GoRuck Challenge

dknob

Ranger
Verified SOF
Joined
May 8, 2009
Messages
1,490
Location
Denver, CO
I did this event Saturday in Tampa. 26 + miles, 45+ pound assault pack (not a ruck sack, so no frame for your precious backs), roughly 25-30 people per class conducting time based events while doing stuff in between such as Log PT, getting wet and sandy in the ocean/river/lake, urban land navigation, and expect to carry 50 pound objects for miles on in. For us it was 12 huge stones weighing between 50-70 pounds.

Hardest thing ive done since I left the Army. Led by former SF shooters. Our instructor Brian was former 10th Group and current 19th Group.

If you want to see if you can survive a SOF selection course. I highly recommend doing a GoRuck Challenge. If at anytime you feel that you can't do that day of events over and over again. Then you don't have what it takes.

www.goruckchallenge.com
Check to see when they roll by your town.

If you are looking to go into SOF and GoRuck rolls by and you decide not to do it; fuck you.

Take care.
 
I did this event Saturday in Tampa. 26 + miles, 45+ pound assault pack (not a ruck sack, so no frame for your precious backs), roughly 25-30 people per class conducting time based events while doing stuff in between such as Log PT, getting wet and sandy in the ocean/river/lake, urban land navigation, and expect to carry 50 pound objects for miles on in. For us it was 12 huge stones weighing between 50-70 pounds.

Did you purchase one of their rucks or just use one that they supplied for the day? Also, did you wear boots or trail shoes?

Thanks for the referral!
 
They'll be in my area come December. I'm just not sure if I'll be CONUS or not. Looks like fun though.
 
I may have been the only one who had fun that day. but it was still a suck fest - I had to carry so much extra weight because of the weaklings. Everybody called me the MVP of the group. It felt good to know that I still got it.
 
Is it wrong of me to think of this as an entertaining way to spend a bit of leave? I'm definitely going to sign up after I'm stateside. Maybe I can con some friends into signing up as well.

Does anyone have any experience with or an opinion of their GR1/GR2 packs? Durability, comfort, ect? (lookin' at you dknob) I'm inclined to believe they're honest about the quality of their product, but I'd still like to hear it from a third party with an unbiased perspective.

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Edit: Corrected the names of the packs.
 
they are not comfortable at all, I got stuck with the Echo Pack.. which is incredibly tiny. Half the size of an assault pack with 6 bricks in it. Kind of unbearable to wear at 45+ pounds. When I got to the line to pick up my free pack to use for the day - the instructor looked at the Echo (I was the only one to get stuck with it) and said "wow you're fucked".

They are definitely rock solid and wont tear or rip (we put them through some serious abuse)... for 6 miles he didnt allow us to wear them on our shoulders. So we carried them anyway possible by like the handles or webbing, etc. And nothing ripped.

I would never buy one for the prices they charge.

I was talking to the instructor one on one for a little while at the end of it and he said GRC would be a "really bad day during SFAS".

Our challenge culminated at MacDill at the SOF Memorial. Very touching and I've never been there, saw many familiar names on the wall.

We had a lot of military guys - a few Marines, some former Active Duty guys from the Army and they were all sucking wind.
 
That's unfortunate about the comfort though, you'd think for such a steep price they would've done something about that. Although, six bricks digging into you might prevent anything from being enjoyable. Were you able to wrap the bricks up in anything or were they just flopping around in the bag (provided they had room to flop at all)? Gotta love how the instructor was nice and blunt about it though. Kudos to him for not sugar coating it. I think I would've been legitimately pissed if he blew smoke up my ass about the situation before hand.

All in all, sounds like a good time though. I'm definitely going to check this out when it comes to my area (VA/NC). I'm anxious to see first hand how bad this is going to suck. I'm sure if I tried explaining this to any other group of people, they'd sincerely believe me to be some sort of sadist.
 
You have to wrap them in tape so the edges dont tear up the ruck.

Definitely wasn't easy. Hardest part was the fact that the weakest ones make it miserable for the rest of us. Since you have to start crossloading bricks and picking people up. And during the stone carries, you'd think that you can go back and forth with the 12 stones between the 26 people. But after the first mile or so, most people could not carry that and keep up the pace needed to make the time hack. I carried my jagged 70+ pound rock for that entire leg (4+ miles) and had nobody to hand it over to because people were just plain weak. I mean I honestly felt pretty good throughout the whole thing other then the short 5 minute breaks between missions only because we sit down and munch on whatever food we brought and I was like oooh nap time. This thing started at 1am early Saturday morning and I worked all day Friday and didn't get a chance to rest up before hand esp since Tampa is 1.5 hours away.

I did do it with friends though, 6 of us from my Crossfit gym.
 
I wish I had known about this before it came here. I haven't rucked or anything but it would have been fun to see how I'd do
 
I'll have to check this out once I'm done with rehab; thanks for the information and heads up, dknob.
 
Thanks for the info! They're coming to my location next Saturday. I am currently engaged in convincing a friend to partner up with me. How necessary is a full team, here?
 
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