After the storms last night, it was a super humid morning at Carpex’s finest official Ruck AO. We had a PAX making his Virgin Ruck, so YHC decided to make it pretty basic. Remember that basic does not mean easy.
Warm Up
After a solid mile or so EC ruck with Carvana, we were joined by Geek Squad and Torpedo (Torpedo). With my trunk of goodies opened up, we provided Torpedo with a 20# rucksack, and I brought out a 40 pound sandbag, which would be our travelling buddy. We headed over to the GT shovel flag for a brief disclaimer, there were no FNGs, and the GT fellas headed off for their morning dose of waterboarding. We performed the pledge, picked up the sandbag, and did a moderate paced ruck past the bus circle, and over to the hill leading to the neighborhood for….
Thang 1
7s up the hill with rucks on, Mericans at the bottom, squats at the top, with the option to double time up the hill. We left Mr. Sandbag at the bottom of the hill. Geek Squad and Torpedo were crushing the 7s, but little did they know I had a surprise in store for them. Once they finished, I announced they had “strap restrictions” (which means they cannot use the rucksack shoulder straps) and they had to carry their rucks suitcase-style up and down the hill, along with a partner carry of Mr. Sandbag, until the six was done.
Note that while I was considering intentionally slowing down to make them do more reps up and down the hill, I thought that was too conniving. Plus I want to encourage more people to ruck, so I kept up my pace.
We then went through the neighborhood over to the gazebo for…
Thang 2
Guess what, we’re doing 7s again! This time, a bit more strenuous. We paired off and went to opposite sides of the gazebo approximately 15 yards from the stairs. Ruck swings at the start point, bear crawl to the stairs, walk up said stairs and then do dips on the gazebo benches, lunge walk back to the starting point. There was plenty of grumbling, including some mumbles about having to take the ruck on and off / straps / etc., so I knew the PAX were getting a strenuous workout. Again, first finishers were issued strap restrictions and had to carry rucks and Mr. Sandbag until the six was in.
I will freely admit that I was the six on this Thang, I hate bear crawls, but there’s only one way to get better at them! Again, there was no intentional slow down on my part, I promise!
At this point, it was time to head back to the Green Hope parking lot. If we weren’t wet enough already from the heavy humidity and sweat, we got a little extra dose from the sprinklers that were watering the fields behind the school (your tax dollars at work after a rainy night!). We went over to the parking lot for….
Thang 2.1
Yes, this really wasn’t much of a Thang. But Torpedo needed to be introduced to an approximately 60# pain stick that is hidden by the North entrance to the parking lot. With Mr. Sandbag and the 60# Stick-o-Pain, we gathered for quick partner work. We were standing on the sidewalk when two cars pulled into the parking lot, and for some reason they decided that they needed to park right where we were, and kind of expected us to get out of the way (very similar to the car that wanted to park during the joint COT at the end of the workout). We begrudgingly obliged, they got out of their cars, their dogs got out as well, and they proceeded to sniff all up in our stuff (the dogs, not the people).
P1 did 10 squats with either Mr. Sandbag or the 60# pain stick while P2 did Chillcut Plank Holds, and flip flop. P1s then flip-flopped the coupons (i.e., extra weight carried in addition to your ruck) and the sequence was repeated.
Mary and COT were performed jointly with the GT crew.
NMS
Great job on is V-R by Torpedo, please don’t tell him that there was only a 5# plate in his ruck! ;-)