a pain to carry because of its uneven weight distribution. We eventually reached our goal location where we dropped off the organ and took our second PT test.
We were all surprised that we were doing another PT test, but Flash explained that he was running the test because he needed to see if we were still physically capable of continuing in the event. He warned that failing this PT test would result in a drop from the event. The test was max push-ups in a minute, max sit-ups in a minute, and about a 1/4 mile run. I was feeling the same thing that my teammates were, which was that we didn’t make it this far to be performance dropped from a PT test. We gave it our best effort and proved to Flash that we were all still capable of continuing with the event.
We spent a few more hours in Queens trying to get intel from the locals for a mission, but it’s not easy when the only people around at around 0300 hours are drunk people. It was getting really cold around this time, so the cadre kept us warm and in the game by having us do PT in an underground subway station.
We later crossed the Queensborough Bridge to reach the East Side of Midtown Manhattan. After successfully completing a mission, we earned a break inside a deli. When the break ended, the sky was light again, which meant that we were in the last quarter of the second Heavy. There were still hours to go, but we were getting close to the end.
We rucked from Midtown to the Manhattan bridge and back into Brooklyn. We stopped by the Brooklyn War Memorial to remember those who served in World War II.
We were instructed by Cadre Daniel that Soul Crusher was not happy with us. Remember that sandbag we had a teammate take away earlier in the event? It actually belonged to the cadre and had sandbag sleeves inside. We were supposed to make sandbags, but now we couldn’t and Soul Crusher was going to make us pay.
We were led to the East River (aka GORUCK beach) in the DUMBO area. Our punishment was to add “grenades” (actually large rocks) into our rucks, making them at least ten to fifteen pounds heavier.
Adding insult to injury, Soul Crusher found a log that would have been easier to carry if we had the runners that were also in the sandbag that our teammate took away. We took a dip into GORUCK beach before moving again.
As we were carrying the log, we were in the process of switching shoulders when someone’s grip slipped and the log fell suddenly, catching and bending my right thumb back in a way that it shouldn’t. It hurt like hell, and I was worried that it was broken. Soul Crusher determined that it wasn’t after examining it, which was a minor relief. However, I could no longer grip with my right thumb. It was at that point that something clicked mentally in my head–I was done with attempting a third Heavy. I was committed to finishing the second Heavy considering how close we were to the end, but the injury took away any lingering desire to do this again for another 24 hours.
We finally figured out a better way to carry the log, and it was in a way that didn’t require my sprained right thumb, so I was glad that I could still be of use to my team. Nonetheless, we were in another Soul Crusher long ruck, and I noticed in our faces how tired we were, even with the constant rotations of carrying the log.
Just like the first Heavy, we had no idea where the end point was, but we persevered as a team and kept rucking through Brooklyn with our log. Eventually Soul Crusher made us dump our log, but the reprieve was short lived as he gave us some intense PT at Fulton park. Tempers were flaring as we kept getting the exercises wrong, which was understandable considering that we were at about the 48 hour mark in the event. Before things deteriorated, we were moving again.
We eventually met up with Flash and Daniel, which meant that we were close to finishing the second Heavy. However, the cadre were going to make us pay some more for the sandbag fiasco that happened the day before. We had to choose our punishment, so we chose 140 four-count flutter kicks.
Afterwards, the cadre instructed us to line up in one row, close our eyes, turn to the left, and place our heads on our teammate’s back.
With our eyes closed, we followed the cadre’s instructions and entered a building. Cadre Flash asked us how long it would take us to climb 110 flights of stairs (the same number of flights firemen were climbing in the World Trade Center during 9/11). There was silence before our teammate, Kim McGrath, said 40 minutes. I made the mental determination to climb as many stairs as I needed since it was apparent that we were at the end of the event. However, I didn’t believe Flash that we were going to go up that many stairs as I didn’t notice any skyscrapers when we approached our end point. My intuition was right as the cadre instructed us to open our eyes and congratulated us on making GORUCK history by being the first team to complete back-to-back Heavies.
As I opened my eyes, I noticed that we were in a narrow hallway of an apartment. The cadre handed us our second Mogadishu Mile Heavy patch and the HH patch.
I was slightly bewildered on what we accomplished. I made it this far because of my teammates, who showed an unparalleled amount of mental determination and grit. However, similar to finishing the first Heavy, I couldn’t dwell on this accomplishment for too long. There still was the matter of the third Heavy. Mentally, I thought I was done after my thumb injury, but I wondered if I would feel the same way after a brief nap.
Special thanks to Pete Silver, Joanna June, and Jessica Walkup for the pictures used in this recap.
Next: Before you read the conclusion of the GORUCK Triple Heavy, make sure you read about the secret mission that happened during this Heavy.
