All Day Ruckoff Podcast

In episode 038 we are joined by the awesome folks at Ruckfit from Old Line CrossFit! They were courteous enough to join us on our first episode and this time we’ve got Jason (back again) and Jeff (here for the first time) to talk about Ruckfit.

Since we last talked to them they successfully put on their first Ruckfit Elite event and now they’re back for their second. Give the episode a listen and learn about Ruckfit Elite Honor the Fallen.

Ruckfit wanted to give a shoutout to all of the sponors who are involved in this event:

Thanks so much for listening! If you missed any of our earlier episodes you can give them a listen right now. Hopefully you enjoyed the podcast and are excited about the next one. This is very new to us so we would appreciate it if you would cut us some slack as we work on perfecting our methodologies. Did you enjoy the podcast? We’d love a review on iTunes or even our Facebook Page! Didn’t enjoy it? Leave a comment here in the show notes and let us know what we can do better!

Thank you so much for all of the support! Subscribe through iTunes, Android, Google Music, Stitcher, or TuneIn and never miss another episode!

The post ADR 038: Ruckfit Elite Operation Honor the Fallen appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

Bomber Bash is the best community manager anyone could ever ask for. I’m so excited that he’s back on the show to talk to us about some of the awesome stuff GORUCK has going on.

We start off talking about the first ever Ruck Club Battle, then talk about how GORUCK is sponsoring the Bataan Death March, and we finish up with info on the upcoming GRT Reunion Light Challenge.

Thanks so much for listening! If you missed any of our earlier episodes you can give them a listen right now. Hopefully you enjoyed the podcast and are excited about the next one. This is very new to us so we would appreciate it if you would cut us some slack as we work on perfecting our methodologies. Did you enjoy the podcast? We’d love a review on iTunes or even our Facebook Page! Didn’t enjoy it? Leave a comment here in the show notes and let us know what we can do better!

Thanks so much for the support and make sure to check out the links in the Show Notes. Subscribe through iTunes, Android, Google Music, Stitcher, or TuneIn and never miss another episode!

The post ADR 037: GORUCK Ruck Club Battle, Bataan Death March, & GRT Reunion with Bomber Bash appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

We are joined again by GORUCK Business Development Manager and fellow GRT Kit Klein. In this episode we talk about all things ruck clubs including what some accomplished in 2017, the ruck club battle, and the changes being made to the ruck club program in 2018.

Ruck clubs are the foundation behind growing the rucking communities so it’s always great to hear what GORUCK has in store for them. If you run a ruck club, are thinking of starting a ruck club, or are a member of a ruck club then there’s some great info in this episode for you.

Thanks so much for listening! If you missed any of our earlier episodes you can give them a listen right now. Hopefully you enjoyed the podcast and are excited about the next one. This is very new to us so we would appreciate it if you would cut us some slack as we work on perfecting our methodologies. Did you enjoy the podcast? We’d love a review on iTunes or even our Facebook Page! Didn’t enjoy it? Leave a comment here in the show notes and let us know what we can do better!

Thanks so much for the support and make sure to check out the links in the Show Notes. Subscribe through iTunes, Android, Google Music, Stitcher, or TuneIn and never miss another episode!

Brian: I’m here talking with Kit, who has a major hand in the Ruck Club Program at GORUCK. I’m very excited that he’s joining us again today, because we’re going to be talking about what ruck clubs have been doing in 2017, what the ruck club program is like and any changes that are happening to it for 2018. Kit, how are you doing today?

Kit: I’m fantastic. My Eagles won the Super Bowl, so I am just on Cloud 9 right now.

Brian: Congratulations.

Kit: Feel good. Feel good. It’s been a long time coming, so we’re really happy. Or at least I’m really happy and I’m sure all Eagles fan share the same sentiments.

Brian: I’m sure. I am absolutely sure. I was watching the videos of it and it looked like everyone out there was pretty happy.

Brian: I’m really excited to start talking about this. We’ve had just a large number of ruck clubs. The ruck battle just happened actually down in GORUCK HQ, where a ton of ruck clubs came together, so I feel like this is just such a cool program.

Kit: For sure. We’ve really seen such amazing things come from this in general. Just like you said, we had the first ever ruck club battle happen last Saturday. I was actually taking part in that as part of the GORUCK HQ ruck club. We ended up finishing in third place overall unfortunately, but it was a really, really cool event. That’s really different than a normal GORUCK event.

Normal than a GORUCK light, or anything along those lines, because of the team competition aspect, which really add a lot of fun to the overall event, because it just created this internal team camaraderie, you’re competing with other people, you’re trying to do – we had the first event, which is a deck of cards and finding out what rucks you’re going to do, to what exercise followed by a formal ruck, so ton, and then a bunch of other dragging activities into the ocean, tank tracks, the relays and ultimately culminating with a statue of liberty hold for the second and third place that seems to – we were in a tie, which we were.

Figure out who’s going to be the winner. Ultimately, it was an awesome opportunity, because then at the end of it, it was great to see all those community in one place and in some people’s travel all the way from Southern California, other people from up in the north east, the Midwest and then of course around Florida.

It was really awesome to see everyone get together in such a interesting and unique way for a GORUCK event, but then at the end of the day be able to share deer, talk about the ruck clubs. It’s now we showed a little bit better face to face and really just understand what everything is all about. Seems to be a decent person is a lot different than even just seeing them on Facebook or some other form of the internet.

Brian: What an awesome way to just get everyone together too.

Kit: For sure. I mean, I think we’re definitely going to look into ways to expand the ruck club battles in general. It is one of my goals to see what we can do to make that happen in other places, just because it’s such a fun event and it’s such a cool thing to happen. I would love to see they have more. I mean, I don’t know what that looks like or that would be impossible at this point, but I definitely want to look into that more and see what we can do, because I feel like the whole point of what I do and what our team does is to really make sure that ruck clubs are setup to success.

We’re getting back to the original point. We do such amazing things from the ruck clubs, whether it’s raising money for charity through the St. Patrick events, I mean ruck clubs come together for those types of things. Supporting different – like the calls we supported was a run to hill initiative for this ruck club battle, where people were donating their cab fares to the Christian Rufus Charity for that.

We’ve seen people come together on other service aspects in terms of donating foods to food shelters, rucking their cans to various locations and donating them, or just in general creating more of a community within their towns or their places they live and see people who might not necessarily get out to work out, find a ruck club and then say, “This is great, because I could bring my dog, I could bring my kids. It is I don’t have to go to a workout class and keep my kid in some sort of daycare. I can just put them in a stroller and go for a ruck, and so get a really good workout without having to leave them, or be apart from my family.”

Again, it always comes back to the basics of rucking, where the great equalizer is weight and you can put more weight or less weight depending on your abilities and you all get the same workout. It’s just amazing to see those types of things come to fruition within ruck clubs and really just see them grow. I mean, a lot of people have started ruck clubs and they just become this massive forces in their own geographic area, where there is 50, 60, a 100 people that are coming out monthly to these various activities, getting together and having a beer, or rucking of course, or just fun ways to make new friends really.

Brian: That’s awesome. For those who are listening and don’t know what a ruck club is, what is the GORUCK definition of a ruck club?

Kit: A ruck club is basically somewhere that a group of people are getting together to go for a ruck. Regularly this is the basis. Our standard is about once a month we like to see the ruck club get out and do a ruck with their group. Most people do more than that. It’s usually maybe once a week, even sometimes twice a week depending on their geography area, where maybe cold or whatever.

We have crossed the gyms that do it. We have just regular people that meetup on a street corner, very much like early GORUCK. We have random gyms that maybe your typical hone wall gym that people just ruck from. We have fire departments, we’ve got team RWB chapters. There is just a lot of people that get together, but it’s basically all foundation on the rucking, getting together and putting some weight on your back.

Brian: That’s great. There can be some structure behind it, like it’s out of a gym or a CrossFit box, or a fire department. It can also be just a group of people who all like rucking and just so happen to get together and ruck together.

Kit: Yup. We see people from all different backgrounds. I mean, a lot of GRTs who completed GORUCK events in the past lead the charge when it comes to a GORUCK Ruck Club. Whereas, we also have a lot of people who see that we promote those ruck clubs on our website as places to go and ruck. That’s where we see other people coming from. Your gym owner and they’ll say, “Hey, I want to get my gym listed somewhere to come and ruck.” Then they’ll write in and look to become a ruck club as well.

Brian: One of the differentiating factors between ruck clubs is obviously the ruck club name. I’ve noticed a lot of ruck clubs have come up with interesting names, and some of them are pretty good. Are there any that have come by your desk for the application form to become a GORUCK ruck club that really made you laughed?

Kit: I mean, I think the one that I always think of is just the Bruckfist Club. It’s out in California and they basically get together and have breakfast and they call Bruckist Club and then their logo is like some breakfast food and all that. That’s about cool. Just getting on that idea that you can get together and do something fun in addition to the ruck. I think that’s always a really good strategy to make things more fun.

Then I’m trying to think of some other names. It’s just so many people that we have that have all the Palm Valley Ruckers, the Drewberries. They’re usually just something ruck club and then there is F and Mercy’s. Ryan Mercy signed up in the northeast. It’s a lot of good stuff out there with our GR Ruck Clubs. GRTs are super creative when it comes to their patches and the things they want to do. There’s never a shortage of a change in the ruck club community.

Brian: That’s awesome. I noticed you mentioned Palm Beach. They won the ruck club battle, is that correct?

Kit: That is. They did an awesome job. Their team was dominating on a lot of the challenges we had to face throughout the light and they were great. I mean, all the ruck clubs will put out and it was really cool to see everybody shoot for that goal of coming in first place and just do the best that they could to place. At the end of the day we just had fun, but yeah, they did an awesome job.

Brian: That’s awesome. Congrats to PBRC on that.

Kit: Congratulations to them.

Brian: Absolutely. These groups come together, they ruck, they have a good time training for ruck events, for GORUCK events, they send an e-mail, fill out the form on the GORUCK website to get registered with GORUCK as an official ruck club. What are some of the reasons why a ruck club, or just a group of people who are getting together rucking right now in a consistent basis would want to take the time to register with GORUCK?

Kit: We are moving towards a way to promote and support ruck clubs a lot better in 2018. In the past, what we’ve done is provide some gear discount, some event discounts, done some special sales, things like that that really give in ruck clubs an opportunity to provide the members with a benefit for being a ruck club.

We’ve also and just like I said earlier provided exposure to these gyms or ruck clubs. I mean, a lot of these ruck clubs, like I said they grow exponentially once they start the ruck club – they’ll just start something small and the next thing you know they filed for a 501C3 and are raising money for all types of charities. There was one I think that was from Houston that just did that. They have a giant ruck club in all different quadrants of the city and they just filed for their 501C3.

It’s pretty amazing to see those types of things happen and people like to get the exposure for being a GORUCK Ruck Club, an official GORUCK Ruck Club. Someone that we feel proud to support, because obviously they’re supporting us and we appreciate that. I think that in 2018, our goals are to provide them with more beneficial discount such as we’re going to have a monthly code.

Before we give a code out to the clubs and it would last for a certain number of months, now we’re looking to just have a single code for each club that last a month for their events, that’s a way you can get a discount on their events, then that will expire into the month giving them an opportunity to get that out there and for that month give them a little bit more incentive.

Then we’re also doing specific gear discounts each month. Before it was – you had to earn it and then you lose it, but now if you’re part of a ruck club, we’re offering a special discount on specific gear. If you’re saying, “Hey, I want to purchase some piece of gear.” You look and we send out a monthly e-mail. Then in the e-mail you see that piece of gear. Okay, awesome. I can get an excellent discount on this piece of gear, because we are more focused on those types of offers that we can extend.

Then if there are those opportunities for full quarters, they’re like, “Hey, I don’t see any gear that they’re offering currently on sale,” then we can work with people on large bulk discount as well. If they’re saying, “Hey, we want to purchase a bunch of – some piece of gear and a high quantity,” then we can talk about that as well. It’s just as simple as shooting us an e-mail and we can see what we can do for you on that end.

Brian: That’s awesome. Definitely great benefits right there.

Kit: Then we’re also looking to provide a playbook. One of our big goals this year is what we’re going to call the ruck club field manual. It’s going to give basically ruck clubs the playbook or the route that they can take to really be successful. We’re finalizing that as we speak. We’re trying to come up with something that is useful, but also informative and provides just enough information to get over some of the humps that people might say, that understand where we’re coming from on the things that we need to get done, but also just what we can do to beset support them.

Our ruck club field manual is going to be a nice tool that will have hopefully in the next coming week, be able download off of our site, for ruck clubs, the potential ruck clubs. We also just again, it’s focused on the rucking aspects, because we really want to work with groups that out there rucking. That being said, if there’s already a ruck club in the community then we might direct a newer ruck club to the already established ruck club depending on the geographic location. Like some locations are much larger, so it might make sense to have two ruck clubs in different parts of a city.

Other times, it makes more sense to just join people up, because they’re only 10, 15 minutes apart and it’s probably easier if they just end up joining forces and maybe having different chapters around that city. We’re trying to really give support in the sense of guidance and just overall understanding of each other through the ruck club program.

Brian: That’s great. I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of clubs who are really excited to hear that there’s going to be a ruck club field manual, because I know one of the humps that some clubs have gone through is they’ve got the person who established the club, and probably one or two friends who they ruck with. They’re just not sure how do they – not really advertise this, but how do they get more people in who want to ruck and train for GORUCK events, because it is very specific. It’s not like running, where everyone knows what running is and you can find running clubs everywhere. This will be great. I’m very excited about this.

Kit: Yeah, I think it will really help to – just like you said, provide a little more guidance with what to do in the beginning stages, what to do when you’ve got something rolling, what to do when you just need some basic guidance. I mean, we have built into it how to former ruck, like what that might look like. I think I had mentioned that before in our previous podcast that we’re building that document that I mentioned into this field manual, so that way people can get an idea what basic skeleton of a ruck put o might look like. Then building off of that into more successful things; how to use the GORUCK logo, simple things like that as well to give people just more understanding and more control, so that they can say, “Hey, this is what I’m able to do as a GORUCK Ruck Club.”

Brian: That’s awesome. I think that’s exciting too that you’ll be in some part redirecting new inquiries about ruck clubs to already established clubs, because I can imagine that five ruck clubs with two to three people each might be a little less fun than run one ruck club for those 15 people rucking together and having a good time.

Kit: Right. We definitely want to do that. If you’re a part of a ruck club and you’ve got two or three people and like, “Hey, this is great.” But you realize that across the city that you live in, there might be more people that are rucking, then maybe it makes sense to join up. I mean, again it’s very geographic dependent, because even here in Jackson, our city is one of the biggest cities in the United States by land mass. It’s like you could have someone at the beaches and someone downtown and it would almost be like a completely separate area, because it’s just so far with traffic and whatever else.

Here, I can understand that. I mean, like I said if there was someone off the beaches, or someone else where there could potentially be another ruck club, it might not make as much sense, because then you’re just taking away where it could be an awesome opportunity to meet new people as well. They already got something going. It’s much easier just to build on that.

Brian: Absolutely. I mean, we both know traffic is a huge factor. Something might only be 15 miles south of me, but it can take over an hour to get there depending on the time of day.

Kit: Yup.

Brian: I’m really excited about what’s coming in 2018. This is going to be a really fun year for ruck clubs. Are there any plans to send bomber back on the road to go and visit more ruck clubs and do those write-ups?

Kit: I mean, we’re looking to – one of our other goals is to support rucking events this year, to own rucking, to be the face of rucking. We’re actively reaching out to rucking events, or things that makes sense to be a part of, whether it’s five case, or where we can get a rucking division built in, whether it’s half marathons, full marathons, working with local ruck clubs again to say, “Hey, guys. I got a really cool thing going on in my town. There is a solid presence there. We want to see if you guys would be willing to help us out there.”

We’re going to have a pretty solid presence there for that event alone. Then again, we’re going to try to get out some other stuff this year as well that makes sense where we can potentially show our support of the rucking community. That’s another really cool thing that we’re looking to really grow this year is just having some presence.

I mean, obviously unfortunately just not feasible to get to every event. Bomber will definitely be out there when he can be. You’ll see us around for sure. If you ever have any cool rucking events that are going on in your city, we’d love to hear about them. Shoot us an e-mail and we’ll see what we can do about getting out to them, or being a part of them in some way.

Brian: That’s awesome. I’ve noticed in recent years that there have been some 5Ks, some half marathons, and even some full marathons that have added a ruck division. Do you see GORUCK in the ruck club component being a factor in more races adding that?

Kit: I like to think so. I mean, I think that the more that we get out there and have a presence, the more that we’ll start to see that grow within races. Some of the larger races definitely look at something. I mean, the Boston marathons always had a rucking division for years now. There is definitely other places that have that, but we’re really trying to be more proactive in finding them and just finding places that want to work with us that fit well.

Unfortunately, not everything fits timewise, or everything along those lines, but we’re definitely interested in seeing what else is out there. I mean, we want to be the face of rucking. I like to think that we’ve had some effect on the number of ruck divisions there are. Hopefully, we’ll just help that to grow more.

Brian: Very cool. Do you see yourselves working with local 5Ks, or organizations like that to create a rucking division?

That’s really where you’re going to start to see some of the GORUCK up. Again, it’s going to be something that we’re going to be beta testing at first. We want to jump in too deep and just say, “Hey, we’re going to go media at every rucking event and the world will have a presence there and have this event.” It’s like I said earlier, it’s impossible, but we definitely want to be around for the bigger ones, so things like the baton which is a lot of cool stuff going on there. Such an amazing event to be at.

I think there’s actually going to be some of the survivors that will be there. It’s just going to be a really, really special event to be at, and we’re looking to find similar things that make a lot of sense for us to setup our tent and get out on the road for.

Brian: Absolutely. For those who are listening and weren’t around for it, GORUCK actually had a ruck year 5K event. I think that was – was it two years ago that those were going on?

Kit: Yes.

Brian: Two years ago and it was a 5K setup in local cities. I mean, it would be interesting to bring that back, but maybe attach it to an established 5K. It might make it a lot easier on you guys, since you don’t have to do all of the transport and all of the setup and stuff.

Kit: Right. I mean, definitely gives us more flexibility. The more that we have, just flexibility and move around and to choose to get in and hook up with the potential partner makes a lot of sense for us and helps a lot, to give us more exposure. I mean, it’s already – similar to a ruck club, right? There’s already an experienced ruck club out there that has a lot of people, a lot of eyes, then it really doesn’t make sense to go in and try to recreate the wheel with a new ruck club when you just join up with another established ruck club and find that perfect partnership there. That’s what we like to do as well. Initially, we’re just being strategic and trying to find the most feasible partnerships that we can for the 5Ks, or the other types of rucks, or things like that out there.

Kit: Sure. It’s absolutely nothing to actually become a ruck club. Again, we vet and call and just touch base with each ruck club before they become an official ruck club to make sure that there is not anything crazy. Again, if there’s one person again just starting up, I mean we’ll happily help you. We like to see some sort of established rucking going on as it helps to make that process a lot easier for the ruck club and for the people.

I mean, there’s no reason you can’t – like I said earlier, you can’t grow into something bigger, but it definitely helps to get some momentum going for you before you become an official ruck club. Again, we’re a resource for that. We have people like bomber who will happily talk to you about what we’ve seen for these great ruck clubs on the community.

Yeah, writing in and submitting application will cost you nothing to do. We’d happily look at what you’ve got going on. We’re actually doing a larger push in March to see what ruck clubs are out there who might be interested in creating or joining one. We’ll definitely see more and more about ruck clubs as we look forward in 2018.

Brian: That’s awesome. Really excited about that. Another aspect of ruck clubs that I always find interesting are the custom events that they make. There have been a number of ruck club custom; GORUCK tough, GORUCK light, even some GORUCK heavy events. I’m always interested in those events and they’re always very unique, because the people behind them are all people who are really into rucking.

You’ve got a ruck club of established ruckers putting on a custom and not just one individual trying to set it all up. I guess, the question here is what are some of the awesome custom events that you’ve seen over the past year that ruck clubs have put on?

Kit: We’ve seen a ton. There has definitely been some – honestly, the ruck club battle was a custom event. It’s something like that like you said that we can sit with together, because if you wanted to do something that was unique and fun, I mean that’s what a custom becomes. If you honestly wanted to put on a custom ruck club battle in your city, I mean obviously Luke did a great job of promoting and getting people out to it and made it easier being in Jacksonville for us to be there and all that.

Customs really do become like what you said, like it’s someone that really enjoys rucking. They want to include some cool stuff in their event. We can definitely work with them to figure out what makes sense. Will definitely bring people down to earth as well. Like, “Hey, we want to do skydiving and all these other stuff.” You want to make sure that they’re like, “Okay, you got to realize you got to get this number of people to be able to have a custom event and you got to pay this amount upfront to reserve your date and all those types of things.”

We definitely help them to tailor their needs, but there is some really amazing stuff out there. We had the St. Patrick’s events were customs initially. We’ve had some of those – one of those – there’s a bunch of charity events that we put on, where people will do normal custom and then have a fundraising component that they collect money from all the participants at the end of the event.

We’ve had some other ones recently, where it’s like groomsmen putting together events for their bachelor party, like custom firearms days for their whole groom party, all that type of stuff. There’s just a lot of unique – someone is just having an event that might not be in their area. Hey, we don’t have a light coming for another three months or so. Well, there’s an opportunity then to do that. The other time that they want to have something super unique where they want to pick the route, they want to pick the cadre and they want to pick what they do during their event a little bit more.

Obviously, we’re going to keep the skeleton in place on what a proper GORUCK event is. When it comes to the extras and the cool things that they want to include, we can definitely work with them to make something truly custom out of it.

Brian: That’s amazing. If anyone wants to put on a custom grooms and firearms day, please invite me to your wedding, because I would love to take part in that. Joking aside, that custom firearms day for the groomsmen reminded me that there was recently a princess bride theme at GORUCK event. That’s pretty custom right there.

Kit: Yeah. I mean, the themed ones are definitely cool. I guess, with people who want a specific theme for their event, I mean it could be something and simple as just like saying, “Hey, we were going to do a custom event or something.” Maybe it’s not on Halloween, or whatever. If there’s something that they want to do, again we can try to figure out a way to make it work. If it’s within the reasons of – or within the reason of our basic principles, but again, I think we can work with most ideas and figure out something cool to do.

Brian: One of the best things about GORUCK is the sheer number of cadre you have on hand. There is tons of GORUCK cadre and they all have varying interest. If you have an idea for a custom event, there’s a good chance that there is a cadre employed by GORUCK who is also very interested in that topic as well. You can probably make some pretty cool things happen.

Kit: Yup, absolutely. I think all of our cadre bring a unique flavor to each event. I mean, I think I said it before that you can do the same event in the same city different weekends, or different cadre and have a completely different event. Even if it’s the exact same place that you’re at. It’s just one of those things that our cadre really bring the flavor to those different types of events, and I think the same thing with customs. It’s like, oh there is great firearms cadre, there is great light cadre, there’s a great tough cadre, there’s a great heavy cadre. We have a lot of people with a lot of different experiences that can bring something cool to your event.

Brian: Absolutely. Are there any other changes to the GORUCK Ruck Club program that you want to talk about?

Kit: There’s one thing we’re working on and we haven’t ironed out all the details yet, but we’re looking to provide some list of challenges for each ruck club. We want to provide ways for ruck clubs to cool stuff with their ruck club and provide them with ideas, similar to the ruck club field manual, but a little bit more specific in terms of if you do this, then you can earn a special patch, or something like that.

We’re trying to think of some cool ways for ruck clubs to get a little more creative with our help and say, “Okay, well if you do X, Y and Z then that will earn you your patch, or whatever it might be.” Again, I don’t know exactly the details just yet specifically, but that’s something that we’ve been kicking around and trying to accomplish something cool that will – it’s just another way for ruck clubs to get their members excited, or engaged.

I mean, sometimes like we’ve been rucking every week and we love it and it’s fun, but we love to do something different. Well, that’s what we’re trying to do here is provide a little bit more guidance, a little bit more excitement to the rucking that these people are already doing.

Brian: This is the first I’ve heard of that and I’m already hooked. That is an awesome idea. I’m very excited to see what comes from it.

Kit: Yes. We’re hoping that it’s something that people really adopt and think that there’s something I want to do, because I think in general it will be fun for ruck clubs to just say, “Hey, you know we did this, we did that,” and do something that will really give them the unique distinction from other ruck clubs that they say, “Hey, we did that. We did that challenge. Did you guys do that one yet? Or whatever it might be.”

We’re all just going to be looking to switch that up and provide something cool for this ruck something. Again, it’s just all tied into the base of working with good people and trying to find some cool ways to work together.

Brian: Absolutely. It seems like it’s going to be a great motivation for ruck clubs who might be looking to try something new, who have a standard route, but maybe they haven’t thought of ways to expand it or thought of different types of workouts. It just seems like an awesome way to give them either a list, or just ideas on these are challenges that you guys can take part in.

Kit: Yeah, something like that. I think it will really help, like you said, it’s like for us who do rucking all the time you might say, “Oh, well that sounds so simple at something that we do a lot.” Then for those that might just be getting started, something might not sound as common sense. It might sound a little bit outside of the norm, which is great. That’s what we want is to try to break some of the – what you might get stuck in, or the things that you think that are the only possibilities out there and really provide a little bit more variety to what they do each month.

Brian: Very cool. Well, I’m very excited to see what comes from this, because I think it’s just an awesome idea. For yourself, what do you have planned for 2018? Are there any events that you’re signed up for yet?

Kit: Well, like I said just completing my ruck club light challenge, or ruck club face off this past weekend, and that was my first event of 2018. I don’t know exactly what my event schedule is. Really tough with a two-year-old to get away for too many events, but I definitely am looking to get out some toughs. I don’t know exactly where my path will take me the rest of the event, but I mean I’m sure I’ll jump into some lights along the way, maybe some of these 5K rucks that we partner with we like to be a part of.

I think with baton, I don’t think I’m going to be actually doing that one. I’ll probably just be manning the booth for it, but we’re definitely just going to be – I’ll be out there rucking the clubs and that when I can and just if there’s a good event that comes close by that I can jump into, I’ll be absolutely down for that as well.

Brian: I feel that. I’ve got a three-and-a-half-year-old foster son and eight-month-old daughter. My wife is an absolute saint for letting me go do constellation 12 last weekend.

Kit: Yeah, it’s not easy when you have kids to get away for 12 hours overnight and not have anything in the morning for them. I think it’s awesome when you can get out for it. I mean, obviously I try to get out as much as I can.

Brian: Absolutely.

Kit: I’ll probably do a firearms.

Brian: Yeah, those are always fun. I mean, if you can get one close, why not?

Kit: Exactly. Yeah, because there’s some – I think I’m going to do – there’s a personal security detail in St. Augustine in March I would say. I might try to get that one out to that one when that comes around.

Brian: Very cool. Then lights are always great to sign up for. Those are just fun events to get out and enjoy the GORUCK community, meet some new people. You get a lot of first-timers at light events. There’s always something fun.

Kit: For sure. It’s always nice to meet someone new that’s never done the GORUCK. We have to do with this past one event that was – may have never been at a GORUCK thing and then we had a battle and they were there. It’s really cool to have them, because I know trying the same with constellation and in some ways for people that may have not done a GORUCK event, or actually get out and check those out as well.

Brian: Yeah, at least at our constellations, yeah the last weekend it was 80% of the people I would say have never done a GORUCK event.

Kit: Wow. That’s awesome.

Brian: Yeah. I think only four people who were there had done a previous constellation. It was a lot of new people.

Kit: Yeah, it was cool. I mean, that’s always my favorite part is meeting all the new people, meeting some of the ruck club organizers, those types of things that just – our community has always been the greatest part of GORUCK, so it’s always great to see everyone out there.

Brian: Absolutely. For those who are listening, maybe they don’t want to start a ruck club, but they want to find a ruck club. They want to find a group of people to ruck with, they’re interested in rucking, where is a great spot for them to go to find someone to ruck with?

Kit: Right now, we have – if you go to the bottom of GORUCK.com there is a link that says ruck clubs. If you click on that, then that will take you to the ruck club page, which gives you a quick rundown of the ruck club program and then a map where you can type in your zip code, or your dress and it will take you to the closest ruck clubs in your area.

The maps are probably going to – I’m sure that’s going to stay the same this year, but there’ll probably more additions to the website in terms of that ruck club manual, there will probably be some other details we add there, other things get pulled out into it, but that’s definitely the best place to go if you want to just learn the basics and find a local ruck club near you.

Brian: That’s perfect. What better way than to just see a giant map of your city and where local ruck clubs are.

Kit: Yup.

Brian: I guess, if there isn’t a ruck club in the area and the person is trying to find someone to ruck with, my advice is always to hit up the local events and go to those Facebook pages and find people who are training for those events. Do you have any other recommendations on ways that people can find the local ruckers?

Kit: Yeah. Definitely, I think that that’s probably the best way to go about it, especially to find people who are obviously interested and have an ear to rucking. I mean, you can always go to a local gym, across the gym. It’s always a good option, just because there’s more of a community aspect in a lot of cases, where people who are working out tends to work out together, the smaller classes. You go to normal global gym whatever, then you technically properly don’t really talk to anyone else. Whereas, in some other gyms you might have a little bit more of a community aspect.

You can always talk to a coach, talk to someone that is waiting at class and say, “Hey, I’m doing this event. Would you guys ever be interested in training with me, or doing the event with me?” That’s always a cool thing to do. There’s plenty of opportunities just to get out in front of your RWB chapters. If you look on the RWB website, you can see if there are a local chapter. Because sometimes RWB might not be doing a ruck as a part of their monthly training, but you can always go there and suggest that, because those people in those groups are already training in some way, usually running or biking or something. If you want to throw in a ruck, then I’m sure they’d be more than welcoming to that idea.

I think it’s trying to find local clubs, hitting up meetup.com. I’ve seen some people use that before with some success in terms of finding people who are interested in training for events, or rucking event in general. There’s definitely simple ways that you can try to find more people rucking.

Brian: That’s a great advice. Some of that stuff that I’ve never even thought of before, I generally consider gyms to be as like headphones gyms and community gyms. The headphones gyms are your global gyms that everyone has their headphones in, no one is talking to each other and it’s weird if you walk up to someone and tap them on the shoulder and say, “Hey, do you want to GORUCK sometime?”

Then the community gym is like CrossFit boxes and stuff like that, a lot of the trainers know on a personal level all the members. I guess, if you want to search Google for a local CrossFit gyms, you could probably even e-mail them and say, “Hey, I’m looking to do some rucking, or signup for a GORUCK event. Do you know anyone who is doing this?” They would probably know right away, because they’re tapped into their communities and their students and their gym members and they could probably let you know people who are already rucking out there.

Kit: Exactly. I think that’s a really good strategy is to try to just talk to as many people. We have one ruck club recently that started up. The guy actually contacted his local park and rec department and said that they were looking to do some rucking and wanted to get their community involved and this day we’re doing some cleanup stuff. I’m not a 100% on that, but either way the initiative was set that he talked to the rec park and rec department, which then I guess put out some analysis about it and his ruck club started to grow exponentially, because more people started to hear about it. I think the media covered it.

It’s funny to see how such little things sometimes can really grow these ruck clubs much bigger than they had even thought they would, because people – it’s an interesting way of doing your fitness. If you walk around, like that’s not a big deal. You start rucking with a rucksack flag or something then you’re going to gain some more attention. I think that just this little movement sometimes can create a larger push for people to you in your rucking endeavors.

Brian: That is absolutely wild. Who would’ve thought that by contacting your local parks and rec department that you could fall into starting a ruck club?

Brian: Yeah, that is wild. I never would’ve guessed on that one. Then local RWB chapter, I mean that makes total sense, because a lot of them are already so tied in and they’re doing rucking, but they might not be on the GORUCK map yet. Reach out there, some awesome advice. I’m excited. I’m really excited about what 2018 has for ruck clubs, just the future and all the energy that’s behind the program and the events that are coming. I’m very excited for 2018. It sounds like you really are too.

Kit: Yeah. We definitely just want to – like I said earlier, the base of it is rucking. We want to get people out there. We want to find quality clubs that are helping us to promote rucking, and that’s really what it comes down to. We don’t want to get too far off track, so we’re again just doing the best we can to support all the ruck clubs out there today and finding good ones to work with and supporting everyone in their whole endeavor to ruck more.

Brian: That’s perfect. Is there anything else you want to talk about Kit before we go?

Kit: I mean, I think we covered everything I want to talk about. Like I said, our goals are pretty basic in the sense of just getting people on the same page with our ruck club field manual. I think that will really help a lot of people like you said just make that jump from like, “Okay, well what do we do now? What does this mean?”

We are definitely going to be supporting rucking events when they make sense. When we can be there, be awesome. If we can’t, then we just like to hear about it obviously. It’s always fun to see the pictures and when people go and join up with the – even if they don’t have a specific rucking division, we have tons of people that will go out there and just ruck their local 5K. They’ll sign up and then they go in for a ruck on, and that’s always cool to see.

Then like I said, the challenges that we’re going to hopefully have this year for people to get an opportunity to take part in as a part of the ruck club to earn a special patch or something like that, I think will really be cool for a lot of these people to get, again something new for their ruck club. Like maybe they’ve already done an event together and maybe they’ve already rucked the same route 800 times, but maybe there’s something that we could provide that gives them a little bit more of a creative challenge to partake in.

Brian: Awesome. Again, I am very excited already about that program that doesn’t even exist in a 100% yet. I can’t wait to hear more about that as we get into 2018. Kit, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me about this. I love ruck clubs, I love the GORUCK community. I feel like ruck clubs are just like the embodiment of all these awesome people coming together to ruck and train and hang out.

Any time I can talk about ruck clubs, it’s always fun. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me about this and congrats again on that Eagles win.

Kit: Thank you, Brian. Appreciate it.

The post ADR 036: GORUCK Ruck Club 2018 Updates with Kit Klein appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

David Pearson has been involved in the GORUCK community since 2012 and has participated in dozens of events. He puts on a custom St. Baldrick’s GORUCK Light event yearly which raises money for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation.

After hearing about this we knew we had to get him on the show to talk about the event and what it means to him. This year the St. Baldrick’s Light events will occur in four cities around the US and David is hoping to expand that in the years to come. If putting on one of these events sounds exciting to you please reach out to GORUCK and asked to be connected to him.

Thanks so much for listening! If you missed any of our earlier episodes you can give them a listen right now. Hopefully you enjoyed the podcast and are excited about the next one. This is very new to us so we would appreciate it if you would cut us some slack as we work on perfecting our methodologies. Did you enjoy the podcast? We’d love a review on iTunes or even our Facebook Page! Didn’t enjoy it? Leave a comment here in the show notes and let us know what we can do better!

Thanks so much for the support and make sure to check out the links in the Show Notes. Subscribe through iTunes, Android, Google Music, Stitcher, or TuneIn and never miss another episode!

Brian: Today I’m talking with David Pearson about the upcoming St. Baldrick’s Custom GORUCK Light event, which is a charity GORUCK event that David has, it sounds like, put on for a number of years. I’m really excited that he’s taken the time out of his day to chat with me today. So I can’t wait to get into this.

David, how are you doing?

David: I’m doing great. Thank you for having me and letting me promote this event.

Brian: I’m excited, man. My heart is always in for charity. So as soon as I heard about this and we got linked up, thanks to Dan, I just wanted to get you on as quick as possible. So thanks again for taking the time.

David: Thank you, and I know GORUCK nation has been hit by a number of cancer losses in the past few years including losing one of the original cadre who passed away from cancer. So it’s definitely something that has affected a lot of people in the GORUCK nation.

Brian: Absolutely. So before we get into the St. Baldrick’s custom events, about some questions about your involvement in the GORUCK community. How did you even stumble upon GORUCK as a company?

David: I don’t even remember. It was end of 2011, I was randomly surfing the internet and came across an article, I think, on ITS tactical. One of their authors had done an event with GORUCK and they had this cryptic review of it and it sounded really stupid. So I found the website and signed up for my first event, which happened in June of 2012 right after they changed the weight requirements and all the other requirements to do a challenge.

Brian: Yeah. Those were the good old days, right? Back when if you’re over 150, was four bricks, and under 150 was two.

David: Yeah. When I signed up, that was a requirement, and then while we were training for the event, they upped it to the current six and four.

Brian: Yeah, I remember when they made that flip, my first event was the old weight requirements and my second was the new one. So definitely felt it. It’s funny you bring that ITS tactical article up. That’s one of the first articles I saw about GORUCK and it really was cryptic, and you got to the end of it and you’re like, “I have no idea what this thing is, but I think I should probably sign up for it.”

David: Yeah. There was nothing else anywhere in the internet about the company or the event. So you were pretty much — If you were into something that was weird and you have no idea what you were getting into, that was a way to go for it.

Brian: Absolutely. So what was your first GORUCK event?

David: Class 179 in June, 2012 in San Francisco. It was a GORUCK weekend. There were three classes on Friday and three classes on Saturday, and I went out on Saturday and was being led by Bo and then Liu came along since they had a new cadre that started Friday that Liu helped out, and then Saturday he just partied with Bo.

Brian: That’s huge. I rarely remember classes being that big back then. So for them to throw three in on a Friday and three in on a Saturday, you must have been out there with a decent number of people.

David: Yes. Every class was huge. It was Nor Cal. That’s where they started, and at that point I think we had at least 30 in each group. Those are a lot of people out, and there were six classes that weekend. There was a lot of people that went through and a small handful including Matt who were doing their first back-to-backs ever.

Brian: That’s awesome. So did you enjoy the event?

David: At the time, no. Afterwards, yes. At that point you had no idea what to expect. There was no information about the event. I had trainings and met people that had done prior GORUCKs, because Nor Cal has a really strong group or did at the time, and so I kind of knew what to expect a little just from what we were being trained to do and what we practiced, but the reality is a lot different and it was brutally cold that night. I think I had four layers on and I was still freezing. We had people go hypothermic in June in San Francisco. That’s how cold it was.

Brian: That’s nearly unheard of.

David: It’s San Francisco on summer.

Brian: That’s wild. So leading up to that event, were you nervous at all? It sounds like you had at least some contact with people who had done a previous GORUCK event.

David: We had done a whole bunch of trainings on the beach and in San Francisco, so I knew a lot of the people that I was doing the event with and we kind of self-sorted. A group of us got together to make sure we were under the same cadre when the event started. So at least I had friends that was doing the event with, that helped. Then it was just one foot in front of the other and do whatever they tell you and keep moving.

Brian: That’s a good plan for success.

David: I don’t think anybody — Nobody from our group, our class, quit. One of the other classes that night, I know, while we were being smoked before we left out to do our various missions, we saw two guys walking up within the first — Probably half hour or 45 minutes. They just disappeared at one of the other two classes.

Brian: That’s wild.

David: After that, those two, there maybe have been a few others, but almost everybody else made it through that night as far as I know from all three of the classes that went out Saturday night.

Brian: That’s impressive. It’s always nice to hear about classes that everyone makes it through to the end. I think that happened a lot more back then, because GORUCK — No one really knew what GORUCK was or how to find it. So the only people who did find it were people who are looking for it. So it wasn’t people who just saw and said, “Hey! That sounds like a fun thing to do on a Saturday along with everything else and sign up.” It was a little tougher to find.

David: Nor Cal has a really strong group. I mean, they were the first — We were the first to be there, the 100% passed in a Heavy. Before that, the prior record had been the Masters Heavy that we did in DC. We were about an 80% pass rate, I think, in that class. Then San Francisco had the first 100% Heavy passed.

Brian: What Heavy class was that?

David: San Francisco one. The one Heavy I did in DC was the Masters Custom, was Heavy 6. I think the San Francisco 100% was probably like 12 or 13, maybe. It was the first Heavy they did in San Francisco, but it was pretty early on.

Brian: Yeah. I did Heavy 9 up in Seattle, and we had a couple of drop from ours, but that was to be expected at the time.

David: Yeah. And we had I think almost a dozen out of the Masters Custom. We had about an 80% pass rate. We are the oldest class, and I think the youngest cadre was what we had wanted.

Brian: If you loss a dozen — Do you say you lost a dozen on that one?

David: Yeah, I think we started at 50 or more, and lost — Yeah, about 10 or 12.

Brian: That’s an impressive class size for a Heavy.

David: Well, it was a custom event. It started as a custom, and then Mark Webb has heard about GORUCK starting this 24-hour event and we decided, “Let’s try a custom 24,” and then everybody learned about Heavy and it kind of morphed into the Heavy event. Again, it was one of those nobody really had any idea what to expect, because it was number six and we had just heard the horror stories of the New York Heavy where people were almost passing out and falling into traffic, because they went from New York City to Long Island and back.

Brian: Yeah, that class got miles in.

David: Yes, they did. I think we ended up about 40 or so miles. That’s what Devin told us for DC.

Brian: That’s impressive. That is impressive. When you finished that first event, that Tough back in California, did you want to sign up for another afterwards or did it take a couple of days for the pain to disperse and then you’re just left with the good memories?

David: I thought it was awesome. I was ready to sign up again, and I did sign up for back-to-back in November, which I think was the next event they had in the city in San Francisco. I thought it was an awesome event, and I love the people and how it was run.

Brian: Yeah. That’s what keeps me bringing me back. It’s all about the community.

David: Now I’m too broken and old to do most of it. I like the Lights. I’ve been beaten down enough.

Brian: How many events have you done so far?

David: To include everything? Probably in the low 30s, between Heavy, Light, Challenge and Capstones and Scavengers and that kind of stuff.

Brian: That’s impressive. That’s awesome. Congratulation on that. The Lights are fun. So at least still getting those in.

David: Yeah, that’s pretty much all I do now are lights. That’s fun, it’s easy. You don’t get too broken.

Brian: That’s true.

David: They Heavy pretty much destroyed my back. It was a lot of weight for 24 hours and I was pretty wrecked at the end of that. I would never do another Heavy again. That’s for sure.

Brian: Yeah, they are something else. So you mentioned that was the Masters custom Heavy. There’re probably a number of people listening who don’t know what the Masters group is. You just want to briefly say what that is?

David: Sure. After my first GORUCK event, I was one of the older people doing the events in Nor Cal, and so I joined the GORUCK page and then I set up a page on Facebook for masters, which is anybody who’s completed a GORUCK event who’s 40 years or older. So we were looking — I think it was Mark Webb wanted to do a masters event with just people to see how it would work. So that’s how we came to do the 24-hour event, and we ended up — We had three who started who were in their 70s. Most of us were 40s or 50s, and we let three children in under 40 who did the event with us.

Brian: That’s wild. So if you’re listening to this and you think you might be too old for a Light or a Tough, they had a Masters Heavy and three people who were 70 showed up for it.

David: No. 60. Yeah, they were in their 60s.

Brian: Still.

David: Two of three finished. The one who dropped who was in his 60s only dropped because he had done a challenge the weekend before and didn’t have enough time to rest. He didn’t think that one through very clearly.

Brian: Yeah, maybe just a little there. They say with age comes with wisdom, but I don’t know.

David: No. Not always.

Brian: As I get older, I’m not so sure anymore. So let’s move into St. Baldrick’s. I’m really excited to talk about this. For those who are listening and don’t know what St. Baldrick’s is, can you just tell us a little bit about that organization?

David: Sure. St. Baldrick’s is — I think at this point the largest pediatric cancer research charity in the country. So they raise money by going around the country, and generally right around St. Patrick’s Day, holding head shaving events and all the money is pooled together and used to research cancers that primarily strike children. So it’s pediatric cancer research. If I remember correctly, last year, the first drug that they helped fund actually was released for use in pediatric cancer patients.

Brian: That’s amazing, and that’s a very worthy cause. Definitely, definitely worth contributing to and informing a GORUCK custom event around. How long have you been involved in St. Baldrick’s or fundraising for them?

David: This will be my 9th year shaving my head.

Brian: Very nice. You’ll have to do this again next year to hit 10 at least, right?

David: Yup. At 5 you bet a badge. You’re called a Knight of the Bald Table. I have one of those.

Brian: That is awesome. That’s a great name for that. So you’re putting on a GORUCK Light to benefit St. Baldrick’s Foundation. Where did the idea for putting on a custom GORUCK event for this come from?

David: The first couple of years, I did the event was locally in my community, which is Walnut Creek and the East Bay at San Francisco with the police department, and then the police department stopped doing it after, I think, two years, and I looked and found the children’s hospital in Oakland was doing it. At that point I had done my first — I think it was training or maybe I had done the first GORUCK event, and so I asked on the Nor Cal page if anybody would be interested and just going and raising some money and shaving their head, and two other guys came out and we did it. I’m not even sure how it morphed a year after that into doing a full custom, but I know I had done some research on customs after the heavy, and Bert at the time was a cadre and I talked to him and he was really excited, since he had been a medic about running an event to raise money for childhood cancer. So I set up a custom working with GORUCK, and at the time we had also been trying to work with GORUCK to let kids do GORUCK events.

When the Light came out, I know I had wanted my daughter to be able to do it with me, and she was under 18 at the time and technically children weren’t allowed to do GORUCK events, although some signed up and it was just for the wink and a nod. So once we got this set up, they started allowing kids to do Lights, and so we were able to have the parents and children came out and do the events.

Brian: That is really cool. That’s wild. Your GORUCK Light for St. Baldrick’s actively encourages kids to come out and do the event with their parents. What age kids are we talking about here?

David: One of the Nor Cal parents, his daughter has done two or three Lights now and she started, I think, she was five or six. She’s a multi-patched GRT at like 8 years old.

Brian: That’s amazing. The only other group I know doing something like that is Team Ninja with their Santa Ruck where they actively encourage little ones to come out too. So I had no idea that St. Baldrick’s did as well. That is really, really cool.

David: That was where the custom part came from, was because with customs, you could have children doing them, because originally you had to be 18 or up to do any GORUCK event, and then for a period of time, GORUCK actually let under 18 sign up and then obviously there were some accidents and a death and the insurance companies looked at the events and they had to pull back on allowing children to do events. But with customs, you can still have kids. So making Baldrick’s a custom let us have children come out. Then even now that it’s a semi-custom, we’re still allowed to have kids participate. They’re light Lights, not a typical Light.

Brian: That’s good to know. If you’re listening and you want to set up a custom event that kids can go to, then make sure it’s a custom through GORUCK and that could be a really fun birthday party idea for parents listening.

David: They’re a good way for the kids to come out and see what it is their parents — Why is your mom or dad carrying stupid heavy things on their back and doing these all these exercise and they get to come out and do the event. Generally, when the kids are out there, the cadre pick the kids to be the team leaders and they get to order the parents around, and that’s always entertaining.

Brian: Yeah! We had some of that at the Team Ninja Light up here in Seattle. The last team leaders were elementary school-aged. So it was fun. It was a good time.

David: That’s perfect. In the first Light my daughter did with me in San Francisco, I think we had 90 people in the class, and she and another 16-year-old were in the class. So we threw them under the bus and they got to be the team leaders for the last third of the event.

Brian: There you go. It’s perfect. So where is your St. Baldrick’s custom Light taking place?

David: We start at children’s hospital at 9 AM with our head shaved, and then as soon as our team is done shaving heads, we meet up back outside of the shaves at the hospital and go off through Oakland, California and do basically a four-event, and it’s wherever the cadre take us.

Brian: That’s great. Your event is based out of Oakland, California. Are there any other locations that there are custom St. Baldrick’s events occurring?

David: Yes. The other oldest Baldrick’s events is on the East Coast with Maryland with Dave Smith. We have one that started up two years ago, I believe, it’s in Colorado. I think it’s out of Denver, and we just, this year, Southern California, add a Baldrick’s event that’s getting started.

Brian: Very cool. So expanding. That’s good to hear.

David: We are, and we’re looking for people who want to take on the leadership role in their city and do it next year.

Brian: So do you collaborate on ideas with the other GRT who are leading these custom events in the other cities?

David: Dave Smith and I, who’s back in Maryland, have been doing it for years, but we helped, like Joe Hanning, who’s in Colorado when he got started with ideas and how to get everything up and running and work with the cadre and the GORUCK. Flash, who helped run Nor Cal, has been running the Colorado one for two years now, and we love the events. Then we’ve been working with So al too to get everything smoothed out and figure out how to set up a head shave and do the event. So we’re happy to work with anyone else who wants to do it in their city.

Brian: That’s great. So if you’re listening and you want to put on a St. Baldrick’s custom GORUCK Light event, it’s probably too late for 2018, because the events are in a month or so. But for 2019, it sounds like you’ll get some good support from people who have put on these events for years.

David: They will, and GORUCK headquarters is very supportive. Mocha Mike is really behind this event. He loves doing this and working with any kind of kid event. So even if you don’t want to do a Baldrick’s, if you want to do a kid-centric events, get a hold of Mocha and he’ll work with you.

Brian: Good to know. You mentioned a couple of times, head shaving. My next question is what can people expect at one of these events?

David: It’s going to be different in every city, but basically what the event is, you set up a team with St. Baldrick’s, which is your GORUCK group, and that team is comprised of volunteers who are just raising money and then those who actually want to shave their head, and the object is obviously to raise money for Baldrick’s. Our head shave, we do before the event. I think in Maryland, they do their head shave after their event at the conclusion. So if you want to share your head, obviously you’re showing up and they clipper it down and you walk out with a crew cut.

Brian: Is the shaving head a requirement to participate?

David: No. Not at all. I mean, there’s a lot of women that do the event that aren’t interested in shaving their heads, and some of the guys were already bald, so there’s nothing to shave. But that’s part of the fun of it. If you want to shave your head, here’s the opportunity to do it for a charity. I usually get my last haircut towards the end of December and then let it grow out and look like a hippie until March when I shave it.

Brian: That’s awesome. So who is the cadre for your event?

David: This year we have Mikey B. and mickey coming to run the event.

Brian: That will be great. Those are two very well-know, well-respected cadre. That should be an amazing time.

David: Yeah. They’re both excited. I know Mikey B. is very involved in the Santa Ruck, so he loves to do kid-centric events and raise money for that kind of stuff. So both of them are very pumped and they have offered to do war stories for us the night before our event and all the money from that is going to go to Baldrick’s.

Brian: That’s amazing. I have had Mikey B. on twice. Once talk about GORUCK Selection and once to talk about the Santa Ruck, and then I had Mickey on once to talk about GORUCK Constellation and the changes from 2017 to 2018, and I mean both of those guys, they’re just standup guys. They are awesome. So it sounds like you’re truly going to have a really special event this year.

David: Yeah. I’ve done a bunch of events with both of them. They’re both really awesome guys. Part of it comes down to — The event is cadre selection, and making sure you get a cadre that likes kids and is willing to do a light Light and isn’t just going to go out there and turn it into a Heavy and just beat people down, because it’s — You’re going to go out and you’re going to sing songs, and we’ve done coloring books before and egg toss races and tug of war, that kind of stuff, as supposed to the normal GORUCK beat down. These are light Lights. Six or seven year olds shouldn’t have much trouble keeping up.

Brian: That is really cool, and I mean it definitely adds a next level of uniqueness to the event, and it sounds like it just really aligns it with the charity that you’re fundraising for too.

David: Yeah, and I know it various times. I mean, when I first started, at the end of the event somebody would always collect whatever cab money was left and it would be sent into the GBS, the Green Beret Foundation, and then GORUCK kind of got away from that charity aspect. I know in the last year, now they’re pushing it again where at each event you should have some type of a connection to a charity. So Jason is starting to focus the company back on doing community events again, which is good.

Brian: Yeah, the audition of the service component was definitely interesting for 2017, and I think aligns GORUCK with more of that charity aspect. Then they also ran those two virtual events last year, which I think combined raised over $200,000. It definitely seems like they’re aligning themselves with the charity.

David: Yeah, and it’s another way to keep the company going. I mean there’s only so many times that most people want to be beaten down before they kind of get burned out, and there’s only so many people crazy enough to do a GORUCK event of any type. So they have to do stuff to keep bringing people in, and I think that’s a good focus, is on that charitable aspect too.

Brian: Absolutely. The GRT community is definitely a subset. That’s for sure.

David: A special kind of stupid.

Brian: Yup. Couldn’t say it better than that.

David: We’re paid for this punishment.

Brian: Yeah. Anyone that will throw money at this kind of an event and pay for it willingly is definitely a unique breed. Yeah, that’s about it right there. So what has the turnout been like for previous years at your St. Baldrick’s events?

David: Once we started actually combining it with GORUCK with an event, we’ve had amazing turnout. Usually, between 40 and 60. I think the last time I asked for a roster for this year, we were in the mid-50s, maybe close to 60 for signups.

Brian: That’s impressive. Did you notice a change? You mentioned the GORUCK run customs as supposed to the traditional custom, and for those who are listening, it sounds like the traditional custom, you put all the money upfront for the event and then you sell spots to the event. The GORUCK run custom is GORUCK listed the event on their website, and it’s still a custom event you’re running, but it’s more through GORUCK than the traditional ones. You don’t have to put up all that cash up front.

Have you noticed a difference in turnouts between when it was an original custom and a GORUCK run custom?

David: Yeah. I mean, either the custom was more driven by the people running it. Like Dave Smith and I, we had to go out and find the people. So the people participating at that point were either all of our personal friends or GRTs already. They knew what a GORUCK event was. So we have an easier sell. Once we went to what we call now a semi-custom, we were getting people who were just going on the website and saying, “Oh, hey! This was like a cool GORUCK event. I’m just going to show up.” It requires a little bit more explanation that, hey, this isn’t the typical GORUCK event. This is something a little different.

So I have to do — The organizers have to do a little more work from the standpoint of emailing people who aren’t in the Facebook group to let them know, “Hey, we also want you to sign up for Baldrick’s and raise some money and here’s what likely to happen during the event.” There’s a little more prep on that end, because you’re getting people who are brand new to GORUCK, since GORUCK is putting it on their website.

Brian: Yeah, that’s definitely an aspect to look at there. The custom that you put on yourself is not listed publicly on GORUCK’s website, and the custom through GORUCK is listed on there. There is a possible chance that someone will sign up and think it’s just a traditional Light and show up expecting that. So it definitely seems like you have to do some work on your end to levels and mentally prepare them that this is going to be a light Light with kids. Don’t expect tougher, heavy beat down in a light amount of time.

David: Those people signing up for a Light aren’t looking for a beat down, and so so far everybody who’s been to these events since we went out with a semi-custom has been totally happy with it. They were surprised and didn’t realize they could have brought their kids.

Brian: Yeah. I can imagine people who are either new to GORUCK or not used to this type of event being a little surprised and they show up and they see kids in the lineup with their rucks out and getting ready for gear inspection.

David: Yeah, and it’s fun. I mean, the kids get a kick out of it. Last year one of the things we did is we learned how to use a team to scale a building. Of course, we were in Berkley doing this and so the Berkley moms at the park called the police and cadre had to go explain to the police what we were doing and they were cool with it, but the kids thought it was awesome that they got to learn how to climb on to a roof without any equipment.

Brian: That’s amazing. Like what an incredible thing for a kid to learn, because at least when I was a kid, I mean like grappling hooks were the coolest thing and I didn’t even know how they worked, but I just thought climbing up stuff was the best. So what a fun experience for kids to be a part of.

David: And they were a little unhappy at the end when the parents got to put them on their backs and put water in their face.

Brian: I can’t imagine why.

David: A little bit of water torture. It was good for them.

Brian: Yup! Resilience training. For someone who’s listening to this and they’re excited about the event and they want to go and sign up for this event, where they should go and sign up?

David: Just go directly to GORUCK’s website. If you scroll down on — I think it’s called — They are special events, because it’s the non-regular patch. So it’s the specially designed patches, and if you just scroll down you’ll see the — I think there are three different listening, because the three of the four cities are on different dates. Ours in Nor Cal is actually on St. Patrick’s Day, on the 17th.

Brian: Very nice. So if you want to sign up, just head over to GORUCK and the event should be there either under the list of all events or under that special events page. For those who are listening and they maybe just want to donate or support you in some way, where should they go to do that?

David: So www.stbaldricks.org, and there’s a search for find people or events, and if you type in GORUCK, you’ll probably find a couple of different teams. Should be one for each city. You can pick which city you want to donate to and you can even drill down to a particular participant and donate to them.

Brian: Awesome. I’ll include links to all that on the website in the show notes. So if you’re listening to this and you want to check out the events, you can do quickly hit up the show notes and I’ll have the links there or you can hit up the show notes and I’ll have the links to the donation pages there as well. So very cool. This event sounds truly unique. It sounds like not your — I don’t want to say your traditional custom, but in terms of customs, this sounds like a custom custom.

David: GORUCK handles all of the backend for us now, but we pick date, time, cadre, and the cadre work with us on what we want to do for the event. They realize that they got five and six-year-olds coming out to have fun with mom and dad, so it’s scaled to include everybody in the event. They understand that there’s head shaving involved and we have to be flexible with time, especially with our group. We have a lot of people who get their head shaved. So even though the website says the event are going to start at a particular time, it’s usually about a half hour after that given how many people we have to shuffle through for head shaving.

Brian: Yeah. That makes total sense. You don’t want to rush that.

David: No, you can’t. You’re up on stage with a crowd watching you. Usually in Oakland, there’s like eight at a time about getting their head shaved. So it takes a little time to get everybody shaved down. Sometimes they’ll auction out to people to shave their beards or their eyebrows or do other crazy stuff.

Brian: That sounds like definitely a site to see.

David: Well, this year — I know our team is doing a video before the event. St. Baldrick’s is sending out a camera crew to do a video of us doing stupid activities that they’re going to have up on the website, and sometimes they’ll do some live feeds from the actual events around the country.

Brian: Very cool. There’s pretty much a head shave in almost every city in the country at this point, any kind of significant size. So if you don’t want to do a GORUCK event, you want to go participate in just Baldrick’s and head shaving, there’s almost bound to be one in your local community.

David: Good to know. If you want to get your head shaved and don’t want to participate in GORUCK, there’s a chance that you can do that.

Brian: Yup! If you always wanted to have your head shaved, this is a good excuse, and just tell people you’re doing it to support raising funds for children’s cancer, not because you’re just totally crazy and want to shave your head.

David: Yeah, you can’t knock that. I mean, if someone’s says, “Why do you have your head shaved?” and you come back with, “Well, I did it for children for cancer.” That’s end of conversation.

Brian: Yeah. Is there anything else that you want to talk about with the St. Baldrick’s events before we get going?

David: No. I think we’ve pretty much covered everything. It’s a great event. It’s a lot of fun and it’s a chance for an entire family to come out and it really isn’t your typical GORUCK event, because you wouldn’t want some of those cadre out there trying to boss around four or five-year-old. It wouldn’t last very long. I think the cadre would lose on that.

Brian: Yeah. I lose on that every night with my kids, so I can’t imagine a cadre would as well. So just a couple of general questions to you, what is your event calendar look like for this coming year? Are there any events that you’re signed up for besides obviously St. Baldrick’s that you’re really excited about?

David: At this point, no. That’s the only one right now that I’ve got for this year. I know there are some new capstones coming up. I don’t know if they still call them capstones anymore with GORUCK, their expeditions. I’m looking at some of those. I guess there’s a new swimming one that’s just coming out on the web within the past day or so. They have a couple coming to California, and that looks really interesting.

Brian: Yeah. They’ve changed the name of those a number of times. It’s been capstones, it’s been expeditions. Now they’ve got — I think it’s a survival umbrella, and underneath survival they’ve got constellation, which is urban survival. They’ve got immersion, which is water survival, and they have expedition which is wilderness survival.

David: Yeah. I mean, those are the ones that interest me, is the learning classes. I’ve been beaten down enough by GORUCK over the years. So I’m like so many of the older GRTs, I’m semi-retired, but the learning ones in enjoy, and I’ve done most of their prior ones. I’ve done a couple of navs in Jedburg and trek and all of those. So were really enjoyable.

Brian: Are we sure that trek ever happened?

David: No one’s going to talk about it. It may never even come back. Who knows?

Brian: Yeah. I’m excited for this new wave of survival events. I did constellation back in 2017 and then I recently did constellation when Mickey came up here to Seattle, and he put on a really good class and they didn’t sell a short. It was a lot of fun and the culminating exercise on this one was definitely different than the last one. It was a good time.

David: I was surprised that our masks worked as well as they worked. Although no one quit warned me that pepper spray reactivates when you take a shower.

Brian: Yeah. So just a heads up, not only does it reactive when you take a shower, but it lingers, and I mean for a year. So I did that constellation in 2017, and then I reused my gasmask again, because that’s one of the required year items. You have to bring it back or you have to make a new one, and I reused it and there was still pepper spray on it, and as soon as I put it on to try it out, it got my eyes. I had stored in my ruck, my jacket was next to it. There’s pepper spray in my jacket. I put it on, I smelled just like pepper spray. It was crazy.

So my daughter who’s eight months now was actually born on the day that constellation ended last year, so I totally spaced on spaced on cleaning that mask.

David: Yeah. I’m surprised you were allowed to do an event.

Brian: She came four weeks early, so we were not expecting her, and I was able to do it because you can bring cellphones to constellations. So if anything happened I could have just gotten a text and left right away. But yeah, got home from the event, took a shower and then two hours later we’re on the way to the hospital.

David: Wow! Congratulations.

Brian: Thank you.

David: Mine just turned 21 this past weekend.

Brian: That’s exciting. Congratulations to you.

David: This will be her fourth Baldrick’s with me. She’d missed last year, because she’s out of the country. Otherwise, she’d done all of the customs with me.

Brian: That’s amazing. That’s very, very nice. Wow! Very cool. Family that rucks together. Always nice to hear.

David: Yeah. She’s gotten to abuse me a couple of times, and I’ve thrown her under a bus. The cadre let her do stuff to me in regular lights.

Brian: I bet she had a kick out of that.

David: More embarrassment than anything, because everybody was watching her do it to me. It’s hard to be 16 or 17 and in front of a large group and yell at your dad while everybody is cheering you on.

Brian: Yeah. I can imagine that would be a number of different emotions. Everyone is staring, but I get to yell at my dad, but everyone staring. So are there any shout outs you want to give? Any people? Any ruck clubs before we get going?

David: I mean other than the Nor Cal group, on the East Coast, talk to Dave Smith. He’s been doing Baldrick’s maybe even longer than I have as far as shaving his head with the DC Fire Department. He’s a great guy and he’s really passionate about Baldrick’s, and now Joe Hanning in Colorado, and we’ve got Andy starting up So Cal. So those are the four leaders of Baldrick’s right now and we’re just looking for more for end of the future to keep growing this.

Brian: So how can people reach out to you? If they’re listening right now and they think, “This sounds like — I’ve done a couple of events. This sounds like something I want to run in my city.” How can they reach out to you to maybe hash that back and forth?

David: I’m on the GORUCK page on Facebook. It’s probably the easiest place if they post there or even if they contact HQ. HQ is probably going to send them to me and or Dave Smith on the East Coast to talk to.

Brian: There you have it. So if you’re in the GORUCK Tough group on Facebook, just put a tag in there about St. Baldrick’s and tag David Pearson, and if you’re not, then shoot an email to [email protected] and say, “Hey, get me connected with one of the guys who runs Baldrick’s events, because I want to put one on in my city.”

David: That will work.

Brian: Thank you so much for taking this time out of your day. I’ve had a great time chatting with you, and it’s always fun to hear stories from people who started GORUCK events back when I did as well, because they’re definitely in some ways back then than they are now. So it’s nice reminiscing about that, but more important I’m just really excited to hear with what you’re doing with the GORUCK custom event, raising money for St. Balderick’s. Children hold a huge spot in my heart. So this is really cool. I’m just really glad to have you on to talk about this.

David, thank you again for taking the time.

David: Thanks for having me on, and they were definitely different when the cadre were drunker than the participants.

Brian: It was a different time back then.

David: It was very different. Thanks for everything and I look forward to meeting you out rucking around the country.

Brian: I’ll try and make it happen. It would be an absolute blast. Thank you, David.

The post ADR 035: GORUCK St. Baldrick’s Custom Light with David Pearson appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

Chris Thorp is the founder of Honor Guard. He produces patches which say “Thank You” and both sells them and hands them out to thank LEO, Firefighters, EMTs, and service members. It sounds like a simple concept but it’s not until you listen to him talk about Honor Guard that you realize there’s so much more to it than meets the eye.

In addition to running Honor Guard, Chris is a fellow GRT and has some incredible stories about his first few events. I highly suspect that you are going to love this episode.

If you’re looking for Chris Thorp on Facebook you can find him under the name Chris Hamlet.

Thanks so much for listening! If you missed any of our earlier episodes you can give them a listen right now. Hopefully you enjoyed the podcast and are excited about the next one. This is very new to us so we would appreciate it if you would cut us some slack as we work on perfecting our methodologies. Did you enjoy the podcast? We’d love a review on iTunes or even our Facebook Page! Didn’t enjoy it? Leave a comment here in the show notes and let us know what we can do better!

Thanks so much for the support and make sure to check out the links in the Show Notes. Subscribe through iTunes, Android, Google Music, Stitcher, or TuneIn and never miss another episode!

Brian: I’m here talking with Chris Thorp, who is the founder of Honor Guard. He is a fellow GRT and I am just very excited that he’s taking time out of his day to chat with me. Chris, how are you doing?

Chris: I’m good, sir. How are you today?

Brian: I’m doing great. Can’t complain. It’s a Monday, but it’s a good Monday.

Chris: It is Monday. My Mondays aren’t normally Mondays. I don’t run by the calendar. Today is Monday, but this is my Saturday afternoon.

Brian: That’s not bad. Everyone hates Mondays and here you are, Saturday afternoon.

Chris: Actually, I just got back from running an errand. Somebody said, “Happy Monday,” and I responded in kind and I got, “Ah, Monday.” They’re like, “Hey, Monday morning. Full of potential. In a week, la, la, la, la, la.” That didn’t go over so well.

Brian: That’s all right.

Chris: Hey, it is an absolute honor. Thank you for reaching out. I’m honored, man. I didn’t really expect this kind of thing to happen. Been looking forward to it for the last couple days trying to figure out – I’m a neophyte for this, so this is new. Thank you. That’s all I can really say when it comes down to it. Thank you for the honor of doing this.

Brian: Well, I’m honored to have you on. I’m really excited and it doesn’t matter that you’re new. That’s going to be good.

Chris: Okay.

Brian: Before we get into Honor Guard, let’s talk a little bit about your involvement in the GORUCK community. This is predominantly rucking podcast, so how did you stumble upon GORUCK?

Chris: I work 12 to 16-hour days, four to five days a week and I’m on my feet a lot. The Fitbit came up what? Well four, five years ago plus when they first came out. I started putting on a Fitbit and was just curious and I stumbled upon a community in Fitbit, very small community, one of those little message boards that more often to a tightly group of friends, just right about five of us and we’ve all been on that little community for the entire duration. Still are.

One of them – backtrack. I had found run zombies, zombies run, one of those fitness apps with a tracking game on it. I’m a huge proponent of game theory and playing games. If I ever want to accomplish something, I have to make a game for it for myself. I picked up – somebody else in the group had it and we were discussing it.

What I decided to do was in the game, you go out on missions and you collect supplies, you come back and you get points and you build your base based on your supplies on distance, speed, whatnot. I decided to simulate the game and I went out to a military surplus and picked up a assault pack and I decided to carry the assault pack while I was out doing my running and I put items in it to simulate the game.

One of the guys in the group was a GORUCK guy, and he mentioned the GR1 and I picked up a rucker, because it literally just come out that week and there you go. I switched from using a assault pack to a rucker for my runs. Thus was born that – I ended up doing an event or two. None of which went well for me, but I got through them and got involved in the community and here we are today.

Brian: That’s wild.

Chris: Yeah. It didn’t go well. It did not go well. The first one was a – when was it? It was the memorial light and not really thinking too far in advance. Again, I work a lot and I don’t get the standard days off that everybody else gets. I had worked a 16-hour shift, got off, got a couple hours sleep and then decided to go to the light. Me and my buddies stopped off for barbecue prior. When I say barbecue, it wasn’t just a small sandwich. It was a pretty large barbecue sandwich. I wind up on the side of the event being tended to trying to keep my sandwich down for a while. Yeah, that didn’t go well.

Brian: That’s quite the first event. When was that?

Chris: I want to say 15. It was with a cadre Flash and Handsome Mike. I remember hearing Flash on the side of the event saying something about how Handsome Mike was looking forward to making somebody puke. I guess, I had accomplished that for him.

Brian: You’re the lucky one. You made his day.

Chris: Yeah. Sometimes you got to be the guy that flips the switch for everybody. Yeah, that was me that day.

Brian: Oh, man.

Chris: Yeah. After that, I did – Let me see. I did the rucking anniversary in San Francisco and got to hang out with everybody there. Jason McCarthy was nice enough to cut it out one. I think it was almost a 2016 I did the 9/11 light in San Francisco. Fortunately, or unfortunately thereof, I got the privilege of hanging out with Christian Griffith, which I’m sure most people in the community are familiar with.

Christian was training me on the side at that time. We had talked about me possibly getting the point where I could do one of his runs with him in Nicaragua. The cadre did the whole nice little ruck relay race across the field. I got partnered up with Christian and the runner guy. I’m not a runner guy. We’re at the start line, we get tagged out at the same time, and I figured, because he’s training me, I better, at least keep within striking distance. I got 10 yards and I got a cramp. I got a severe cramp and I kept going all across the field, all the way back, laid down, try to get through it. Everybody told me to sit up, the next one I said no. Got up

Again, I got paired up just through luck with Christian. 10 yards out, cramp hits again, this time worse. I come back, I got the talk, “Are you going to stay in or stay out?” I’m staying. There’s no way I’m not leaving. Long story short, I did the whole thing and a week later I had discovered I had ripped my hamstring and I was black from stem to stern for a long time. That was my other one that didn’t go that hot.

Brian: Wow.

Chris: Yeah. I’ve signed up for a lot. I have signed up for a lot. However, unfortunately I’ve had to cancel last minute, because in my line of work, if nobody shows up for work, somebody stays. There have been a number of times where somebody doesn’t show up for work and I end up having to work a 16-hour shift and there is just a – this is fourth 16. I can’t do that. I’m not going to be able to do that. I’m going to be a liability to myself, or somebody else. Or it’s just I can’t make it on time. I probably canceled out on far more than I’ve ever done.

Brian: That’s life sometimes though.

Chris: It is. However, what I have been able to do to make up for that is I’m sure, you are familiar with it and I’m sure some other people are familiar with it is the team spearhead pathfinder ruck training. You’ve heard of that?

Brian: Absolutely.

Chris: Yeah. I’ve been able to do that. I started on team – class 007 with them. Then I have been a course adviser pretty much every class since. I’ve been able to do that, since that – my own time. Today is like the 28th, 27th, right? Its late January. I can’t remember the date today. Next class starts February 1st, so I know this will come out probably right after that. I’m really interested, I’m seeing that team 7, or group 7. If you’re interested, you can hit me up with that.

My style is a little bit different than the other guys doing the course advisers. I try to work more on acts of kindness, things a little bit less than the physical nature, more emotional, spiritual, mental, building a better American thing. But if anybody is interested, we’re going to hit it up February 2nd through April 31st, I believe is the classes this time.

Brian: Very cool. It’s interesting how the CAs all bring their own piece of themselves to the groups.

Chris: Yeah. Have you done it?

Brian: Yes.

Chris: Okay. Yeah. You’re not CA?

Brian: I’m not a CA.

Chris: You haven’t been one? Okay. My first one was Kirk.

Brian: Really?

Chris: Yeah. I’m sorry. You should know this, because Kirk being you. Yeah. No, Kirk was my first CA in group 7, or class 7.

Brian: That’s wild.

Chris: When Kirk passed, that hit me really hard actually. I was sitting out working a unit – who was it? It was either Tina Streeter, or Hope Delos Santos that put a message out about Kirk real quick. I remember sitting in a housing unit surrounded by close to – let’s call it a 100 felons. I’ve been there trying to cover my eyes, because I lost it. It’s something about losing Kirk really hit me.

I know you were really close to Kirk. My condolences man. I know it had to be like losing a brother. He actually meant a lot to me too, and I know he meant a lot to a lot of people.

Brian: Yeah. We really found how many people he meant a lot too that day, because there were a lot of people – a lot of people were sad. All the work that him and I put together; we talk daily about charity challenges and that whole project. It was still as sad. That’s tough.

Chris: Yeah. I have what I call my honor ruck and I know whether you edit this part out or not is up to you, but I know you have got the video. I’ve got the patch, Kirk’s patch. I don’t know if you see it there.

Brian: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. I carry that with me on my honor ruck daily. Kirk was a definite influence. Back to it, yeah, the CAs, I try to bring a little bit more of getting out there and just being human over miles and weight. Although that’s an important aspect, and that’s the core of the program. I want somebody to walk away from that program growing in every aspect, not just their quads, their cardio getting better. I want them to be better, just be better.

I’ve had a lot of people get in it and quit, because they couldn’t handle the mileage. Because they weren’t ruck people. Hey, to me it’s not about the miles. It’s did you make a friend? Did you have some fun? Are you better today than you were yesterday? If you did, you passed the course in my opinion. Yeah, okay you didn’t get the patch but that’s okay, because it wasn’t about the patch. It was about just being better and learning something and making some friends. That’s where from me. It is what it is.

Brian: That’s awesome. I love that approach. Can you remind us again for those who are listening and recently got their interest perked and want to be on your team? What number are you?

Chris: My group is 7. Group 7. They can find me under course adviser, Chris Thorp. There is a link if you go in, you can actually actively choose who you would prefer. At this point, yeah I’m on there. They can easily ask either Lyle Peterson, or Lisa Stevenson who were running it to switch me over if they can’t find it.

Brian: For those who are listening and haven’t heard of pathfinder before, I interviewed Lyle back in episode 2 or 3. I’ll post in the show notes. If you’re listening to this and you’re interested in hearing about him and the pathfinder program, check up the show notes. I’ll have a link to that episode. He did an awesome job on that interview.

Chris: Yeah. Lyle is a awesome guy.

Brian: Before we get into Honor Guard, I just got one last quick question about your experience with GORUCK. It sounds like you’ve had quite the experience that first event. Ate barbecue before had a tough time. Second event went all right. Third event ended up tearing your leg, huge issues. You keep signing up for events. What keeps bringing you back to them?

Chris: What keeps bringing – That’s a pretty good question. I’ll say it, you guys, I can go and do rucking any day of the week I want to by myself. I can tear myself down any of the day of the week I want to by myself with somebody on the group. The group overall, it’s just an awesome group. Man, I don’t know how to – I’m sure everybody in the community knows what I mean. If I have to qualify it, I don’t know.

I haven’t met anybody in that group that I didn’t feel the solid person wasn’t – there isn’t flat out almost implicitly right there, right then, trust with my life. Working in law enforcement, I need to be able to trust people. That somebody has my back in a bad situation, that I know somebody is going to be there when my life is on the line, or somebody else’s life is on the line. I get that sense; that kind of group, that kind of solid foundation, that kind of integrity and trustworthiness is just implicit to other people.

Brian: That’s great. I mean, we really do have a special community here. It’s very unique and not just anyone can go to the – we’ll go to the GORUCK website, read that description, see the hours, see the miles and say, “Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.”

Chris: Yeah. You get it. Everybody else in the community gets it. But you’re like, “Why do you do that? What? You do that on purpose?” I mean, I got up one day. My wife was taking care of her parents out of town. I was by myself, which is really rare. I couldn’t sleep and I woke up at 1:00 in the morning and decided to do a marathon ruck solo. Got up, got ready, got my stuff together.

I think I was out the door 2:33 once everything was said and done. I walked from my house to my place of employment. At this point, I had no idea about foot care. I completely knew, didn’t learn anything, but I decided to do cold, a marathon ruck and it goes 30 pounds dry with no foot care expertise or knowledge and I got 13.1 in to work. I had serious, serious, serious blisters.

I walk in to t nurse’s station there and said, “Hey.” I pulled my shoe off and gave them a quick rundown of what I was doing and I just go the look, “What are you doing? You’re nuts. You’re crazy. Why would you do this on purpose? What are you thinking?” I tried to explain it and I couldn’t. I did what I did and put my shoes back on and walked the 13.1 back. I think, we probably all have some kind of story like that.

Brian: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s quite the distance for when you’re first starting out.

Chris: Yeah, I was stupid. That was some dog. That was not an intelligent – it was not an intelligent decision, but it was actually very life-changing, because I got to the point – Again, I had really bad blisters before I got halfway through. I didn’t stop. I got to the point where I couldn’t stop, otherwise I wouldn’t begin again. I called everybody I knew and I said, “Just talk to me. Tell me a story. Tell me a joke. Breath in my ear. I don’t care, something to distract me.” I got to a point where I think I was about a mile out, probably about a mile out and I turned my headphones on and I started listening to music and I was singing at the top of my lungs through residential neighborhoods that I’ve lived for 40 years.

It’s not like people don’t know who I am. I’m singing at the top of my lungs, Metallica, Black Label Society, anything, because my emotions were completely shut and raw from the pain in my feet. Turned the corner to the cul-de-sac, to my house, which is probably about 300 yards and I cried the entire time, because it hurt so bad and I realized how far I had gone, what I accomplished, that I wasn’t going to quit. There was no reason for me to do this. I wasn’t doing it for anybody other than I just got the idea in my head and I couldn’t quit at any given moment and nobody would’ve known.

Nobody would’ve known anything at all about what I did, why I did it, how I did it. It was just simply because I wanted to see if it was something I could do. I did it and it was quite life-altering just to do something stupid and dumb like that. But realize, “Hey, I do have it in me, that I can do something.”

That was my only why was, “Can I do this? Do I have it in me?” That was probably a very important why, but it was a very selfish why.

Brian: Still, I mean that’s very powerful.

Chris: Yeah. No, that was freeing. It was very freeing. I teach at the academy for law enforcement academy and I try and tell these guys stories about why and integrity and all those kinds of things. They don’t get it. They’re like, “Ah,” and they’re looking there with their eyes blank look. They’re 20, 21, 22. I just want to like, “Oh, come on guys.” I literally show GORUCK commercials to them and try and get them to understand the issues of camaraderie and integrity and do not quit and what’s your why? They don’t get it. I wish they did. I hope that one day they do and they probably will. Yeah, that’s –

Brian: Well, this is great. I mean, some of that stuff just takes time for develop – I mean, 21, 22 is still young. That’s solid. When you put yourself in that kind of a situation where no one knows, no one knows you’re out there rucking, no one – you could’ve Ubered home. You could’ve taken a life home, a taxi home, no one would – go on right back to bed. Showered, gone to bed, woken up. No one would’ve known the difference. The fact that you can hold yourself accountable and be that driven to complete something, when clearly you weren’t even halfway through when your feet were toast.

Chris: I was 5 miles in and I was already off in blisters. I had no food care knowledge. Nothing at all. I literally had a pair of work boot socks that I put on, and I think I got, yeah 5 miles in and I was getting a blister and like, “All right, just keep going.” By the time I got, yeah halfway through, you know how you get that blister on a blister on a blister and it rotates around the back of your foot? You know what I’m talking about?

Brian: Yup.

Chris: It’s like, “Oh, man.” I swear they were multiplying exponentially. It just so was bad. For the two days after, I couldn’t walk. I had to go some places with my daughter the following couple days and it’s like, “Hold on. Daddy’s coming.” She goes, “Oh, a 98-year-old man.” Something that would’ve talked me 3 seconds, took me 3 minutes. It was bad.

Brian: That’s bad. That’s bad. The feeling after you’ve got smoked at a GORUCK event and you’re just standing there looking at the car. I have to get into this. How am I going to get into this?

Chris: Okay. Here is the other one. Now that you bring that up, I forgot about this, because I’m stupid. I am. I’m just stupid with it. Me and my wife, the zombie thing I talked about earlier. Have you ever done a zombie run?

Brian: I haven’t.

Chris: You haven’t. Okay.

Brian: But I know what you’re talking about.

Chris: Right. You usually get three balloons, three flags, three something, three lives, and you go on a 5K run and they have people that dress up as zombies. If they’re able to pop your balloon, grab your flag, whatever, you lose a life. Three lives and you’re not out, but you don’t get your survivor medal.

I had been out jogging and somehow I’m with my daughter jogging. I got little twins in my abdomen. I’m like, “I don’t know what that is, but okay.” It’s like a week before the race. It’s there, but it’s not going away, but it’s not bugging. It’s like all my life. We go out and we get to the first group of zombies and we sprint through. Duke, here is exact there. I’m done. Okay, nobody got my flag.

I’m feeling like a sport. I got this. We got to the next one, zig-zag-zig, all of a sudden I feel as ripped in my pelvic floor. I’m like, “Wow, what was that?” It damn near dropped me. I’m like, “Okay, I don’t know. That’s not cool.” I walk a couple more. I’m like, “Hey, I’m out. I’m out. I’m out.” I walk through a couple more sections, I get to another one and I find a flag on the ground I’m like, “Okay.” I feel inspired, because I got an extra life in my hand. I’m like, “Let’s do this again.” I get to the next one, zig-zag. I feel that rip again in my pelvic floor and it dropped me.

I lay there. Everybody comes over. “Get away. Get away. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.” That stupid macho, leave me alone, I can handle this attitude that most people get in this stuff. I complete this series of run, run, run, rip, run, run, run, rip, run, run, run, rip through the whole thing. I get through and I get to the car and like you say I got to get in the car. I have to at this point literally sit down and take my other leg in my hands and manually lift my leg into the car. As I do it, I’m letting out a pretty good scream.

Long story short now, so I have a half marathon the next day. Dummy me decides let’s do the half marathon. Using my GORUCK experience, I went to the ATM and got 20 bucks, put it in my sock and told everybody, “Here is the gig. I’m going to do this run. Yeah, I don’t feel my hot, but I got 20 bucks. If I have to bail out, I’ll bail out, I’ll meet you back at the finish line.”

I decided to flop an 800 ibuprofen. You know anything about those? The big ones?

Brian: Those are real.

Chris: Okay. Those are the real ones, right. I have, because I’m smart I have a stash of these. I pop an 800, so I should be feeling okay, right you think. Every water station, I decided to pop another 800. How many water stations do you think there are in a 13.1 race? Quite a few. I popped an 800 ibuprofen at every water station. I finished the race. Again, I’m hurting man. I want to say it was like, 2:45. I didn’t run it, but it was – I didn’t crawl either.

We get done and we decided we’re all going to go to the cheese cake factory and eat and I get in there and I’m there with my wife and I’m looking at her, I’m like, “I don’t feel so hot. I’m not feeling too good.” I go over to the bathroom, “It just doesn’t feel good.” Go outside, “I just don’t feel good.” I end up with my head in my wife’s lap in the middle of the cheese cake factory and she’s rubbing ice on the back of my neck, because I feel like I’m overheating.

I tell her, “Hey, even the noise right now is bugging me. I got to go.” I go to stand up and I walk over to the cashier’s section and the lady looks at me and she was, “Sir, you don’t look too good.” What I remember is I don’t feel too good and then my head being ripped off of the floor. A guy pulling me up look at me – he goes, “Hello, sir. We’re with the fire department.”

I had passed out in the middle of the cheese cake factory and the fire department pulling me up checking me out. I’m like, “Hey, what’s up?” He goes, “Well, apparently you passed out.” Apparently, I passed out into their Deckard of bush. Thank you cheese cake factory for having that there. Probably saved me a bust than knows.

What ended up happen is I got tested for rhabdo and then I did not know, but I had bilateral hernias. I did that whole race with bilateral hernias. I’m just not smart enough to know when to stop.

Brian: That is wild.

Chris: Yeah. On top of that, monitored for organ failure because I took probably close to 5 grands of ibuprofen.

Brian: I was going to say, if you can take that much ibuprofen and still feel bad, something is really going on.

Chris: Yeah. I got the lecture of a lifetime from the emergency room physician. The kicker is I was a medic, I was a firefighter, I did nursing, I know better. I know what that stuff does. I know what the level of toxicity can do to you and the long-term stuff, and I still do silly stuff.

Brian: That is wild. That’s wild.

Chris: What keeps me coming back in my own inference? The people. Yeah, the people. Long story short, that’s where that came – where we got ultimately was the people. All of my mishaps, all of my minor tragedies and the fact that I probably paid GORUCK more money to do nothing and then I have to actually go and experience and event, because of all of my cancellations. I just want to be a part of the community. I really do.

Brian: That’s wild. The follow-up, the zombie run, did you get the survivor medal?

Chris: Dude, I did. I did. I did. I did. I kept that thing, and a lot of it – I don’t know if it was a pity survivor move or not, because I would literally run in, zoop, jag, trying to get through a couple zombies and I would fall to the ground and holding my crotch, because they were hernias. Somebody come over, “Go away. Go away. Go away.”

Then my wife would stand over me and I would pretty much crawl to the last zombie, the little shaky zone and then sit there for it was probably 30 seconds, it felt like 10 minutes. Then collect myself and limp to the next section and rinse loud and repeat. Yeah, I kept it. I got it. They could’ve easily walked over and taken it, but they let me have it. I have my survivor medal.

Brian: That’s awesome.

Chris: I’m surprised, I didn’t get divorced over that.

Brian: Being married. I understand.

Chris: All right.

Brian: Let’s get into Honor Guard. Where did the idea for Honor Guard come from?

Chris: My dad when I was probably eight. I knew you’d ask this and this is when I mold over in my head for a long time. It all does boil down to my parents. My parents have always demonstrated a level just appreciated, gratitude and kindness, being active, honoring things. I know they didn’t intentionally do it, but they did it. They did it.

Pretty much, I consider myself a reflection of my parent and my family and friends. The whole you are the sum of the five people you hang around most concept, that my father specifically is still the lot of these thought processes into my head on little things that I know he wouldn’t never remember. I’ve tried to jog his memory. He’s like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I’m like, “Well, you know what dad? You created this, so when you sit here and tell you like what I’m doing, head over to the mirror and talk to that guy, because he was the one that started it.”

My dad was a police officer for a little while and my dad worked in juvenile hall and he ultimately became a probation officer. I grew up in a household that – my dad was not a firm man. He isn’t a big man, but he was fair. I learned a lot about fairness to him, and I ended up going into nursing. I did low-level nursing. I went to paramedic school, I did firefighting and I ultimately wound up in law enforcement.

What I found in all of these was I remained the same person. My desires, my goals, my morals, my integrity and all of that never changed. But how I was treated was based upon the uniform I was wearing. I’ll give you a quick example.

When I was on the ambulance, we had – one night we had three back to back to back, called blue calls. We went to three homes, attempted to save three lives and lost all three, which is – that’s pretty standard in EMS. Saves are far a few and between. I had three back to back to back, and at some point in there I’m sure, somebody came up and said, “Thank you. Thanks for everything you did for grandma,” or whoever it was we were working at the moment.

I got down on my hands and knees and we went three rounds with death that night and we lost all three rounds. I work in law enforcement and what had happened was we had an incident where somebody passed away. Anytime, you have anywhere where there is humans, you’re going to have somebody ultimately, long enough timeline, pass away.

This gentleman passed away and we got grilled. We got questioned, we got treated like we had done something wrong. Yet, here I am. I’m the same guy that I was. Nothing’s changed. Then a couple years later, I am driving down a street and I come across a car that’s on fire and the car looks like it’s been going for the while. I pull over and I’m wondering why the fire department isn’t there. But hey, being who I am, I pull over and I check out. There is a little kid hanging out the back of this car. The car is on fire. Wow, what’s going on?

I realized an accident had just happened. I look in the front seat and there’s a lady there and she is completely engulfed, emolliated. She’s not moving and I did the quick fill triage and rode her off, and did everything I could to get the three-year-old out of the car and we ended up doing it – I ended up getting the three-year-old out of the car, third degree burns over 90% of his body. He survived.

Then went back to fighting for the life of this lady in the front, who I had written off as dead until she started moving very, very slow. The long story short on that was she got out, she didn’t survive, but the problem here was when the fire department came and extinguished the fire, one of the firefighters – and I’m standing right there, leans in, looks out and he goes, “We got more people in here.”

I was 6 inches fighting for the life of one small kid, another lady and I was 6 inches from watching four other people burn to death that I didn’t know were there. What had happened was work got a hold of this, because I happen to be working there and another guy from work showed up on duty – I was off duty. We got the gold medal of valor for it, which is great. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Why did I get treated three different ways for three different incidents, where the only thing that changed was the uniform I was wearing, or my expectation to duty? I was treated completely three different ways.

How Honor Guard was born, to bring it back full circle, was I decided I needed to see some consistency in how people were treated for their service and actions towards their nation and to be just like Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Be the change.” If nobody else was going to do it, because I didn’t see anybody else doing it, I decided I was going to do it and that’s how that transformed.

Brian: That’s wild. Those are stories.

Chris: That was the concept. How it really morphed is I was sitting at work on God, I should know the date. I don’t know the date. I’m embarrassed, I don’t know the date. The days at the five officers in Dallas were shot and killed. I was sitting on the couch with one of my co-workers just watching the story unfold and just incomplete and utter – an emotional wreck watching my brothers being killed on live TV.

Because of GORUCK, I decided, “You know what? Let’s do a patch.” I put together a patch for the Dallas five and got it made and sold it off and sent the proceeds to the families. It wasn’t a lot, but it was what I could do. I sent them some money and got the patch out and born from that was the concept of those thin-line thank you patches that I have.

One of the SWAT team members saw the Dallas patch, wanted his own patch made. We sat down and did a couple designs and put together a SWAT patch. They paid me and I took the funds that they paid me and I did the first run of the thin-blue line thank you patches. I drove from North Carolina to California in November 9th, 2016. I handed those to every law enforcement officer I could find.

I took the time to thank them, express what I was doing, who I was. Yes, I work in law enforcement, but I’m not here as a law enforcement officer. I’m here as a civilian; somebody that lives in the community which you protect and serve and thank you for the sacrifice that you do. Thank you for your family sacrifice of loaning us you during the times that you’re here, and being willing to endure the stress that comes along with being the loved one of somebody that serves.

Thank you to each and every one of you. I did that. The rest is history. We just move on and expanded it to firefighters, EMS, nurses, military and hopefully as many more as I can in the future.

Brian: That’s great. That’s an amazing story on how Honor Guard got started. For those who are listening and haven’t seen an Honor Guard patch, can you just describe quickly what they look like?

Chris: Yeah. I’m a minimalist. I don’t like a lot of fancy stuff. There is patches out there that are similar, but the basic design for me was I sat down at my desk and what is – first of all, what am I trying to do is I want to say thank you. How do you say thank you? You say thank you. You say thank you. I wrote down thank you.

What is the quintessential thing that basically everybody says that’s a police thing? The big thing in the community is the thin-blue line. What is something else that – black and white cars. It’s a black patch with the white words ‘Thank you,’ and the thin-blue line in between, the thanking to you. It’s that easy, that simple. It was just simple.

The idea that it doesn’t take much to thank somebody. One of the biggest questions I get is, “What I do with this?” You give it to somebody. Well, would I say thank you, that’s it? Yes. That is it, man. That is it. You walk up and say thank you. Well, what are they going to think? Here’s the problem, you’re going to get one with your responses. You’re there going to get, somebody that go – that looks like right and goes, “Hey, I appreciate that. Thank you very much.” They act appreciative, or they look at it and they flip it over in their hands. They look at you, they look at it and they just shove in their pocket and walk away.

The reason they do that is because they are not used to being thanked. They’re not used to somebody approaching them not wanting something and showing a bit of gratitude. I’m a law enforcement officer. I’m a 20-year veteran. I don’t have any tax. I dress the part. I look the part. I had numerous law enforcement officers as I drove through across the nation, stop, look at me and go, “Huh?” I would have to go, “Hey, man. I’m a cop. I’m just like you. I’m right here with you. I’m just dropping these off. I want to say thank you for your service.” “I don’t get it.”

I got that so much that I realized that it was something that needed to be done. I drove in the Reno, Nevada Police Department and I had a bag of probably 40 or 50 patches, and I walk up to the receptionist and this was a receptionist is behind bulletproof glass. “Hey, man. I’m a deputy from California. Is there anybody around that I can speak with? I have some items I wanted to give it to them.” I put the bag up on the counter. She backed up like it was a bomb.

I need to go, “Hold on a second.” I pull it out and go, “Hey, they’re just patches. I’m just here to trade patches.” Okay. Before that, she was getting ready to call her supervisor in the bomb squad, because I walked up and said I had something I want to give them.

That’s how on the defensive that everybody is feeling. Law enforcement officers to civilians. I’ve had civilians ask me all the time, “Well, what if I get shot?” “Why would you get shot?” “Well, what if they think I’m a threat?” “Well, what are you doing that would make them think you’re a threat?” People literally do not want to approach an officer, because they think there is going to be an altercation. The officers are feeling their tension, so they’re reacting to their tension, so they’re feeling there’s going to be an altercation. What point in time, what does it going to take, so that nobody feels that just saying hello to somebody is going to lead to an altercation?

Brian: That’s wild. There’s two things that I want to bring in on that. When you go out to dinner, how many times you say thank you to the hostess, the waitress? They bring the food, thank you. They come by –

Chris: Me, all the time.

Brian: All the time, right? Same here. They bring the food, thank you. They bring the check, thank you. Even though they’re bringing you something and say, “Hey, pay us this money,” you’re still saying thank you.

Chris: Yeah, constantly.

Brian: I mean, I probably say thank you at least a dozen, two dozen times when I’m going out for dinner and I’m standing here thinking and it’s just wild to me that a police officer you thank you once and they’re taking it back. You think people in the service industry and I mean, police officers they really – they’re serving us. They’re also in a service style industry. You thank people who bring your food all the time, but how often do people thank the police officers, the fire fighters?

Chris: They don’t. They don’t. That’s the point. Here is the issue, the firefighters are the rock stars. They know it and we all know it. In an industry we know it. The firefighters are the rock stars. EMS, they don’t get thanked. Police, they don’t get thanked. When was the last time you thank an officer yourself?

Brian: It’s got to be a couple months since I last reined into one and actively went out there and said thank you.

Chris: Why did you do that? Why?

Brian: Because we’re friends.

Chris: Okay. Take him out of the equation and I appreciate that you said thank you to your friend. When was the last time you said thank you to an officer that you don’t know?

Brian: It’s got to be three months ago.

Chris: Okay. Why did you do that? Why did you thank the one that you don’t know?

Brian: Because he did something for me. That’s nice.

Chris: There was a catalyst is what you’re saying.

Brian: Exactly. There was something that sparked it.

Chris: Right. When was the last time you thanked one that you had no interaction with? You just walked up and said, “Thank you, sir.”

Brian: Six months ago, possibly. It was at a GORUCK event.

Chris: Because you had the patches?

Brian: Our group did have patches.

Chris: Right. I get that, but the catalyst was the patch. But had you not had the patch, or it had not been a GORUCK event, because I understand that some people are using them in the GORUCK events, which I think is absolutely awesome. People don’t do that. If you would say we’re outliers in the community, then how often does the average person do that?

Brian: Never.

Chris: Okay. How many officer on duty right now, right now, what percentage would you say would lay down their life for anybody, anytime, anywhere?

Brian: Probably somewhere between 99 and a 100.

Chris: I would say unequivocally a 100. I can understand the 99. I would literally give my life right now for anybody, anywhere, anytime to make sure somebody else is safe, somebody else over me. That might be selfish for me, because I leave behind a number of people who rely on me and care about me. But that’s what I do, that’s who I am. That’s the way my mom and dad raised me. That is a direct reflection upon the values that my parents had instilled up on me.

Nobody is going to come up and thank me for it and I don’t expect them to. At the same time, those guys put on a uniform every day and they don’t know whether they’re coming home every day. The average person doesn’t’ thank them for it, and a lot of times they get treated poorly. That doesn’t make any sense to me.

Here is a trivia question for you and I don’t expect you to know the answer. How many line of duty desks that we had this year for police officers? We’ve had eight. We had 125 last year and we had 140 the year before. The reason I don’t expect you to know is because I went out on January 12th, and I remember the date because it happened to be a birthday celebration. My wife and I went out and I came across a group of officers at a barbecue joint and they were sitting there and they all had their motorcycles and I mistakingly thought they were en route to a funeral up in Washington for the deputy that passed away, I think it was like January 8th up there.

I walked up and I had patches with me. I patched them in and said, “Hey, thank you.” I said, “Are you guys coming or going?” They looked at me and said, “Are you coming or going to the services up in Washington?” They said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “The deputy that just got killed in Washington, the services, I figured – Sorry, I thought you guys were funeral detail for going up there.” They’re like, “Oh, we didn’t know about that.” They were very surprisingly uninformed about somebody in their field that had just passed away.

If we in the field don’t know, how do we expect the civilians to know, the people that we serve to respectful and gratuitous when we aren’t even paying attention? Come on, man. Seriously, what’s your thoughts on that? You’re thinking a long pause, so I know you got something going through.

Brian: Yeah. I mean, it’s tough, right? Where do you start? Is it because it’s not as exposed as heavily in the media? What’s the way to make sure that people know the true impact?

Chris: Okay. Here’s another flipside. I may have my numbers wrong and I apologize profusely if I’m incorrect, but these were the numbers as I understood them. 2017, do you know how many military guys were killed in action? From my understanding, it was 33. For law enforcement it was 125. Based upon those numbers, and again if I have them wrong, I profusely apologize. That would mean line of duty death, killed in action law enforcement in 2017 was almost four times more deadly than act of duty military.

Yet, we don’t really hear – we hear more about when the military is killed in action than we do with law enforcement. Based on what you’re saying, yes I think media covers it a lot less. Firefighters line of duty death, I think for 2017, I’m almost certain I don’t have the number right, so I’m going to generalize, but let’s say it’s about a 100. I think it was somewhere between 95 to 113. I can’t remember exactly at the moment. Line of duty deaths for firefighters are even less reported for some reason.

These guys go out, are willing to put themselves on the line each and every day to make sure we’re safe and then when they pay the ultimate price, it’s swept under the rug. Then we could sit here and ruminate on that for a minute. However, just as important are all those guys that were injured that while didn’t pay the ultimate price are now unable to work. They are now physical broken, mentally broken, to the point where they’re incapable of completing their tour of duties and they are having a hard time finding work.

They put themselves in the line and just because it didn’t reach the extreme level, they’re forgotten about. Who’s thanking them? Who’s taking the time to make sure they’re okay? For me, it encompasses a lot. It really does encompass a lot. I think a thank you is the very least, we as a community can do.

Brian: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Chris: I didn’t mean to lay the heavy stuff on you today, man. Sorry.

Brian: That’s good. It’s a heavy topic.

Chris: It is. That’s the bane and the beauty of it is it’s a heavy topic, so it doesn’t get talked about, but it needs to be talked about. Nobody is really – I hear people giving lip service to it, but I don’t see a lot of people being active. That’s why for me, the patch is an active thing, because it forces you to walk up and engage. You have to literally walk up to somebody, give them something that you’ve purchased yourself, so that purchase represents a small moment of your life because we trade our life one second a time for money, and then I pay the money so that is a physical embodiment of a few moments of my life that I’ve given.

I hand it to them and say thank you. Then that person that receive the patch gets to walk off and have a small memento that somebody actually said thank you. Whether they throw it up on their desk, they throw it up on their headboard on the car, they put it on their vest, their gear, whatever, there is a physical reminder that somebody said thank you. I think that’s really powerful.

Brian: I think it’s incredibly powerful. I think we just established that law enforcement officers hardly ever get thanked. Having that physical reminder that it happened is very powerful.

Chris: I get pictures of guys with them on their bulletproof vest. They send it to me. I get stories of people saying, “Hey, the officer was in near tears because he said nobody ever said thank you.” The awesome one I get is when people come up and say, “Hey, I try to give this officer a patch, but he opened up his vest and there was one already sitting on it.” That’s a lot. That’s awesome. This guy is carrying it around on his vest. Somebody tried to say thank you. He’s like, “No, already got one.”

Brian: That’s amazing.

Chris: Yeah, it’s cool.

Brian: That’s really cool.

Chris: That’s really cool. I just had somebody in the pathfinder just took one up to the Granite Mountain Hotshots. You know I’m talking about? The firefighters that died on the Yorneo mountain fire, so that only – I haven’t seen the movie yet, but only the brave, the movie that just came out is based on them. She took a patch up there and left it at the memorial site, sent me a picture and somebody forwarded the picture to one of the firefighter’s wives.

Brian: Wow.

Chris: I’m sitting here almost getting – because I’m like – this is, “Wow.” That’s really cool. She gets a picture of somebody that walked up and left a patch. It’s just a patch. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a small piece of cloth with some what? 15 cents worth of thread. It’s the thought, it’s the time, it’s’ the effort, it’s the action behind the item that is significant and not the item itself.

Brian: That’s powerful. That’s got to be like you smile all right. That’s exactly what you’re hoping for when you started this.

Chris: It’s exactly – it does make me smile, yes. But it almost makes me feel like a fraud. Because I know that sounds weird, but it’s like you don’t have to buy a patch. Anybody can do this with anything. It’s nothing. All I’m providing for you is an opportunity and a reason. The patch is an icebreaker. It doesn’t have to be a patch. It doesn’t have to be anything. It can be simply walking up in a handshake. If it takes the patch as a method of an icebreaker for you to walk up and show somebody some gratitude, whether it be military, fire, EMS, whoever, crossing guards, whoever, then great, I’m willing to give that to you.

God, I hope it works, because everybody in this world on some level deserves a piece of gratitude and for somebody to say thank you for something. If that’s what it takes to be the catalyst, I’m very happy. That’s an honor. That’s a deep, deep honor. It’s not like I’m doing anything.

Brian: You definitely are doing something. You’re providing – I mean, some people just need that extra push. Some people are more introverted than others and they just need that little shove.

Chris: All I’m being is a gentle shove on the shoulders. I’ll gladly be that. If me providing a patch and going out and posting things and saying, “Hey, look, look, look, look, look,” is what that gentle shove is, that’s awesome. It’s an honor to be a part of it. I don’t feel like I’m doing anything other than what I would do is just this happen to be the avenue that it took.

Hey, thank you for what you’re doing. The stuff you incurred and put together. You guys have over a $100,000 donated to charity. You guys are a catalyst. Do you feel like you’re doing a lot with that? I mean, you don’t have to answer that, because it’s rhetorical. Only you know how you feel how much you’re affecting the world. But you’ve been able to bring charity challenges out initially with Kirk and now with Kirk and I believe his wife is tied to you somehow.

You guys are raising awareness and money for people – that will help people, that you will never hear a thank you from. You know what I mean? The recipients of these gratitude and kindness will never come and say thank you. That’s awesome, man. That’s awesome. You’re doing all these work and you legitimately will probably never be thanked by the people that is going to directly affect the most. Thank you very much for that. I have a lot of deep respect for that.

Brian: Well, thank you. Yeah, Kirk’s wife is amazing. She’s helping out a ton. She’s phenomenal. She’s incredible. She has my deepest thanks for all the support and time and effort that she puts in. She puts in a lot of work in the charity challenges.

My thoughts, just personally how I feel in charity challenges is I always feel like it’s never enough. That if I had an extra hour or two hours, I could do something more. There is always something more. I never feel like on top of some mountain like, “Look what has been accomplished?” It’s always just looking up. There’s more that needs to be done. I’m nowhere –

Chris: No, no. That’s exactly, because it’s not about you, it’s not about me. We’re only being conduits. I’m only trying to help funnel somebody’s gratitude. We’re just conduits. It’s not about us.

Brian: That’s the thing, right? Like you said, a $100,000 donated, that’s not for me. That’s not a $100,000 under my bank account. That’s thousands of people signing up for events. Their money coming through us and then going straight to the charities to get donated. That’s like you said, charity challenges. That’s going to be over a 100,000. That’s like I said, not on my bank account. That’s why I feel like, yeah, exactly what you’re saying.

Chris: You’re right. I charge for the patches. I could be altruistic and I could give the patches away. I give a fair amount away to people I meet, but I don’t for two reasons. The most important being is as I said before, that patch embodies – in order to purchase the patch, you have to go to work, you have to give up your life. That patch embodies a very – depending on who you are, how much money you make and everything, a portion of life.

When you hand that patch over to somebody that you paid, you are saying, “Here is a very small portion of my life that I have taken and dedicated to showing you thank you for what you’re doing.” If I just handed the patches out to everybody and said, “Hey, go hand them out,” there is no investment by you. There’s none. There is no physical investment. At that point, you are a representative of my time to pay for them and get them created.

I sell them, because I want people to be giving of themselves. I don’t want them to be an agent for me. I want them to be an agent for themselves. Then it allows me to continue the process and buy more patches and ensure that things get out there, so that more and more people get that thank you. I hear you. It’s not like I specifically profit from it, all the money for the most part of it goes back into buying more and whatever equipment – I’m looking at buying some small equipment in the next little while to move forward and see what else we can do.

Yeah, it’s no win. Am I really financially profiting from this? Just like you said, it’s all going to somebody else. Yeah, when you hear the accolades of things you’re doing – I’m just like you. It’s not about me. I don’t feel like I’m doing much and there is always a thousand more things I could be doing. That’s my mindset is looking up and not looking down. Just like you said. Yeah, good way to put it.

Brian: We talked, just touched briefly now on buying the patches. For people who are wanting to buy your patches and hand them out, do you have a website?

Chris: I do not. I need to get one. If there’s anybody, or if you know anybody that will help me with that, I need to get that. What I have is they can find me – I assume you’ll link it up through your stuff.

Brian: Absolutely.

Chris: There is the Honor Guard, just Facebook page, I guess, the retail page, which on there is a little store shop and it needs to be updated, but Kevin Maestri and Kevin I know I probably screwed your name up, Knotted Chords help me put it together, but they can go on there, or they can just message me and we can do the things through PayPal.

The other thing is if anybody’s interested, we have a private group, secret clothes, all that backdoor stuff. People in the group – I bet people in. I just don’t let everybody in. They come in and they tell me they want to do and I’ll go checkout their profiles, their pages and if I have any questions, I’ll ask. I think we got close to 900 people in that group, but that’s the best place to reach me is through that and we can either order through that website, or we’ll just go straight through PayPal. I haven’t used Venmo. I know some people are using Venmo, but it’s just a simple like that. Just very, very simple, easy transactions and get it done.

Brian: I’ll post links to everything in the show notes, so people will know where to go buy some. I think there’s someone So Strong as well.

Chris: Yeah, sorry. Yeah, oh man. You can edit this part out. Sorry, sorry Margaret. Yeah. Margaret is So Strong and I partnered – Yeah, we talk about all the other stuff, man. My mind is still on that other stuff. Margaret and I have partnered and she is using So Strong as a method of selling the patches as well along with her patch tags. Those patch tags are awesome. I know you got some.

Brian: I do.

Chris: I don’t know how many I have, but I probably have at least 15. I attached the patch tags, the carry beaners and then I have all my little honor patches and my thank you patches all over my ruck. Yeah, they’re everywhere. Everywhere. I had given amount. The patch tag are awesome. Our stash tags are awesome. Yeah, you can pick up the patches through Margaret as well.

She’s selling the fire law enforcement and military ones at this point. I have the nurse and the EMS ones as well, and I’m looking at teachers and dispatchers. Oh, geez, a whole bunch – whole fleet down the line soon.

Brian: Very cool. I can’t wait to see when those ones come out as well.

Chris: Yeah. In the future. I’m working on some other things with regard to some apparel things, just to see what I could play out and we’re – I’ve got a couple other projects on the side that I’m trying to mesh, for lack of a better term, that I’m hoping will fit nicely and everything will come full circle and work together. We’ll see what happens.

Brian: Very cool. I’m excited to watch it.

Chris: What about you? What do you have going on for ADR? What’s next for you guys?

Brian: Trying to get into video. We’ll see how it does. Started the podcast. This is going to be podcast episode 34. Haven’t missed a week since we started.

Chris: I know. You’re doing well.

Brian: It’s been kept as busy. I’m trying to get setup with some video stuff, so that will be interesting. Then my time right now is just been focused probably 90% on charity challenges, getting ready for the winter challenge, which will have just started when this is aired. I had to rewrite probably 90% of the website to get that thing going. It’s been fun.

Chris: I think your video stuff would work well. I think you’ll hit a homerun with that.

Brian: Thank you. I’m hoping.

Chris: Yeah. No, I think you’ll do fine.

Brian: Well, Chris is there anything else you want to talk about before we go?

Chris: I mean, I could do this all day. Let me see.

Brian: Maybe I’ll have to do a follow-up.

Chris: Yeah, maybe actually. That probably would be not a bad idea. Well, right now with the Honor Guard we partnered with So Strong. We’re working on that partnership and I’m hoping that – it has been an absolute joy for me to work with Margaret there. She has taught me a lot. We’re in contact quite a bit and she has been nothing short of miraculous with her mentorship of me.

I’m a service guy. I worked all the different service – I’ve been in the service sector job for 30 years running calls, dealing with things. I’m not the best knowledgeable person when it comes to business and stuff. So Strong has been awesome avenue of mentorship.

Right now, Christian Griffith, which I know a lot of you guys are familiar with is doing his run to hill, his run across the United States. I believe that starts like March – I can’t remember the exact date, but mid-March. Right now I’m donating a percentage of my proceeds of all sales to him through the end of his run. We’re going to be making donations to him as we get in orders, because that’s an absolutely worthwhile cost. Christian is an absolutely worthwhile guy. I’m assuming you watch selection.

Brian: Yes.

Chris: Yeah. I actually use selection as my training material at the academy. Here it is law enforcement and I’m showing selection. If you watch that and I would tell anybody to watch it again and there are a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of absolutely base line, awesome life lessons in each one of those episodes, whether it comes from teamwork, being on top of things, the integrity station, all of that.

I use each and every one of those as a training session for the recruits. A matter of fact, Christian’s section where – I actually start off the academy giving every recruit a copy of the man in arena speech and then about halfway through – Then we’ll start it off and I’ll tell somebody, “Somebody in this group is a friend. I won’t tell them who.” They usually end up pointing to Bert Kuntz, or Tyler Gray as who they think my friend is. It’s never Christian. It’s never Christian.

Then we come to his interview where he actually – that was the first time he publicly really divulged what’s going on for him. Then he gives the man of the arena speech at the end. Then I turn it off and I look at them and, “Hey, that speech sounds a lot better given a context, doesn’t it?” Everybody goes, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

That’s when I go, “That’s my friend.” Then jaws all drop and they’re like, “Really?” I’m like, “Yeah.” I bring it full circle to is hey, you never know and all of your dealings with all the people in your career, in your life and these people entered in some semblance or crisis. You never know what they’ve gone through, because a lot of people that knew Christian never knew what he went through.

Now he’s using that in that show as a catalyst to propel him and his cost to hopefully do what he can to defeat that. People didn’t know and you never know. The selection and Christian all that, he really brings a lot to the table for me with regard to my training. I tell them that all the time. The academy is going and I’ll usually take a picture of that scene where he’s crying on TV and sent him just that clip.

Everybody’s watching him with the tears and he’s like – Just a little, “Hey, look. We’re doing it again.” Hey, it’s a powerful thing. I’m really happy to make that a possibility to donate to that cause like that. That’s an awesome thing. I’m really looking at – he’s going to be running into San Francisco at the end of his – his index s San Francisco, so I’m hoping to get as many people as I can to run with him that last few whatever distance, whether it be a marathon, half marathon, 5K, 2K, 10 yards, but across that finish line. That’s awesome.

Brian: That would be amazing.

Chris: Yeah. It would be awesome. Are you going to come down?

Brian: We’ll see. Probably not. It’s tough to get out. I have a eight-month-old daughter and a three and a half year old foster son.

Chris: You’re fostering?

Brian: Absolutely.

Chris: Dude, that is phenomenal. Way to go.

Brian: Thank you.

Chris: Yeah. Look at you. How is that?

Brian: It is an experience. It’s amazing, but it’s an experience. I love them death. They’re at sixth or seventh placement.

Chris: How long did those normally last? Just out of curiosity.

Brian: Up until this one, it’s been five to seven months. We’ve had this little guy for over two years now.

Chris: You can confirm or deny something for me, okay? It’s going to seem like it’s not the same, but I’m curious. I run a service dog program and I don’t know if you knew that.

Brian: I did not know that.

Chris: In the jail, I run a program and the person that I run it with is Dr. Bergin and she is the person, the lady who is responsible for service dogs. She was the initial person 60 years ago plus. I don’t know. It was a while ago, who thought up of service dogs for those that were handicapped, not seeing eye dogs, but service dogs.

She had a friend who was a quadriplegic and she went down to the pound and picked one up. Basically from ground zero, figured out what it takes and how to train a dog to be a service dog. I have the inmates that they’re learning how to train. They’re training dogs. They’re training service dogs from week. Let’s call it 12 and they have the dogs for about four months and then they have to give the dog up as the dog was on.

Well, they’re doing this and they’re carrying for something that will move on. A lot of these guys, this is the first time they’ve ever been able to tap into that emotional side of themselves. They’re giving something to somebody that A, will never say thank you. They’re giving this thing their love and care away. They will probably never see it again. That has to be very tough. That is a huge gift and thank you for being that kind of guy. I think that is absolutely awesome.

Isn’t that one of the most awesome things you’ve ever done?

Brian: Yes.

Chris: Okay.

Brian: Absolutely. I think it’s probably very similar. You care for a child for months and months and months as your own. Sometimes they’re going back to a good situation and sometimes they’re not. There’s just a ton of emotions associated with it.

Chris: Well, I think the difference between them and you is A, it’s a puppy, it’s a dog and it’s not a child, but I know there are people out there that family members are family member, whether they’re four-footed, or furry or not.

A lot of these guys, this is the first time they’ve cared for anything that they’ve actually taken the time to access that part of their emotional – their psychie. They’re accessing this and they’re giving it. It’s the first time. Some of these guys have a really hard time. I see that they grow a lot. I tell them all the time, “Hey, thank you. Thank you for that gift. Thank you for that and thank you for the love and caring and compassion you’re giving.” You’re not going to get thanked by the person who receives this gift, so I’m saying thank you, because I know that – I see what you’re doing. I see the gift you’re giving.

Hey, thank you. It might not be the same and I realize that some people think it isn’t, but I see it in them. It gives me a sense of what you’re doing, so thank you man. That’s awesome. That’s a big gift.

Brian: Well, thank you. Thank you. That’s incredible what you’re doing at that program. That’s amazing.

Chris: It’s cool. It is cool. I got to hang out – with that program, it should be coming up. I haven’t looked, but Jason McCarthy is putting that service first thing together.

Brian: Yes.

Chris: You’ve seen this, okay. Jason came in with cadre Mikey B and Leah. I believe his dog’s name is Leah. Jason filmed I think with Mikey B. Well, I brought Dr. Bergin in and I got to hang out with Jason and Mikey and Dr. Bergin. Dr. Bergin and Mikey B sat down and they had a conversation. That was really interesting, the fact that here he is with Leah, his service dog who has by his own admission saved his life. Here is the lady that is ultimately responsible.

Brian: That’s phenomenal. That’s amazing.

Chris: Yeah. I got to sat there and watch this interaction. It was absolutely awesome. I don’t think GORUCK released that episode of the service first, but I’m really looking forward to that one.

Brian: Me too. Chris, this has been so fun. We have to do it again.

Chris: Okay. Anytime you want, man.

Brian: All right. Thanks so much for taking all this time out of your day. I’m really excited to get this episode up. Let’s keep in touch.

Chris: Yeah, please. Absolutely. Please. I really look forward to it. It’s been an absolute honor. Thanks for letting me spout my craziness. I hope somebody somewhere hears this and just walks out to somebody and says thank you. Say thank you to somebody, somebody who’s done something for somebody; a waitress, a crossing guard, the mailman. Go to the store and hold the door open for somebody, something. Show somebody some gratitude and specifically those people that you think may never get it, or don’t get it as often as they should.

Go hug your wife, your husband, call your mom, which I probably should do here when we’re done now that I’m thinking about it. Those kind of things. Just say thank you. It’s two little words that I don’t think it’s said enough and mean probably as much to anybody as anything else we ever hear.

Brian: Absolutely. Thank you.

Chris: Thank you.

Brian: Have a great rest of your day, Chris. Thank you so much again.

The post ADR 034: Chris Thorp Interview (Honor Guard Founder) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

Jason joins us for a second time to chat about how 2017 at GORUCK wrapped up and what’s happening in 2018. This was a great conversation and it’s reminds me of the times I’ve sat around and chatted with Jason.

Jason comments on the release of the new GORUCK Rucker and how much he likes it better than the original model. We have a great time talking about all of the accomplishments GORUCK had in 2017 and where they’re going in 2018. Hopefully you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it!

Thanks so much for listening! If you missed any of our earlier episodes you can give them a listen right now. Hopefully you enjoyed the podcast and are excited about the next one. This is very new to us so we would appreciate it if you would cut us some slack as we work on perfecting our methodologies. Did you enjoy the podcast? We’d love a review on iTunes or even our Facebook Page! Didn’t enjoy it? Leave a comment here in the show notes and let us know what we can do better!

Thanks so much for the support and make sure to check out the links in the Show Notes. Subscribe through iTunes, Android, Google Music, Stitcher, or TuneIn and never miss another episode!

Brian: Today, I’m chatting with Jason McCarthy who is the founder of GORUCK. I’m very excited to have him back on the show and I just can’t wait to get going, because we have some awesome topics to get into. Jason, how are you doing today?

Jason McCarthy: I’m great. I’m ready to dive in.

Brian: Awesome. To start off, happy 2018.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah, it’s another great year. Life’s good.

Brian: It is. Life is good and I’m very excited to get going into 2018.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. Your family grew in 2017, my family grew. It’s just great. Life’s good. GORUCK Nation is growing, meet more people, more adventures. It’s a pretty good time.

Brian: It is. It is. I’m excited for this year. I think it’s going to be really fun. Before we dive into 2018, it’s been a couple months since we talked about 2017, which was also a huge year for GORUCK. There were major changes, major additions, just lots of really cool stuff going on last year. The first topic I want to get into is the service action requirement, which it’s hard to believe that it’s not even a year old, but it was just introduced in 2017.

For those who are listening and don’t know what the service action requirement is, it’s a requirement for GORUCK light, tough and heavy events. It’s an action that your team must accomplish either before or during the event that does some good in the community. Examples that have happened are like canned food donation drives, cleaning headstones and obviously donating cab fare to a charity at the end.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. By the way – yeah, yeah, I’ll get into that. My least favorite is donating cab fare. It’s not that that’s bad. That’s fine. I think that we as a nation and we as communities are best when we find something and we give our time to it. We pour a little – we do something. It’s easy to write a check, I mean a dollar, $2. Bill Gates is billions of dollars. God bless him for that. It’s awesome. He also pours a lot of time into the stuff that he does.

The goal is that people come together and find something that matters to them in their community. We’ve seen things that have required a lot of time and we’ve seen things that have required a little bit of less time. I mean, dropping stuff off at a homeless shelter. Everyone’s got – not everyone, sorry. Lots of us have too much stuff.

Have you said, “Hey, you can do something great for someone if you donate some jackets to a homeless shelter.” “Fantastic. Let’s go do that.” So much of the value that we get in life is in being something part of something that’s bigger than ourselves. We just want to further encourage that and it’s not overwhelming the GORUCK challenges. It’s not all of this time and all – These are service actions, not enormous experiences. It’s the thought that counts and it’s been turning that thought into actually doing something.

It’s gone well. I mean, there’s been no real pushback. I mean, how do you push back on that? That’s been a good addition. It just sort of strengthens the community and the values that we hold dear.

Brian: Yeah. I’m glad you brought that up. The donating cab fare, GRTs have been doing that for years, right? I mean, all the way back to 2011, 2012 I remember donating the cab fare after the event. It doesn’t really bring the sense of community together that I’ve seen some service actions do.

My follow on question to this was going to be, service action has been around for 10 months and what are some of the actions that you’ve heard about that have really made you smile and say, “Yes, this is why we added the service action component.”

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. I was a cadre in Spokane. If I would’ve read about this and hadn’t been there, I probably would’ve hit home, but it just so happen that this was the one and they class-organize donating a bunch of items that were important for – this home for – I think the requirement is something like single mothers under the age of 20, so with their kids. Of course, my mom was 18 and five-days-old when she had me. She was barely 18. It really hit home.

They organized it. I didn’t even know really during the event. I didn’t hear the story exactly. “We’re going to go donate some items to this great cause.” Okay, great. Fantastic. That sounds awesome. Where are we going? Looked at a map recon. Great, that’s fantastic. Went there and just saw some of the moms and saw some other kids and saw the lady who was running the shop.

It was really cool to be able to give a lot of – donate rather, the stuff that the team had put together there, because it just – I mean, I would’ve been one of the little kids running around in a diaper or something in the front lawn. Who knows, right? That really hit home really, really a lot.

Brian: Yeah, that makes total sense. I think one of the big takeaways from that is – I guess, a story I’ll tell on a second is that actually being there and going to it and seeing everything, that that has just another layer to that service action.

When I did the Santa Ruck back in December, we got a ton of toys together, we put it on this giant wooden sleigh that had GORUCK painted on the side. It was really cool. It was fun getting all the toys together. We knew where they were going. It was to the Ronald McDonald House. It wasn’t until we actually got to the house and we saw the families with the kids looking up at the Christmas lights, up the Christmas tree that everything really started to hit home on what we were actually doing.

Jason McCarthy: Which is awesome. It’s again, yes donating money is cool. You write a check, but does it change your heart at all? Does it make you want to go do more stuff? I mean, there’s room for both in life. I’ve done plenty of things where it was just, “Hey, I can’t be there, but I’ll support it some other way.”

The things that really change us that impact our lives are when we do something, and we see something and how it impact someone else’s life. The goal is that someone spends a couple minutes, or a few more than a couple minutes and actually feels something, it inspires them to go find a greater cause to serve, that only strengthens their community, our communities and our nation.

Brian: That’s such an awesome goal. I love it. I’m glad you guys introduced in 2017, and I’m excited to hear even more stories in 2018.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah, me too.

Brian: Moving on from the service action, since last we talked there’s been just a couple gear releases from GORUCK. The largest not just in size, obviously is the GR3. How does it feel? That I think has been in the work for ages. How does it feel to finally have that out?

Jason McCarthy: I mean, the funny part is it’s – I’ve heard musicians talk about this where by the time the album comes out, they are so far removed from the process of the album that they’re already working on something else. Full disclosure, it always feels like that around here. Except, in this case I’ve gotten to use it a few more times since it came out. It feels good to get things out. I mean, to say, “Hey, this is out there in the world. What do you think?”

We believe in our process and our – all of those things, right? It won’t bore you with too much of that, but we believe in what we do, so it does feel good to get it out there. The responses was good. It’s a big ruck. It’s awesome for travel. It’s different than GR2 in a lot of ways. I think that we’ve only scratched the surface in terms of showing people how to use it best, which is an important part of the conversation.

I would expect to see more accessories. Not immediately. We’re not working on any right now, but more accessories over time, except for in the firearms line. I guess some. That have the Velcro backing in them. It’s a neat form of compartmentalization and all that gear door stuff that MOLLE doesn’t really allow, because MOLLE is just really difficult to work with, but it’s very stable and secure. Velcro on the interior is a really cool thing, because it lets you mix and match whatever you want accessories that are – You put your stuff how you want it, right? Which is cool.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, MOLLE definitely has its place because once it’s in there it’s not going anywhere. There’s just something about the Velcro. You can easily reconfigure how you’ve got everything set up. You can travel one way, and then you get to your destination, you can rip all the pouches out and reassemble them for how you do your daily carry. Then you can quickly put it all back together when you’re traveling out.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. Here’s a good story. I went and ruck them out in Montana, which by the way hiking is just rucking them out. I went hiking. I brought up, I think 24, 40 beers, whatever it was. We got to the top and we drank them all, or almost all of them. We tried to drink them all. Do or do not. But we try to drink them all. On the way down, my load was a lot lighter and I also just had different space stuff.

I ended up having a bunch of cameras and some other stuff. I took the pockets and moved them around to the top, so that the new heaviest stuff was at the top. It was just really easy that morning that we woke up and then we rucked down the mountain and about the rest of our day. It was awesome. It was really easy in the interior to reconfigure stuff in a way that I never would’ve adjusted if it would’ve been MOLLE.

Brian: Yeah. That makes perfect sense. I’ve bought some of that Velcro tape and I’ve glued it into some pouches from shooter ruck. I’ve got a decent modular camera setup now for that. I mean, you can’t beat the versatility of it.

Jason McCarthy: Glad you’re experimenting. That’s how we all get smarter.

Brian: Yeah. I mean, that’s the drive GORUCK products right there. In addition to the G3 coming out, you guys also launched at the same time the GR3 compression tough bag. I got one with my GR3. Is that tough bag going to be replacing the current version of the tough bag, or are they going to live together?

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. I don’t see them living together. It’s just not enough from a skew perspective. We’ve had to scale up a lot of skews, new skews on the apparel front. You can have skew creep. Too many skews gets really hard. It makes everything more confusing. We’re trying to reduce skews where possible. I do not see two tough bags being around. The compression one is the way to go.

Brian: Awesome.

Jason McCarthy: Because you can also use it standalone. I haven’t done anything on the compression tough bag yet as far as explain tough goes. The heavy amount of R&D time we spent in not wrapping around the whole system, but only giving it part of the compression tough bag, because if you wrap it all the way around, the problem is those loops then, they find their way completely removed from the cylinder part of the tough bag itself. It looks terrible. You got to fix it every time. It’s bad. When it only compresses a third or a half whatever it is of a tough bag, then it stays those – the compression straps stay in place and it works. Yeah, that’s going to replace the existing.

Brian: Good to know. I mean, that makes total sense, right? You should be putting stuff in it that takes up roughly that amount of space, or else you’re probably bringing along too big of a bag for what you’re trying to bring with you.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. I mean, the thought being too is that even if you have another ruck, you can use it as a gym bag for dirty clothes or whatever if you want and put it in the ruck. If you have too much space, then you can expand your ruck, or if you’re hiking – it was perfect on hike the Grand Canyon. Hiking is rucking in the mountains, by the way.

I went in to hike the Grand Canyon and I just have my sleeping bag in the compression tough bag on the bottom of the ruck, and it’s perfect. It’s lightweight at the bottom, so it’s not dragging the weight down and stuff like that.

Another usage is that we saw a world where someone goes backpacking through Europe, or backpacking through wherever and they have that as an accessory. Sometimes people buy souvenirs or whatever the case may be. If you want to expand it, it will actually attach to the ruck so you don’t have to carry it with your hands. There is some versatility to it, and I think that we’ll see over time that people will like that.

Brian: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, what’s not to like about it? One of the final major, I guess additions, so to speak in 2017 was the creation of the GORUCK Show, which has been awesome. I’ve enjoyed watching that week over week and it’s great that you guys are bring them on YouTube so people can find them there too. How has that been going for you?

Jason McCarthy: I mean, first of I would say it’s not execution-wise, Blaine and I are both pretty comfortable. We’re both have been in positions where we have to talk about really big ideas and then we have to transition to really small ideas. It’s been fun. That’s probably the most important part of it for me and us. I’ll speak for Blaine now. You can ask him separately, but it’s been fun.

You put it on the calendar and you say, “Hey, we’re doing this.” There’s nothing bad that’s going to come off it. I don’t foresee it in its existing state spanning the universe and this is going to be the world’s most popular podcast. It’s just to do that, you have to get richer brands in and then you’ve got to get some former president. You got to do all that stuff, right?

What we want to do is lead with transparency for the people who know GORUCK and love GORUCK and want us to be successful and want to know what’s going on. Because you all are the ones that use word of mouth to get your friends involved.

We like to have something that puts our time where our values are, the value being lead with transparency. It’s been fun internally for Blaine and I to get to do it. I found out a lot about him through just shooting the shit with him on the GORUCK show, and I’m sure vice versa.

It’s true, so as with almost anything it comes into like how you do in the world, what the world sees is so much – is so dependent upon how you’re doing in your own life. If we love what we’re doing here at GORUCK and I do. I think we do, right? Then that over time really gets communicated to the world. Culturally it’s cool. We get to spend a little bit time and check-in and we get to talk about whatever topics we want, or you guys want us to talk about. Then we always try to throw in some – whatever the community wants us to answer, we’re happy to talk about.

Brian: Yeah. I might experience from it. I’ve had two awesome takeaways from it. The first of that, it’s just great to see you guys joking, talking, just having a really good time. I mean, clearly you guys are having fun because you could see it through the video. It’s just, I guess – I don’t want to say reassures, but like you said, leading the transparency. I mean, the people in that video, that you and Blaine. I have hang out with you guys. That’s you guys, so it’s great that you’ve got an avenue to just be yourself and talk to the community and go through the topics that either you guys have got, or the community presents.

Then the second piece is that it’s just been awesome to have like a consistent check-in, I guess where people can show up and ask questions. I know you guys have always answered a couple at the end, and it’s been really cool to see.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. I mean, the worst thing I think that happens is that people forget that we’re human. I mean, our why. The magic is in the why. It’s really hard to consistently execute, because it requires a commitment to explanation. It requires a commitment to putting yourself in front of the jury of GRT opinions, which matter infinitely that sort of how business works. It’s how life works too, but it’s really how business works is that you all get to vote every single day. The why we’re doing stuff, I mean that’s important for first, for us to know. Second off, for us to communicate. We’re happy to do it and we do have fun doing it. That’s a double win.

Brian: That’s awesome. Yeah, definitely feels like a double win watching it. Is there any timeframe for when that will be out in audio file?

Jason McCarthy: I guess, there was some delay in terms of how you go to iTunes or something. I don’t know. Not my lane. I think I heard mid-January, which it’s already mid-January. I got to think someone is beating on the doors in Cupertino. We’ll see.

Brian: Yeah, it’s a little initial hurdle that once you get in, that’s all good.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah.

Brian: It will be nice.

Jason McCarthy: Then there’ll be a big dump of them. “Hey, here is a bunch.” That would be cool.

Brian: Yeah. It will be fun. I mean, it’s just podcast are nice because you can listen to them on your drive to and from work, on the bus.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. You really don’t need to look at our faces really. I mean, we’re having too much fun, you’re driving in your car. You don’t want to watch us drink beer and stream it on your whatever. Just download it and just know that we’re drinking beer having that.

Brian: I’m jealous enough as it is. I don’t need to see you guys drinking the beer. Especially if you’re listening to it driving to work. It’s like, here you are driving to work and these two guys are having a blast. That’s awesome. Is there anything else you want to talk about for 2017? Or else, we can move.

Jason McCarthy: Basically, I spent a ton of time on our apparel line, and so expanding those and all that stuff. It’s one of those laying the foundation things and that went really well for us. The apparel is grown a lot. I think it’s a testament to the soul of the team that’s building it and the designers and our commitment to serve simplicity and just staying true to our roots of the Baghdad, New York City, GR1 vibe of, “Hey, this can fly in a lot of different environments and it’s built to perform.”

It’s also really expensive stuff. It’s a double-edge sword. Sometimes you get what you pay for, at least that’s the hope and that’s our goal. That was a lot of my time though in 2017. I would say I spent more time on apparel than anything except for managing the business of sorts.

Brian: Yeah, 2017 really seemed like the year of apparel for you guys. I mean, you’re just talking about skew overload. I can’t even imagine. One new pair of pants in four colors, all the sizes, that’s got to be somewhere in the 30s in terms of skews.

Jason McCarthy: It’s a lot. It’s why if you go Google why you should not start an apparel brand, it’s a real thing. I mean, the community has done historically supported us a lot. I think that time is showing that it’s really good stuff. If it’s out of your price range, hey I get it. That’s the deal, right? It’s really expensive.

Brian: It is.

Jason McCarthy: I pay a lot more for – we pay a lot more for the GORUCK than a lot of stuff that you go buy RTI at full price. Part of it is what it is.

Brian: It’s quality too. I mean, I bought a new pair of challenge pants and a new pair of simple pants just so I could get up a comparison post, but by no means you need to make those purchases. The original challenge pants I have, which I – I mean, I think I’ve taken them through double-digit events now. I mean, they look brand new. The only thing that’s got any wear on them is the printed internal label, because the first version had the printed label, the new version’s got the sew-in.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. Which we’ve changed of course, because we like things tough and we don’t like anything to fail. We like to fail quickly and we failed on the internal labels of the version one challenge pants. You can take me to task for that. Yeah, we like the American flag and stuff like that too. It’s been fun. It’s been a lot of work in a great way. If you like who you work with, it doesn’t really matter how hard it is.

Brian: Absolutely. I mean, especially the position you’re in, you like who you work with and you like what you’re making. What else is there?

Jason McCarthy: Yeah, it’s great.

Brian: Coming in to 2018, I guess some of the biggest news so far has been the release of the Rucker version 2. Congrats on getting that launched and out the door.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. That was a couple years later, or – It felt like we were working on that one forever too. It’s jus taking something and making any changes takes a lot of time. The old adage time is money and it is. It’s not just money from a direct cost, it’s money that you can’t spend on other stuff.

We try not to tinker with stuff unless we really need to. We just saw a need on this one and it’s 2.0 is for more people, it’s better. I’ll put myself in that category. I don’t have to go to the website and buy one. I still have my V1 Rucker, which is great. If I’m going to go do an event, I’m going to do it with the 2.0 for sure. It’s better, period, the end.

Brian: Period, the end. For those who are listening and haven’t had a chance to check out the version 2 of the Rucker, the major change that was made is that there is an elevated ruck plate pocket now. The ruck plate doesn’t go straight to the bottom. It’s like this awesome elevated pouch, so that when you put it in there, it’s off the lower back.

Jason’s got an awesome video that he just shot today on Facebook live. I’ll link to that in the show notes. Between that, there is the deering added for the bladder hole through, which is awesome, reminiscent of what’s on the GR3.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. We paralleled that development a little bit. I mean, the big consideration was I don’t love making things that are specific. We add a toy in the pocket at the top of the Rucker at first glance is specific. I mean, it will fit the expert 20, or the expert 30 ruck plate perfectly. Singe it down and you flip it upside down, it’s not going anywhere. Perfect for a GORUCK challenge.

The thought process was well, you can actually throw other – say you want to use a Rucker as a gym bag. You can actually throw other stuff in there as well. We like you to take the gear and make it yours. You can put plenty of other stuff in there and you will.

It felt better about it in that regard. The Rucker 1.0 I’m sentimental. I got the first one of those, go figure, and it’s got my cool little R&D label in it. I look at it. I did my first ever GORUCK challenge wearing that one. It’s awesome. Frankly, this one is better; 2.0 is better.

Brian: I’m excited to get mine. I already got that on order and it should be fun.

Jason McCarthy: I remember last time, you – the only almost hard question you gave me was about the embroidered spearhead on the Rucker, right? This one it’s on the MOLLE. Hey, sometimes you got to get people talking, right?

Brian: Yeah. What do –

Jason McCarthy: Change things up a little bit.

Brian: It’s funny you bring that up too, because the views are so polarizing. On Reddit, like I don’t know any other way to say this, but it just seems like you guys got – people shit on the spearhead being sewn into the bag. Then on Facebook Live today, there were just tons of comments, “Oh, the spearhead on the bag is awesome.”

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. Hey, look. I mean, different strokes for different folks, man. Here is what I know though, the people that know us at all, that take the time to criticize are usually are the ones that love us the most. If not the very most unconditionally like mom or something, then just one wrong below that. You know what I mean? It’s just dealing with those people like humans and saying, “Look, this is the thought process. You can like it or you cannot like it, but this is the thought process and GR1 is not any different really since the beginning.” GR1 is GR1. The Rucker, hey you might see some changes. There is that.

Let me be really clear. Definitely not ruling out bringing back embroidery at some point. It’s just not on the production cycle right now. Right now the spearheads in the bottom MOLLE, personally I prefer that personally. GR1 was also our first ruck sack and it has zero external branding. That’s my style.

I also love what the spearhead stands for and I love what it means. I mean, I believe in GORUCK and the values that we hold dear. I’m also happy to wrap the spearhead in big ass spearhead t-shirts and all that stuff too. You know, we’re all complex and it’s fun. I like both those communities, but they are different. Reddit and Facebook is – they’re just different. I like that they’re different.

Brian: It’s nice, right? I mean, you definitely get different opinions from both spots.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. The gear door stuff can happen on both. Reddit likes to go a little deeper most of the time on that stuff anyway.

Brian: If you’re listening to this and you haven’t been to the GORUCK sub-Reddit, you can hit that up at reddit.com/r/GORUCK and you can see what we’re talking about there.

Jason McCarthy: It’s fun. It’s a lively crew. Kudos to James for easing me into it a little bit. I like that dude a lot.

Brian: That’s awesome. It’s a great spot and I’m glad someone got you in there.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah, I enjoy it.

Brian: I have this on the question sheet, but it sounds like I already got the answer. I was wondering if the original Rucker is ever going to be making a comeback, or if everything moving forward is going to be Rucker version 2?

Jason McCarthy: The embroidered spearhead at some point maybe. I just don’t really see – the V1 it’s not bad. It’s great. I did my first event with it. I really liked it. 2.0 is as we say more better as Palmer says. More better for more people. I don’t see the 1.0 coming back. 2.0 is good.

Brian: Maybe like a 10-year anniversary throwback Rucker.

Jason McCarthy: Hey, never say never.

Brian: You mentioned in that video today that you shot that in 2018, did you say you’re signed up for 15 events that you’ll be running?

Jason McCarthy: No. I think I said a few.

Brian: A few? Okay.

Jason McCarthy: Okay, so here’ sa big event. We are doing a 50-miler, a Rucking 50-miler-only, 20 pounds, meaning 20-pound of ruck plate, or the equivalent. We’re going to start that out in DC. I don’t know when exactly it’s going to be. Thinking early summer. It could be as late as fall. The cutoff is 20 hours, which is very, very doable. Yeah, looking forward to doing that. I’ve never rucked 50 miles consecutively like that. I’m excited to do that and see how it goes.

Brian: That should be awesome. You might not know. Didn’t Palm Beach Rucking Crew just put on a 50-miler, they’re rucking for GBF?

Jason McCarthy: I did. I think that’s right. I think I did see that. I have to get some foot care tips and stuff from them, ask them which boots they wore and all that good stuff.

Brian: When I first saw that, I thought it was a typo. I thought it was 5.0 and they just forgot the period.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. It’s awesome. I don’t know. Everyone gets to vote with their wallets, of course. More importantly their time, which is I’ve done some challenges. Lots of us have done some challenges. Lots of us have done other challenging things. Yet, I think it’s time to focus on longer rucking. I mean, that’s a new challenge. 50 miles, I’ve never done it and I’ve done a lot of rucking in my day.

I want to check that one off. I think that more people will want to do it, because they’ve never done it. It will be mandatory buddy pairs, stuff like that. Other details you’ll see at launch, but this is a historical thing. Teddy Roosevelt, JFK, 50 miler. We just want to take it up a notch with 20 pounds on your back, and institutionalize and standardize it. I think it’s going to be great. I mean, it’s going to be great for me because I’m going to do it and I’m really looking forward to it.

Brian: That’s awesome.

Jason McCarthy: Blaine is going to join. Blaine is going to join as well. He’s going to do it.

Brian: Is he your buddy?

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. I was up in DC and there were a couple other – this past weekend and there were a couple other guys up there. I gave them the same warning where I’m giving you now about the 50-miler in DC. Then we’ll expand it to lots of different places. I could see them saying, “Yeah, that would be cool. I’ve never done that.” “Hey, I’ve never done that. Sounds like a terrible idea. When do I show up?” It’s cool.

It’s not too much weight. I mean, 20 pounds so you’ll probably have 30 total on your back really when you stuff on water or a snack or two. You can stop and eat if you want whatever, all that kind of stuff. It would be cool.

Brian: Awesome. Yeah, I can’t wait to see how that develops. It’s exciting to hear that you might bring that to other locations as well, because that sounds like just another new challenge. There are a lot of people who have done multiple lights, toughs, heavies. 50 miles, 20 hours?

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. 20-pound ruck plate, I should say.

Brian: Yeah. Then plus water, plus food. If you’re listening, bring water and bring food because you’ll need it.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. For sure.

Brian: Coming in 2018. Other things for 2018 constellation completely changed up. That’s exciting.

Jason McCarthy: Hey, I feel good. My vote doesn’t really matter that much anymore. You guys get to show up. As promised, constellation is more along the urban survival route. It’s all rooted in our special forces cadre what we’re able to teach people, this line about building better Americans. We hold that dear. A different scenario than maximum physical challenges and it’s more skill-based. It’s urban.

It’s a good time. My dad did it in Cincinnati this year. He’d been in a couple motorcycle accidents and stuff. He almost died. If the EMTs wouldn’t have seen him get side-swiped into the guard rail in West Virginia and I think ’99 or something, he would’ve been dead. He had a femoral bleed out. Anyway, he can’t do a GORUCK challenge, but he did constellation and it was like, “Yeah, it was cool man.” He brought some buddies. They all did it from his print shop and they all did it. It was something fun to do with his friends and they learned some stuff. Cool, right? We’re excited to bring that and that’s just different running parallel to the challenge.

Brian: Yeah. it’s definitely different from a challenge on almost all accounts. It’s great that urban survival aspect. I guess back in 2017 there was a beach beta, but there was also the beach tough beta and beach light beta over in traverse city, which seem like a survival esk version of the light and tough events.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. Last I checked, I think some of those are coming out at some point soon. I’m not sure the date, but more marathon-based. Cool.

Brian: Is it officially renamed Poseidon yet? Or is that –

Jason McCarthy: I’m not going to say officially, but I think so.

Brian: Okay. There’s a chance that those tough and light events are going to be coming out of beta for 2018?

Jason McCarthy: Yes. They’re coming out. Some cobwebs upstairs, I got to kick out. I’m not exactly sure beyond that. Yeah, they’re coming out soon.

Brian: Nice.

Jason McCarthy: There’s been some debate about how to launch that is what I’m getting at. Where do they belong in the hierarchy of things and all of that type of stuff. I think it’s more survival series and survival series are constellation plus these other kinds of series, right?

Jason McCarthy: That’s what it feels like, right? You’ve got constellations, urban survival, you’ve got this beach/possibly Poseidon event, which is water survival, then possibly who knows? Mountain survival. I mean, you could go anywhere. Desert survival, rain forest survival.

Jason McCarthy: I think that’s right. Yeah.

Brian: Who knows what those would be called. It would make sense, right?

Jason McCarthy: I actually know who knows. They’re just not in the room with me right now. I could guess, but I don’t – We tossed around a lot of different things and yeah. Anyway, I can’t give you a 100% yes or no. They’re launching soon though, which is cool.

Brian: Awesome. 2017, I mean that definitely feel like the year of apparel from a sense. From this conversation it’s seeming like 2018, at least the start might be the year of survival events. Is there –

Jason McCarthy: I would say a part of it. I mean, survival plus rucking and then we’ve got women’s apparel that’s progressing really nicely. I promised Badass Bates Community that we would have it in 2018. I’m going to hit a homerun on that one from the standpoint of timeline anyway, you all get to determine the output, but working on all of that stuff which is great. A lot of women stuff. We just don’t know how to gauge demand on it is our big problem, so I don’t think we’re going to make very much. We’ll see.

If there is a vote for what we’re building then we’ll do what we can quickly to build more. Women’s apparel. What else? Rucking events, more survival event. With the GORUCK challenge, we’re seeing a big spike in GORUCK light participants, mostly for a lot of reasons. We talked about it a little bit more, but we also lowered the price point on it. The hope is that the classes get a little bigger – big light class is just more fun, and that’s the vibe we’re going for. It’s also the best way to get people into the GORUCK community is through the event side.

I mean, we’re always happy if someone sees the gear and says, “Hey, this is badass. I want to buy it.” We would always prefer just to use and just ship to use. Trying to get more people through the light and that’s the goal. We’ll need your help and everyone’s help to wrestle up your friends. The hope is that the price point isn’t prohibitive and the vibe comes across clearly that it’s – it doesn’t have to be easy, but it is fun.

I really personally love the white. It’s probably my favorite event to lead. If I’m to lead a hundred events, I’d probably lead a lot of lights, the majority lights, because they’re less disruptive to the weekend and yet, you still get to meet with people, do it with friends. You can show up and have a good time and then you get to reconnect, or join this great community of GORUCK. I love it.

Then sometimes though you want more challenges and then there’s other events, right? Now that you’ve listed off some of these stuff, sort of I started thinking, “Wow, there has been quite a fair amount of stuff. That’s cool.”

Brian: That’s awesome. Lights are just – they’re so much fun, especially now, especially now. They got off to a, I don’t want to say rough start. They were a tough start. I remember my first light event was –

Jason McCarthy: That’s fair.

Brian: It was a difficult event. If you listened – I guess just a side note, for anyone listening who listened to the last podcast episode, which was with Mickey about GORUCK constellation, lights are very fun now. Sign up for a light event. Mickey and I went on a spiral down the original GORUCK light events.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah, it had to evolve. It’s that light 2.0 now. Maybe we should call it that.

Brian: Yeah. I mean, they’re way different than the first 50 or 60.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. Because at that point, the cadre thought, “This is awesome.” Half the time when they cram in all of the challenge, right? It had to evolve. That’s cool.

Brian: Yeah. You’ve got the equation there right. You’ve got time and you’ve got difficulty. I guess, you’ve got time, difficulty and distance. They divided time by half, but it’s like they forgot to divide the other two. They are really fun events. Maybe that’s something that can be 2019. It’s the retro lights or something, where you get the brutality and distance of a tough event crammed into five or six or eight hours.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah, let’s do it. GORUCK tougher. How do you think that would do?

Brian: I mean, I’d sign up for it.

Jason McCarthy: Maybe really well.

Brian: Yeah. We should beta one.

Jason McCarthy: Wouldn’t be that hard.

Brian: No. You’ve got I’m sure a lot of cadre who would love to get in on something like that.

Jason McCarthy: Yup.

Brian: That’s awesome. I don’t even remember how we got here, but 2018 is going to be a fun year. That’s a fact.

Jason McCarthy: I also think so.

Brian: Stepping back, there was a lot more special events in 2018 than there were in 2017, or I guess like types of special events. That’s probably a great way to drive in more people in to those lights and toughs now.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. Part of the thinking also is that it’s a forcing function. If there’s a special path, you can prize a special execution. Meaning, if a cadre shows up and there is a patch that says, I don’t know, Mog mile or whatever, whatever the special event – that’s not a good example of a new one. But if it says Normandy, or if it says Mob Wars, or if it says whatever the case may be, it’s just battle – almost gave the spoiler alert, because I think 2019, we’re looking at battle with the bulge in the first part of the year, because it’s cold and stuff.

If someone shows up and says, “Hey, this has a special patch,” then you have to do something that is with that patch. You can’t just have a cadre that says, “Hey, I’m just going to lead my event my way.” Which is a good thing. A cadre having complete autonomy is good in some cases, but you still have to have a left in a right bumper. With the special patch, there is just a forcing function and say, “Hey, build this into the concept that you need to teach someone what the battle of the Alamo is about if you’re going to do that in San Antonio, or JFK and Dallas, or in Washington, DC.” You need to do the things that make DC and JFK’s type of event. There are several.

JFK is buried there. It’s where he took his last communion. It’s where he proposed to Jackie at Martin’s Tavern, which is the best spot in DC. It’s awesome. If you’re ever there, go to Martin’s Tavern. I spent a lot of time there with my dogs on the patio and with friends inside. It’s a good spot.

That’s really the forcing function though is, hey it is fun. It’s more fun for you guys. You guys get to vote with your time and we have to make sure deliver on the promise that the patch makes. Does that make sense?

Brian: Absolutely. It’s awesome how the cadre take ownership of the events. They definitely deliver, because it’s just really cool how GORUCK is setup that way. You’ve got the list of cadre on the website and then you can see what cadre is going to be at the events. The cadre know this and participants know this. Stories about cadre get around, so everyone is trying to do their best and deliver the best event, because it definitely comes back.

Jason McCarthy: It comes back to your reputation too, right? That’s the most important thing that any of us really has, so you pour your heart into something and let the chips fall where they may, but you got to go through that planning process and you got to really give it your all.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of planning process with events, 2017 Mogadishu Mile, those events were amazing. I mean, all the veterans at the start of the event. How did you even start planning something like that? That must have been something really tough to put together.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. We’ve been running that event for a while now. We just over the years met a lot of people who were there, and the cadre know the guys who were there and there’s one cadre bellman was there as well.

It’s like people want to share their stories. This is not a crazy concept. The idea of someone is too busy, no you’re not. I mean, the idea that someone doesn’t want to. Some people don’t. I’ve got a really dear friend who is in Mogadishu, who has talked to me about a lot of other experiences he had. He says, Mogadishu is just not what I want to talk about, because I just lost too many friends there.

I just got goosebumps thinking about him saying that to me. He’s not ready to talk about that, but other people are. Everyone’s experience is a little different and we react to it differently. It’s pretty therapeutic a lot of times to get up and talk about your story. It’s hard, but it’s therapeutic as well.

People want to do it and we know those guys. If they want to do it then great. I want to hear it. I’m going to go to a Mog Mile event and there’s going to be someone who is at Mog Mile and the floor is theirs. We try our best to put together as many of those as possible. The guys that talk, talk. It is pretty cool to see pop-up in so many cities now around the country, where the people who were there are able to talk.

Brian: It was absolutely phenomenal. I showed up to take some pictures at the start of the event and I had no idea that there is going to be someone there to talk. It was wild. He actually talked a couple times. It was really powerful. That was definitely one of the things that surprised me when I showed up to an event in 2017. I mean, you guys did great with that.

Jason McCarthy: Cool. Glad you guys liked it.

Brian: Yeah. You got a lot going on in 2018.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. It’s good.

Brian: It is good. Is there anything that’s going on in 2018 that we haven’t talked about here? I feel like we’ve hit a ton of different stuff.

Jason McCarthy: I mean, Rucking events, women’s apparels, new event series. Yeah, there is a couple other things, but I just don’t want to talk about them yet.

Brian: Still on the works?

Jason McCarthy: Yeah, still on the works. Don’t know when they’re coming out. Not built out at all. We’ll see where it goes. Might not be for a long time. Because you never know when something’s ready until it is. We’ll see.

Brian: That’s right. It’s absolutely true, and something might feel 50% one day and then like a week later you’re there and it’s ready. Then other items feel 50% one day and it’s been a later and they’re only – they only feel 60% then. You never really know.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. I try to avoid the latter. Those are not fun projects. Usually those ones end up starting over.

Brian: Yeah. It’s been too long. Man, I’m very excited about 2018. Do you have any events on your list already?

Jason McCarthy: Let’s see, so I’m doing – I’m going to do this 50-miler in DC. I’m spending a little bit more time in DC, only not a lot, a lot of time, but just checking it up there some – It’s a good – love the community up there. Still have a small little place up there, so I get up there from time to time and it’s capital freedom, so that’s pretty awesome too. Doing the 50-miler up there. I might try to lead an event or two up in DC as well throughout the year.

Going back to Spokane again, I’m going to do that in August. Doing the GRT reunion in Austin in April and geez, I don’t know what else right now. Do some stuff as it comes up. Doing the battle of the Ruck clubs here and I think it’s next weekend or something, or something like that, here at headquarters in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.

Brian: It’s coming a little quick.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. It’s coming quick.

Brian: Are you excited about that one?

Jason McCarthy: Yeah. I mean, I forgot about it for the last 20 seconds. But now that I think about it, I’m super excited. Because there is a 120 people or something signed up for it. That sounds awesome.

Brian: Yeah. For those who are listening and haven’t heard of this event, it’s called The Battle of the Ruck Clubs. It’s a GORUCK light event that’s happening down at GORUCK headquarters. There’s just a ton of ruck clubs coming together for this custom event. I don’t think anyone really knows what to expect yet, but hopefully we can score an interview with Bam or something afterwards and get the details on what happened.

Jason McCarthy: I think it will go pretty well.

Brian: Yeah. It should be fun. If it goes really well, maybe we can replicate it in other cities, because there is – I know there is some cities that have a high concentration of ruck clubs, and over – at CARC there’s a number.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah, sounds good.

Brian: Yeah, well I’ve taken a ton of your time. It’s late there. I’ve got two more questions and then we can talk about if there’s anything else you want to talk about that we’ve forgotten to talk about.

Jason McCarthy: Shoot. What do you got? You got any hard questions today or no?

Brian: Define a hard question, because I can always come up with something.

Jason McCarthy: I don’t know. Something that might make me blush. It hadn’t happened in a long time, but I’ll bet you don’t.

Brian: All right. I’ll think of something tough. The first question I’ve got on here is 25-liter Rucker, is that ever coming back, or do the lucky people like me who own one, do we just have like a gem on our hands?

Jason McCarthy: Well, you definitely have a gem on your hands, but I would say, we’re in skew reduction mode right now. I think we should be using GORUCK workshop more from the standpoint of it’s a presale. It’s surprisingly hard surprising, because I wish it weren’t. That’s really my definition of surprising.

It’s surprisingly difficult to execute on a presale with hey, this is when you’re going to have it. Then execute that well. I mean, GR3 we had to pull a lot of strings at the end to get it out when we did and we were delayed. There is always a delay. When it comes to the – we have all of these archive of things and some of them we can modify a little bit, or – like a year ago, for instance the Radio ruck. We’ve got I think 300 units that we’re building right now. I think they’re coming out late Q1, early Q2, something like that.

It’s one of those things where should we do a presale for, or should we just build a limited stock and see how it goes? I don’t know. Those are the decisions that we have to make. Sometimes it feels like a bigger thing if it’s a presale with more promises and all of that type of stuff.

Anyway, I would like to see us use workshop a little bit more, but not necessarily from the customization standpoint, but from the presale standpoint. It’s just building that a little bit more into our DNA. It takes time. The 25-liter Rucker to answer your questions, if I were a betting man, I would say at some point probably, but it’s just not on our radar.

Brian: That makes total sense. I mean, presales are just tough because you presale all these items and now you’ve got an expectation on a delivery date. Even if you guys can crush everything on your end according to deadlines, I mean there’s just so many other areas, like the sew shop, the materials. Even as far as like buckle suppliers or something, like who –

Jason McCarthy: Yeah, our labels. The wrong labels get ordered and that’s two to three weeks to wait. Those are just realities. All we can really do is over communicate what that is. We thought we had built in a lot of leeway and we ended up really cutting it close as far as deadlines. I mean, that’s just where the behind-the-curtain, the relationships with the vendors that build our rucks in California and Washington state and stuff. I mean, those end up – but you have to nurture those all the time.

It’s just we’ve got a great team that’s been doing this a while. Those relationships keeps getting better. They just have to keep always getting better. We’ll see. There’s lots of little stuff out there though that we’re not hesitate to bring back. It’s not like we don’t want to sell you guys stuff if you’re going to use it and do it.

If we did do the 25-liter Rucker though, it would be an updated version with the updated layout for the ruck plate and stuff. The V1 internal stuff in the Rucker is I would be surprised if that comes back.

Brian: Nice to know. Yeah. I mean, that’s like you mentioned, it’s just – it’s a lot going on. I mean, especially for all those products every single one you bring back, I mean that’s just – that’s more time you have to spend on that. That time just got shifted away from something else.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah, from something else, something new. Look, these are all problems. I could sit here. We could have a whole show dedicated to problems and we could have cheese with our wine and all of that stuff. We’re not in the business of cheese with our wine. At the same time, it’s a fine line between never explaining anything and just pretending that things are easy, which they’re not.

My hope is is that this doesn’t come across as any type of wining. We’ll always need – that’s just not who we are. It’s not what we do. It’s just more, hey there’s a lot of factors that go into all of these and this is difficult and we don’t get to control everything. See, that’s the other part of it. Because the parts that we can control, we’re better at those than the parts we cannot control. Those are the just the factors that go into manufacturing and all of these other kinds of components to the businesses that we run.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. Once you’re dealing with people who aren’t on your – the internal core GORUCK team, then it’s – it can always get interesting.

Jason McCarthy: Cool. You had another question.

Brian: I did have another question. What was it? Oh, man.

Jason McCarthy: Hey, I do that all the time.

Brian: I know. It was there and then I just got – I got too excited about the prospect of another 25-liter Rucker, because the thing with the Rucker is that – this is my opinion and other people have – a couple other people have brought it up to me too, but the 20-liter Rucker is awesome for tough events, it’s awesome for light events, but I’ve got some friends who combine that –

Jason McCarthy: You’re talking about heavy, where you got – you bring too much stuff.

Brian: They borrow my 25 for like a winter-heavy.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah, you guys bring too much stuff. Got it.

Brian: There you go. I mean, the 20 liters I cap there, so make sure you don’t bring – don’t bring too much extra junk.

Jason McCarthy: I mean, a part of me wants to just say GORUCK selection for instance is 20-liter Ruckers required. You can bring your own, or you can just borrow one from us. I mean, it’s like a part of me wants to say that, because – we probably won’t. But if these people bring these big rucks all over the place, I mean just bring less stuff. It’s not that hard.

Brian: What’s the most ridiculous someone has brought to GORUCK selection?

Jason McCarthy: A baguette.

Brian: For real? Okay.

Jason McCarthy: Yes. I think it was a bag of bread and baguette and all that stuff. I mean, it’s like I’ve seen – after almost seen it all, right? It was, “Hey, I’m going to put my meal in a plastic bag for when I can get it or whatever.” It’s before we just said, “Hey, bring an MRE.” He had some bread or baguette or something in their bag. I mean, it just never ceases to amaze me how someone can sign up for that event, GORUCK selection and then not go through the packing list.

I saw it a little bit in Special Forces, or in the training, special force qualification course. You see people that aren’t really there. They’re not really in it to win it, so they don’t read the pack and list. No attention to detail, whoops. Just is what it is.

Brian: That’s tough. I mean, I feel like you’re spending the – well, that is the GORUCK selection. If you’re spending the money on the ticket to be there that you don’t want to check over the packing list.

Jason McCarthy: You would think.

Brian: Yeah. You would think.

Jason McCarthy: You would think.

Brian: Is there anything else you want to cover before we get going? I mean –

Jason McCarthy: Do you think of that hard question yet, or are we ready to break?

Brian: See, any question for you that other people would consider hard. I mean, I feel like it just rolls right off you. You’ve got something – You are who you are.

Jason McCarthy: Well, the hardest like what’s the most condemning thing someone could say about anything we do? Roll that up into a question and let’s talk about it.

Brian: Condemning thing. While I think of the most condemning thing. When is trek coming back?

Jason McCarthy: I don’t think trek ever even existed, Brian.

Brian: I mean, outside if you guys are selling trek on a t-shirt, which is it’s probably just a joke, right? The event that never existed.

Jason McCarthy: I don’t know. I think constellation is the feeder to that. It depends upon that. I mean, we always lost money on trek. It was fun and we’re still talking about it to community. I had lots of feedback at the time, but now everyone loves it. It’s one of those events.

Brian: Charge more for it.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah, I guess.

Brian: Limit the number of participants and charge more. Roll it through GORUCK workshop.

Jason McCarthy: Yeah, something like that.

Brian: There you go. Trek rolled through GORUCK workshop. If you don’t hit 20 sign-ups, that’s all you’re doing, then event is not happening. If you do, then we get trek.

Jason McCarthy: More workshop. I like it.

Brian: I can’t think of any condemning questions.

Jason McCarthy: Good. I feel you struggling. It’s almost like we’re out of GORUCK challenge.

Brian: I know.

Jason McCarthy: Think good, man. Look, here is my point. It’s like I would rather just get things out there. If there is some burning question in someone’s mind – People come in here and I don’t – we’ve known each other a while so I’m happy to ask you that kind of stuff. People come in to GORUCK all the time and it’s like, “Hey, how did you find about it?”

I don’t want to become removed from the people, like GORUCK Nation. That’s why I love going to events. I love showing up for ruck club this, or ruck club that. You’re plugged in to the community. There are big things that we should talk about, let’s just talk about them. This doesn’t have to be difficult, right? We’re not sitting here plotting on how to do careable things and everything that comes with that.

There are a lot of values that we hold dear and we do our best to live that life, and we’re proud of what we’re building together. We’re proud of all of the miles that people are doing together. We’re proud of how people meet more people and maybe spend a little bit less time in front of the screen and maybe a little bit more time with their friends.

We’re proud to see people empowered. That’s really fun for us to watch. Sometimes there is a, “Hey, why did you do this?” Or, “Hey, why did you do that?” It doesn’t need to be the elephant in the room.

Brian: That’s the thing, right?

Jason McCarthy: If there’s a question asking me – I’m not just saying to you. It’s sort of, “Hey, if there is an elephant, let’s talk about it.” There is a reason. If there’s not a reason, then I’ll tell you that we either messed up, or that’s just the way it was, or something like that. That doesn’t happen very often.

There are always decisions you have to make. It’s not always black and white. It’s not always perfect tradeoffs. There’s a lot of ways to get from point A to point B, but you don’t always get to have your cake and eat it too.

I just see a lot of things out there about – I mean, the easiest one to default to is price, or all these things. It’s like, yeah you build something really high-quality, it costs more. I mean, that’s the easy example, but it’s not a – it’s been around for so long, it’s like I get it. It’s really expensive. At this point, it is what it is.

I guess, my only ask which one of you is – if there are ever big things that come up, the elephants in the room or something, I’m happy to talk about them. I hope they are not, which is what I’m hearing from you. That’s good. That means that we’re doing our job well. If we stop doing our job well, then we need to take a step back and then we need to start doing our job better, which usually means over-communicating what the reasons are on things and engaging people at a realer level. That’s good news.

Brian: Yeah. I think one of the big things about it is that whenever anyone has an issue – I mean, the place that I frequent probably the most is reddit.com/r/GORUCK, you’re there. If someone brings something up and then you’re like the third comment on the thread explaining exactly why something happened or why something is the way it is. It’s just been awesome, because I don’t think anything’s ever able to become an elephant in the room, because you’re so tapped into the GORUCK community that –

Jason McCarthy: Let’s talk about this one. I was on the Reddit – I was actually Rucking the Grand Canyon. I’ll say it again, I think for the third time, hiking is just rucking in the mountains. Rucking is the umbrella, hiking is underneath it. There is this whole thread about GORUCK’s e-mail marketing and all this stuff sucks and it’s terrible and all these stuff. That’s not one that I really delve into. I found it fascinating.

My initial reaction was to say, the next e-mail will be twice as long. If you don’t like it, unsubscribe. I peel that back a little bit and I never posted anything. It’s more like, look if there’s a lot of people out there and everyone has an opinion and we’re happy to hear almost all of them. What it boils down to though is if you want strip mall marketing, go find a strip mall brand.

Part of the hopefully its charm, sometimes you might not like it, sometimes we miss the mark. We’re not perfect. I’m not perfect. But we’re willing to wear our heart on our sleeve a bit. We’re going to talk about the values we hold dear, and we’re willing to put our time and our money and our efforts and our team’s efforts in what we talk about. You never know what you’re going to get.

Sometimes you’ll get an e-mail that’s, “Hey, maybe New Year’s resolution isn’t the right way to say it. Maybe you should go do something –” not be shamed into running more that you’re not going to do, or shamed into a $200 gym membership that you’re never going to use. That maybe you should take a big adventure and do that, which I’m really happy that I’m doing this year. Done that without defaulting to it over the past years, so to say.

I’ve seen all of that and I read it. Sometimes I say it influences me one way or the other a little bit. I mean, I think with e-mail marketing, I think as a business as we mature we probably do need to segment out who gets the monthly national or bi-monthly newsletter and who gets more newsletters. That’s a reasonable thing. Not everybody wants everything all the time. I get it. Some people are more on the periphery, some are on the inside and you have to segment that out a little bit. Great.

I think we’re actually in the early stages of growing that out if I’m not mistaken. I think there was a note about that in our most recent Rucker launch e-mail. There’s some of that stuff going on, but ultimately if you strip mall marketing, go find a strip mall brand.

It’s always, hey here is a beautiful picture with a 30% off. What do you stand for doesn’t matter. 30% off. I mean, stuff like that. The world needs fewer of those brands and the world needs more brands that stick to their guns that really have something to say, that have values that want to share and experience with people that also want to share an experience and like the experience that we’re sharing.

We strive to be one of those kinds of brands and not one of the kinds of brands that if you can call them a brand. You’re on some marketer’s e-mail list and that’s how they reach you, and you can buy if you want. Or maybe go to Amazon, or buy the same thing. Or you can price hunt and do all of these stuff.

I’m not against a good deal. I get all of that stuff. I don’t aspire to be one of those brands. I want us to really mean something and do something really important. Be a part of a revolution that changes the world, that brings people together more, that gets people out, more active that gets people more empowered.

That’s fun for us. Like I said, the next e-mail might be twice as long and it might have a picture. It might have none. It might have 12 pictures a monster. Might have 27 pictures a monster. Your dad might struggle to load, there might be so many awesome pictures a monster. I don’t know.

Sometimes we want to do something and we do it. It’s pretty simple. That’s really what goes on. Yes, there is other sort of campaigns that are built-in to a cycle and that’s great and we send those out too. Sometimes things come up and we do those too, which is great.

Brian: Do you know what e-mail reminded me off?

Jason McCarthy: What?

Brian: It reminded me of the blog back in 2012, 2013 when it was just you writing it. I thought it was – I mean, personally that’s what threw me back to. It was awesome. I remember that was just – whenever anyone brings that up in my head, that’s just your writing style. That’s just Jason writing. That’s how all those posts were back then.

Jason McCarthy: People like it, people don’t. Maybe I’ll put a few more periods here or there throughout the years. I don’t know. Maybe post something big, writing a rucking book this year too, by the way. Spending a lot of time on that. That’s the final little nugget, I guess, if you will. Look, our people are great. I’m happy to have all these conversations.

Everybody does have an opinion, but not everybody shares where their opinion is coming from. That’s the challenge in some of these forums. I really only get with two with the tough group and Reddit. Reddit is just a 100% anonymous for most of the people, which makes it a different challenge. The tough group, it’s pretty easy because it’s Facebook to figure out who someone is. You’re responsible for your post to some degree. Reddit, not so much. I like both. I like both platforms, but they are different like that.

Brian: Yeah, they’re definitely different.

Jason McCarthy: All right, Brian. I got to run, because I got to get home by 7, or else I’m going to be in trouble. I’m going to bike fast on the way home. It’s been awesome to chat with you and it’s been awesome to connect with GORUCK Nation through you. Thanks man.

Brian: Thank you. It’s been great catching up. Get home quick, man. Good luck.

Jason McCarthy: All right. Thanks, bud. Good times.

Brian: All right. Take care.

The post ADR 033: Jason McCarthy (GORUCK Founder 2017 Recap & 2018 Looking Forward) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

In this interview we’ve got Cadre Mickey dropping knowledge about the changes being made to the GORUCK Constellation events. It was great to have the opportunity to chat with him and hopefully you enjoy the stories in addition to the information in the episode.

Cadre Mickey has been part of the GORUCK Expeditions event team and was a key player in the Constellation series in 2017. For 2018 Mickey is the go-to Cadre for everything related to Constellation… which is one of the reasons we are so excited to have this interview.

Thanks so much for listening! If you missed any of our earlier episodes you can give them a listen right now. Hopefully you enjoyed the podcast and are excited about the next one. This is very new to us so we would appreciate it if you would cut us some slack as we work on perfecting our methodologies. Did you enjoy the podcast? We’d love a review on iTunes or even our Facebook Page! Didn’t enjoy it? Leave a comment here in the show notes and let us know what we can do better!

Thanks so much for the support and make sure to check out the links in the Show Notes. Subscribe through iTunes, Android, Google Music, Stitcher, or TuneIn and never miss another episode!

Brian: Today I’m talking with Cadre Mickey who was instrumental in revamping the GORUCK Constellation events from 2017 into 2018. There has been just a ton of work done it seems moving those events over, lots of new modules. I know both Jason and Blain have commented on it a couple of times. So I’m really excited that Mickey has taken the time out of his day to chat with me and to just talk about what to expect in 2018 with GORUCK Constellation.

Cadre Mickey, how are you doing today?

Mickey: Not too bad, man. Thanks for having me on here. I hope to get out some good information for you guys.

Brian: Absolutely. So for those who don’t know or have never done an event with you before, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself?

Mickey: Yeah. I’m a former Reconnaissance Marine. I was in from 2003 to 2008. During that time, all the work was over in Iraq, so that’s why I went to work over in Iraq.

Brian: Got you. How long have you been a cadre for GORUCK?

Mickey: I don’t have it down to the day. Before 4-1/2 to 5 years. I’ve been around for a while.

Brian: That’s exciting. You’ve seen GORUCK evolve from just a couple of styles of events to what they’ve got now.

Mickey: Yeah, totally. I remember when we first started running Lights and nobody really knew what they were. We just hammered people for six hours and cut our mileage in half. That was what a Light was I remember it first. But yeah, things have definitely evolved quite a bit.

Brian: Yeah. I think my first Light was 8 hours long and I think we had double digits in miles.

Mickey: Yeah. A couple of my first ones were basically a tough mileage. I just moved to them a lot faster.

Brian: That’s awesome. Yeah, back then, Lights — If you’re listening and you haven’t done a GORUCK Light, they’ve definitely changed a lot from what they’re like when they first came out. Don’t let this scare you from signing up for your first GORUCK Light.

Mickey: We just scared everybody.

Brian: They were definitely a different beast at the beginning.

Mickey: Yeah, they’re awesome now. I think — I like them before, but I think they’ve gone to a really good place and they’re definitely a great event for people that are a little unsure about the whole GORUCK experience. I think it’s a great first exposure. There are a lot — They’re super fun to run as a cadre.

Brian: Yeah, they seem like they are great intro to GORUCK now.

Mickey: Yeah.

Brian: Before they were a great intro to what a GORUCK Tough would be if you just had four more hours, but now it’s a good intro to the overall GORUCK experience.

Mickey: Yeah, definitely.

Brian: You’ve been a cadre for GORUCK between 4-1/2 to 5 years. So that takes it back when GORUCK was still a fairly young company. How did you learn about or hear about GORUCK back then?

Mickey: Honestly, it was a birthday present. I got a TAC hat in the birthday present. I’m just checking on the tag, because it was a nice hat and everything, and went on the website and out of the country at the time and then I hit on my buddies. They were still in the States and decided, “Hey, let’s do one of these challenges when we get back to the states.” That was how it all kicked off. I didn’t really — Well, come to find out I didn’t know somebody in the company, but at that point I had no idea other than that they made nice gear and their events looked cool.

Brian: Yeah, back then the website isn’t what it is today. I think right now there’s a picture of every cadre out there with a nice description, and I know back then it was a little more sparse than that.

Mickey: Yeah, it was a little bit more secretive. You had no idea who your cadre was going to be until they showed up at the start point. Even then, the only information we had on them was what they spoke about at that time. Yeah, it was very different.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. You signed up for your first GORUCK event. Back then, it was just the challenge. There wasn’t the Light. I don’t think there was even a Heavy. I think it was just a challenge, right?

Mickey: There was a challenge, and then I think the extradition events were maybe they had run couple of them and I think there was selection. Selection was the grand one at that point.

Brian: I think the first Ascent was back in 2012. So I think we were at the challenge, Ascent and Selection.

Mickey: Yeah.

Brian: And not that much information about anything at the time. So you signed up for your first event with some friends. What did you think about it?

Mickey: Yeah. Well, so I signed up for the challenge in Sta. Barbara, California and as time got closer, my friends that were supposedly going to do it with me, they one-by-one kind of fell off. On the actual night of the event, I was the only one left to go standing there. But it was awesome. My cadre was Bo, who, funny story about Bo, Bo and I deployed together and I had no idea that he was going to be my cadre or anything like that. I didn’t even really recognized him at first. It took the majority of the night until the sun came up the next day before we realized that we knew each other. It was a good time. It was definitely more than not what I was expecting. Again, there was no information about anything really at that point. It was a ruck event, so I kind of assumed it was going to be a ruck run. So that’s what I trained for.

Then Bo took us down to the beach and ran a pretty nice welcome party down at the beach and I hadn’t gone through anything, I guess, since I’ve been back in. It sucked, but it was a lot of fun at the same time. It brought back a lot of memory.

Brian: That’s awesome. I had a similar experience for my first event. Signed up with a bunch of friends, and then come the day of the event, you’re the only one standing there.

Mickey: Yeah. Happened to a lot I feel like.

Brian: It does, but it’s kind of fun going into an event and knowing no one there, because you’re forced to make friends with everyone else who’s on your team. You don’t have a smaller team or clique to fall back on or anything.

Mickey: Yeah, totally. That’s very true. I think I can think of two guys off from the top of my head that I did that event with that I still talk to today. It’s a little bit different now, because they’re usually one of the participants in my events. But it’s cool, the bond that’s going through that type of stuff creates, which is honestly one of my favorite parts about this whole GORUCK thing.

Brian: Absolutely. The events are really fun in their own sense, but the community that’s created from them is definitely something special.

Mickey: Yeah.

Brian: You took part in your first and sometime between that first event and now, you decided that you wanted to be a cadre for GORUCK. How did you make that decision and what was the first event that you ran?

Mickey: That decision actually came after my event. Bo and I, we then grabbed some lunch and a few beers after the event and he was telling about the cool GORUCK thing and the cadre position and offered the position for me or at least opportunity to become a cadre, and it sounded awesome. It obviously it,I’ve been doing it for almost 5 years. But that’s when I chose to become a cadre.

I did my train up down in Sta. Monica, but my first solo event was actually — It was a Light. It was a custom Light. I don’t know — Madison, Wisconsin. It was a custom Light. Again, I had no idea what a Light was. They told me, “Hey, just cut your miles in half and cut your time in half.”

This custom Light — This core office, there was three guys in the office that kind of had my idea what was going on and they were pumped about it. I think they were the ones that kind of volunteered everybody else to do it. But the rest of the people in the office had no idea and were not prepared, whatsoever, and so it was a pretty brutal beat down for them. But yeah, that was my first solo event. Yeah, that was — Yeah, it was pretty —. I had one lady started crying, like, “Holy crap!” But it was a good time. That was my first event.

Brian: That’s wild, and I’m guessing you’re spot on there. There’s probably one or two people at that office that I had done an event before and got everyone else signed up.

Mickey: Yeah, exactly. Like, “I got a great idea.” That was cool. After the event, everybody is pretty pumped as always.

Brian: Yeah, I don’t know how you felt after your first event, but after my first event at least, I didn’t think I was ever going to do another GORUCK event. That was back in August of 2011 and it took like two days or maybe a day and a half before I was like, “All right. I could probably do another event,” and then three days after that I was feverishly looking on the website for when they were going to be back in Seattle next year.

Mickey: Man, I hear that so much as a cadre. That everybody is like — And that’s what everybody — Like all the GRTs are always telling the new guys, like, “Yo! You don’t think you’re going to want to do another one, but just wait. Give it about a week.” That’s definitely true.

I think that just stems from the sense of accomplishment too. Now, there’s tons of videos and people I feel like increasing kind of knowing what to expect, but back in the day, I used to tell my classes this too, like if I — Whatever the start time was, 1 a.m., if at 1 a.m. I told you what I was going to give you and how long it’s going to take and how far you were going to move, the majority of you would have said, “There’s no way I can do this,” and probably walked away. But now that you’re on the end of it and you’re looking back at what you’ve done, you realize that you are capable of doing so much more than you give yourself credit for, and that’s an extremely important mental tool, I think, going through life. Not just — I mean, honestly for us, coming from different combat jobs, but no matter what you do in this world, if you have that mentality that you can push farther than you give yourself credit for, that’s going to make you successful in whatever you do. I think that’s why people keep coming back, is that sense of accomplishment and realization and it feels good.

Brian: It does, and the pain from the event subsides after a couple of days, but that the sense of accomplishment, it’s just about that 4, 5 day mark where all the shadows have started uploading all the pictures and you’ve got —

Mickey: Yeah.

Brian: You’ve got no more pain and you’ve got all of the accomplishments. You’ve got everything going for you to sign up for another event.

Mickey: Yup.

Brian: A couple of more questions before we get into Constellation. Some cadre love running Light events. I know others just love Heavies. That’s their game. Are there any events that you tend to gravitate towards?

Mickey: Events where I can teach. I was on the expedition team. We were doing the Navigators and the Ascents. Now, I’m in charge with Constellation. Any events where people can come in and I can actually teach them skills that I learned — Or I mean you’re always learning these skills, but I can give them some of my knowledge and pass them on so they can go and do whatever they want to do. That’s awesome. I love doing that. Those are my favorite types of events.

On the flipside, I still like a good Heavy too. You know what I mean? I don’t mind going out and running, just crushing Heavy and really once in a while to keep my reputation intact, I guess.

Brian: That’s awesome, and it’s probably a different sense of pride you get from running each event. In one you’re teaching people skills, and it’s cool. Seeing people grasp them and use them, but in a Heavy, seeing people just come through those grueling events and come out in the other side, it’s truly something to see and experience.

Mickey: Yeah, definitely. I guess they’re similar in the way that like there’s always a realization as people are going to the event. Yeah, they’re two completely different realizations and come in very different levels on the pain chart, I guess.

Brian: Absolutely. Probably as polar opposite as you can get, nearly.

Mickey: Seriously.

Brian: I reached out to BD and he’s the senior director of events and asked him who I should talk to about the changes made to GORUCK Constellation in 2018. He threw your name out there, which is why you’re here on the podcast. Thanks again for being on here. What has been your role in shaping the 2018 Constellation events?

Mickey: Pretty significant. I’ve designed and written the majority of the modules, designed the timeline, been working with HQ on getting all the stuff approved, getting the timeline. Sending them up and having them look at it, taking their suggestions and doing the modification that I had to. That’s not to say that I did it all by myself. During the 2017 Constellation, we developed liked a pretty solid crew of consulates and cadre. At the end of 2017 — Or not the end of it, but when I began working on the new curriculum for 2018, I reached out to those guys and asked for their input on this stuff as well. Not all of these new ideas were mine. I just take everybody’s input and put it in a nice little package and then got it approved on HQ.

Brian: That’s awesome. So did you have any involvement in the forming or the execution of those 2017 Constellation events?

Mickey: Yes, I did. When Constellation first came about, it was actually myself and a couple of other cadres from the expedition’s crew. They were kind of tasked with taking the survival stuff we would teach you to navigate it and applying it to an urban setting. I was involved in that in the very beginning, and then everything shook out, I ended up being put in charge of the Constellation event, 2017, and then as we moved through 2017, I don’t know if you’ve heard about the Beta or if you were there at one of the Betas, but if you looked at the event that we ran during the Beta to what we ran in New Orleans the last event in 2017, it was completely different. There’s a lot of work. I read through a lot of AARs, I talked to a lot of the cadre that were teaching classes and we did a lot of work to make sure that we were at the good spot for 2017.

Brian: That’s great, and I didn’t hear too much about that event, so I have to dig into it a little bit. When Constellation 2017 was announced for the cadre to be a part of, was that something you’re excited about? Was that an opportunity that you’re like, “Yes! Constellation is something I definitely want to be doing.”

Mickey: Yes and no. I was a little worried about urban settings. I’m an outdoors guy. So I love the Navigators, I love them, and I was worried that we weren’t going to be able to do the same kind of stuff in an urban setting. That fear was completely unfounded. There’s so much stuff we can do in an urban setting that’s so much fun. Don’t get me wrong. I still love the outdoors, but I can have just as much fun in an urban setting as well. Yeah. To answer your question, I was just pumped to be part of something new and have that challenge of creating something that the GRTs like and that I can put a lot of work into.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely, and it definitely seems like it was an overall positive experience in 2017. I mean just a number of people who showed up for Constellation events was insane. I think the Seattle Constellation event had more participants than any other event in Seattle for 2017.

Mickey: Yes. Seattle, I think we had over a hundred for that one, and it’s kind of crazy looking back on 2017. We had 25 different cities, and I think at least half of those cities have close to a hundred participants. There’s definitely — That was a learning thing for us as cadre too, like how many normal legacy events do you go to, whether it’s a hundred+ participants. But that was kind of — We’re not only dealing with the 100 something people. We’re also having to teach them and effectively teach them some stuff. That was one of the things we learned and figured out too during 2017.

Brian: That’s got to be tough too, right? I don’t think — I’ve only been to one GORUCK event that I can recall that had over 100 people, and that was the first ABSOC in San Diego. It was kind of a special event, which makes sense by so many people had turned out. Usually, just 15 to 30, maybe 40 people and trying to teach a couple of dozen people is way different than trying to teach 140.

Mickey: Yeah. We figured it down. I think we do it in a very effective way, and really what it boils down to is the knowledge and the professionalism of the other cadre on the Constellation crew. Being able to split a crew up and have three different classes going on at the same time and making sure that every group is having the same information on the same timeline is not an easy task. It’s a little stressful at times, but it’s something that we realized that we need to do make sure that the participants were having the best possible time they could and all my Constellation team stepped up and made it happen. I’m really happy with how it all went out.

Brian: Awesome. So at one point during 2017 did you decide that Constellation 2018 was something that you definitely wanted to be a big part of?

Mickey: It seems Constellation picked up steam. I had a solid crew. It was definitely something that I knew I wanted to continue on with. I don’t know if I have an exact event or exact State, but fairly soon to it. When it really started — We hit our stride and we were getting awesome AARs and people are coming to us and telling us how much they learned, and especially with the a lot of new participants, new people at GORUCK like completely coming out and saying they’re having a great time. That’s when I really knew that this is an event that is fun for us to run as cadre and then we were doing a lot of good work on these cities. At that point I was like, “At 2018, we got to keep creating.”

Brian: That was one of the interesting things I noticed with Constellation in 2017 is that it seemed like the majority of the people who came out to those events weren’t GRT. They were people who had somehow heard about it and signed up for it, but it wasn’t like a GRT reunion, which is kind of what I expected it to be.

Mickey: No, that’s completely true. There was a ton of new people. I haven’t seen — In the beginning of the event you ask, “Who here this is your first GORUCK event?” blah-blah-blah. I hadn’t seen that many hands come up when I ask that question for a very long time. That was awesome. You definitely still had that GRT reunion group as well, because for a lot of the old school GRTs that were like, “I’m retired from the Heavies.” The Constellation is something they could come out and hang out and not have to worry about carrying a log for however many miles. Do you know what I mean?

It’s cool, and I think a lot of that stem to we advertised it for — There’s always been a little bit of advertising when it comes to GORUCK events, but that was something that HQ decided they were going to do. They put together a cool video and all that other stuff, and I think that was a way for us to kind of reach out and grab the attention of folks that aren’t on the tough page or the normal means of communication, which was cool.

Brian: Absolutely. It was really well put together. You guys did a great job advertising that. So 2018 welcomes a brand new Constellation event called Constellation 6. What prompted the creation of that event and what can people expect from a Constellation 6?

Mickey: Constellation 6 was something that we toyed with the idea last year, 2017, but we decided to shelve it until 2018. Much as the 12-hour allowed us to take the 24-hour to the next level last year. So the 6-hour is going to feel along the same skill level-wise as 12-hour was last year. We were able to adjust the timeline and tweak our modules to where someone that’s never done one can come in the 6-hour and walk away with the confidence of that, “Hey, I have the basic skills I need to keep myself or my loved ones safe.”

The people that did the 12 last year, they might see a little bit of overlap as far as information goes, but the way that we’re going to develop it, the way we’re going to test people on it, press them out on it, that is all going to be changed. So it’s going to be a good time. Also, it’s going to be during the day. It starts at 9 a.m. in the morning on a Saturday. So maybe some of the folks that weren’t excited about staying up all night to learn this stuff can attend. Now, they can come out to the 6 hour which is a more convenient time. I’m really excited for the 6 hour. I think it’s going to really fun.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. I think you hit the nail on the head right there with at least what I see. Having it during the day will definitely open it up to a new group of people who aren’t too keen on being out all night or unable to be out all night. So that should definitely be pretty interesting.

So would it be worthwhile for people who have already completed a Constellation event in 2017 to register for our Constellation 6 event?

Mickey: Yeah, I think so. I mean anybody that’s gone to the Constellation in 2017 know that it’s a great skill set. Having the mindset, having that peace of mind, the calmness of the mind to where you do find yourself in extremely stressful situation. You don’t freeze. The disaster mindset as we call it. It’s huge.

So it’s just like training to be a boxes, training muay-thai or something like that. You sit there and you keep watching those videos and you can go do one class and do all that stuff, but you’re never really going to feel secure in your skillset if you don’t get into a ring and get punched in the face. Do you know what I mean? If you don’t experience that stress, then how do you know you’re going to be able to perform what you’ve practiced and watched and studied in a stressful environment? Yeah, definitely. Coming off the 6 to kind of refresh those skills as well as put yourself under different stressors is huge to really mastering these skillsets.

Brian: Absolutely. I can relate to that. I’ve trained muay-thai for years and there was nothing like that first time that you get into a ring even for sparing and you take a nice combo to the face. It like just opens up a whole new world of, “Oh!”

Mickey: Yeah, exactly. They’re like, “Now what do I do?”

Brian: Yeah.

Mickey: You know what I mean?

Brian: Absolutely. I know exactly what you mean. It’s perfect. In 2017, there was Constellation and Constellation 24. We’ve struck out the 2018 Constellation calendar and it seems like Constellation morphed into Constellation 12. A lot of the modules looks like have changed up quite a bit. How much overlap would you say there is between the 2017 Constellation event and the 2018 Constellation 12 event?

Mickey: Almost none. We will do a very quick refreshes on those, we call the basic survival skills refresher, and that’s one of the first modules that we’ll go over in the 12 hour. Then after that, it is completely new material. We’re introducing a lot of new stuff, stuff that just based off the feedback I got from 2017 stuff — I’m excited about it. It’s going to be fun to teach. It’s going to make the event more exciting, more fun, and we’re starting — Like I said before, because we’re covering that basic stuff in the 6, we can get in the little bit more in-depth stuff during the 12. Maybe not as in-depth as we will in the 24, but definitely more in-depth in what we were doing last year.

Brian: That’s awesome. I’m excited. I’ve seen some of the modules on the website and some of them just like awesome. So speaking of Constellation 6 and Constellation 12, I noticed that the events are stacked in a way that you could do Constellation 6, you could maybe grab a quick nap and a bite to eat and then you could do Constellation 12. Is that something that you would recommend people who are interested doing, kind of like a Tough to a Light, the TL, or is that something that you wouldn’t recommend?

Mickey: Yeah, I totally recommend it, and I kind of — We switched the whole 12 and 6 hour border for that very reason. Maybe I have someone that has never done any of these stuff before. They can come do the 6 and then if it’s something they’re really interested in, they can do the 6. They can get a really, really good grasp on those basic survival skills, then do a little refresher for the 12 and then keep rolling on and gaining that knowledge and those skillsets throughout the night with the 12.

Yeah, I hope people come on, do the 6 and 12. I think it’s really cool to hang out with everybody for a whole day, but we’ll see. We’ll see what people want to do.

Brian: It’s a great idea. Speaking of which, GORUCK should bring back the MLCH, the Meathead and Light, Tough, Heavy. Try and rope some people into a Light and roll them into the Tough.

Mickey: Yeah. We’ve talked about. There’s whispers of it in the hallways, I guess.

Brian: Yeah. I don’t know how many total of those they ran. I know they ran one in Washington State.

Mickey: Yeah. That was Cadre Ed, correct? I think he was kind of the —

Brian: Yup. Yeah, he ran point on that. From what I hear, it was definitely interesting starting with a Light and ending with the Heavy.

Mickey: Yeah. That’s a different kind of mindset.

Brian: I think we’ve talked about this already, but there’s just a ton of new skills being taught in 2018. So people who — If you’re listening and you did take part in Constellation in 2017, by signing up for 2018, you’re not going to get just a repeat of what you had. I hope we’ve made that point clear that it’s going to be a ton of new skills, very little overlap besides that refresher at the beginning. I’m excited and I hope a lot of people are listening to this that gets them excited about 2018 Constellation as well.

So I believe personally that the skills you learn in courses like Constellation are lost when they’re not used. We talked about those boxing, muay-thai, those types of skills. I think your thoughts are the same with mine, that signing up for courses like this yearly to keep those skills sharp is a solid idea.

Mickey: Yeah, I completely agree. Everybody is like, “Oh! You just want us to keep out to your event.” Yeah, obviously, because I came out to you guys. But it’s also — And you say to yourself, like these skills are perishable and it’s different. One of the AARs I read was like, “I can go sit at home and watch YouTube videos on all these stuff.” I’m like, “Yeah, you definitely can, but how are you going to test yourself on how well you actually absorb those skills?” because you can ask anybody that come out to these events, they tell you firsthand like, “You know, I’ve seen videos, I’ve read how to do this, but actually doing it, it seemed, what it actually entailed is a whole new thing.” You have that going for you.

Then we add in stressors. That’s — For a cadre, that’s more stuff we’re really good at it, so it’s not a thing. Not only are you acquiring all these skills on a hands-on method, but you’re also having to perform those skills that you just learned in a stressful environment. That boosts the confidence of your skills. Heaven forbid you ever do find yourself in a survival situation, you’ll have that confident and you’ll have that peace of mind and that kind of clarity, your calmness that you need to actually perform to be able to do these skills.

Coming back and doing this stuff over and over again and re-stressing yourself out, I think it’s critical to really mastering these skills. Like you said, just like with muay-thai, you don’t go spar once and you say, “All right, that’s good. I’m ready to go,” but you spar over and over and over again and constantly improve and become more fluid. You become more calm and just improve overall. So I think that applies to this as well.

Brian: I think another piece on it too is that in a situation where you’ll need the majority of the GORUCK Constellation skills, there’s a solid chance that YouTube is going to be down or you’re not going to have access to a phone or a laptop, and if you do, like do you really want to be spending what little battery you have left YouTube-ing videos on how to do whatever?

Mickey: Yeah. No, that’s exactly — I forgot who I was talking to one time. He made the joke, he’s like, “I like hunting, but usually where the deer are, I don’t have service, so I don’t know how to clean the deer after I shoot it, because I can’t watch the YouTube videos,” or something like that. At that point I was laughing.

Brian: Yeah, that’s funny. Yeah, that’s just — It goes back to just practice, practice, practice and getting those real stressors in there, because I guarantee that the stressors that the cadre put on will be nothing like — Or maybe not nothing like, but they won’t be at the intensity level as a real-world stressors where you would need the skills you learn in Constellation. So it’s good to have that little bit there to ramp up, so if you do need it, you’ve got at least a base.

We’ve talked about a ton — There’s a ton of changes in GORUCK Constellation coming in 2018, which is very exciting. What have been some of the changes that you’ve been most excited about, or that you are really interested in teaching?

Mickey: There’s been a couple of. Now that we don’t have to teach how to start a fire, how to clean water. I won’t go over it, but we don’t have to spend as much time on it. We can get into kind of the foraging and using what you foraged to build really useful tools, right? Having the ability to see at night in little light situations is huge. We can get into the stuff like that. We can get into a little of the defensive stuff. We’re not going to get into hand-in-hand or hand-to-hand combat yet, but we can definitely get into some stuff that you can build from very simple materials that protect yourself, give yourself that little extra second and then escape in a bait situation.

On the flipside of that, we’re also going to get into some really cool medical stuff. I finished reading a book while I was designing the module, but where there is no doctor, it’s about — Or these places down in like South America where they don’t have a lot of Western medicine or access to it. How they cope with it? I learned a lot of really cool stuff. So being able to go in and teach that is going to be a lot of fun, I think.

Then we’re going to get into more health stuff as far as when you’re foraging for food or you’re catching food, how to correctly prepare that to make sure it doesn’t make you sick. The way that we’re going to teach that and the way we’re going to test that is going to be really fun. I’m looking forward to it. It’s going to be a good time.

Brian: That’s awesome. I’m excited for all of that. I think the conflict stuff will be interesting too.

Mickey: Yeah, definitely.

Brian: I don’t know if you hold the same feeling, but generally in — Maybe not like these types of situations, but in most situations, evading and escaping is preferable to fighting.

Mickey: Yeah.

Brian: If there’s one thing that doing muay-thai and boxing, that kind of stuff has taught me, it’s that people who don’t expect to be that strong or that skilled can be very strong and very skilled.

Mickey: Yeah. There’s always that freaking, the ringer if you will. You don’t see it coming. Just beats the crap out of you. Yeah, in a survival situation — Yeah, I completely agree with what you’re saying. It’s definitely — You’re better off just getting out of there so the short guy that’s just sitting quietly in the corner doesn’t kick the crap out of you. In a survival situation, who knows? You might not have the antibiotics or the way to prevent an infection from even just bust the knuckles. You punched somebody, you bust your knuckles up and they get infected. In a survival situation, that can be huge.

Brian: Absolutely. I remember the first time, a 280, 290 pound person head-kicked me and I’m 6”2’, 6”3’, it was like, “Whoa! Not everything is at it seems.”

Mickey: Yeah, exactly.

Brian: That’s great advice. Yeah, I mean, you bust up your knuckles, they’re bleeding, they get infected. What do you do? Now you have to raid a hospital or something, which will probably bring up more conflict. It’s just so much safer to play it smart, I guess.

Mickey: You know, and you’re not always going to be by yourself. You might be, and I think it’s a lot easier situation, but if you’re not, if you’re moving with your family and children or maybe someone that’s not physically or as physically capable like you are, maybe you could handle getting into a fistfight, but are they going to be able? So that’s going to change the dynamics of that conflict if you can. Just worry about yourself. You have to worry about those that you’re trying to protect as well. Just to kind of circumvent all of that, why not just get out of there?

Brian: Absolutely.

Mickey: That’s the best protection for those that you’re trying to protect.

Brian: Yeah. I do love my 7-month-old daughter, but I cannot trust her to have my back.

Mickey: Yeah! Someday she’ll be your sidekick.

Brian: Have there been any challenges or any roadblocks that you’ve run into getting the series set up for 2018? It sounds like there’s been a number of changes. Have any of those post a problem?

Mickey: Not really. I mean, time. It takes a little bit of time to come and prepare, but honestly nothing huge. Actually, I think a lot of the large issues that we are encountering were kind of worked out in 2017, which made 2018 more awesome, because now it was like, “Well, I already know how to handle this, so now I can — I know my left and right limits so I can maximize everything I have in the middle.”

Rolling out, I think one of the biggest hiccups we had is the schedule dropped a little bit later than we would have liked. So people haven’t been exposed to it as much as I — Or maybe they just don’t like the event. Yeah, that was kind of a hiccup. Other than that it was pretty good. I had a lot of good input and a lot of great help on it, so it went really smooth.

Brian: Good to hear, and that’s definitely an interesting way to put it. I really thought of it that way. 2017 was the first year for GORUCK Constellation events, and the way GORUCK structured, they kind of put the entire years’ worth of events out there. So you’ve got your orders in front of you of what has to get accomplished in 2017 and you’re probably learning a lot going event to event. So 2018 has been the first year where, I guess, you’ve been able to gather all that knowledge and then figure out how that’s going to impact the events going forward.

Mickey: Yeah, totally. Definitely. The timeline was something we put with a lot during 2017 and it took a few events to where we are really happy with them.

Brian: That’s great. GORUCK obviously is known for Tough events. I think the GORUCK selection live feed, Jason or Blain mentioned that it got like a quarter of a million total views. A lot of people who know about GORUCK know about the Tougher side. For people who are listening to this episode, a lot of people who listen who haven’t done a Tough or a Light yet and they’re not really sure where they’re staying with their physical abilities. When it comes to GORUCK events, what level of physical fitness is needed for either a Constellation 6 or a Constellation 12?

Mickey: Both. It’s very light. We’re not — This isn’t a PT event. We throw around the term gentleman’s course. It’s just a normal course. You show up. Yeah, you’re going to have to walk and you’re going to have to carry your ruck, but there’s no weight in your ruck other than what you brought as far as your team you go at your own pace. There’s no ruck marches or anything like that. We get to the areas of operation that you’re going to be working in and we put you out on your mission. How fast you go and how far you go, that’s completely up to you.

There are groups that have had to run, but that’s because they weren’t paying attention to time and they have to get back on time, or maybe got lost and how far away they were, like that. That’s very rare. I’ve never had — I’ll put it this way. I’ve never been close to dropping anyone for medical reasons or because they weren’t physically fit.

Brian: That’s good to hear. You didn’t have anyone crying at your events, like that Light?

Mickey: No. Not from the physical aspect of it. Maybe from some of the practical application, but that was pepper spray which makes you tear up, so that made sense.

Brian: That it does. I like that one of the items that I saw on Constellation 24’s packing list was the pepper spray mask you made in Constellation 12. I still have mine around. I think that’s one of the items on the Constellation 12 events too, the packing list. So I’ll definitely be bringing that back.

Mickey: Yeah. Those are fun. Everybody loves that the most, because it makes the event very exciting when you know you’re going to have to use it, but actually it isn’t sometimes as the most pleasant experience, but everybody gets through it.

Brian: Yeah. When people are asking for advice, the Constellation event, I didn’t really want to spoil that you are going to get peppered sprayed in the face. So I would just tell people, I say, “When you have downtime, just work on your mark, because the cadre really grade you on it.

Mickey: That’s a very good way to put it.

Brian: They want to drop a secret, but at the same, like if you have downtime, work on that mask and make sure that seals good, because it’s a practical event, a lot of practical applications.

Mickey: Yeah, definitely.

Brian: I think I mentioned earlier, we had someone on the podcast back in episode 25 and they gave in AAR for the Constellation 24 event. Will Constellation 24 be making a comeback this year?

Mickey: Yes. Yes it will.

Brian: Awesome.

Mickey: I’ll get into — later if we have time, it’s going to kind of coincide with some of the other survival events that we’re going to be running this year. Poseidon is coming back this year. The Maritime Environment Survival Course will have a 6 and 12 with that as well, and then we have wilderness survival course. All these should be — Bear with us. Those will be dropped in here pretty soon. But the 24 events really start to coincide — It’s coming back. I’ll put it like that.

Brian: Good way to put it. For those who are listening and have listened to previous episodes, we had Corey Modrowski, and he gave an AAR for the, I think at the time was called Beached Beta Tough and Beached Beta Light out in Traverse City, and I think that’s what it will be turning into a modified version of that or something similar into Poseidon for this year. Very exciting stuff.

We’re starting off the New Year, people are making their resolutions. Some of those resolutions are for GORUCK events. I know I’ve gotten a number of emails so far people saying that 2018 is the year where they sign up for their first Light or 2018 is where they’ll finally do a Tough. What advice do you have for people who are considering signing up or have just signed up for their very first GORUCK event?

Mickey: Be stoked. Be happy. You’re going to have a blast. Don’t show up completely unprepared, but you’re about to do something awesome.

Brian: That’s great advice. I think one of the issues with people getting overly nervous for the events, maybe that’s not the case, but it’s almost like there’s packing list and information overload on what you should bring to events, and so people get nervous if they don’t have all the stuff. They’re not going to do well.

Back when I did my first event, and I’m assuming you’re back in 2013, really even then there wasn’t much information out. You just had that GORUCK packing list and you showed up with your bricks and hope for the best.

Mickey: Up with their headlamps on blinding each other. Yeah, I think you’re right there. I think people kind of get a little overwhelmed and it makes them a little bit more nervous than they need to be, but look at the percentages that come on these events. You’re going to make it and you’re going to have fun and you’re going to be glad you did. Be stoked that you’ve made that stuff.

Brian: Absolutely. What advice do you have for people who are taking the next step this year? They might have done a couple of Lights and are signing up for a Tough, or they might have done some Lights and a Tough and are signed up for a Heavy in 2018. Any advice for them?

Mickey: Don’t just train to meet the standards. You should be training to crush the standard. No matter what the cadre throws at you, carry on, and keep that same enthusiasm and keep that same thing, stoked feeling you had for your very first event. Let that carry on to the next They’ll crush it. Everybody here does.

Brian: That’s awesome. Completely agree. You should be able to beat the standard on a bad day is what I usually recommend training to.

Mickey: There’s the easiest thing you’re going to do as you think about it. That should not be your goal. Crushing those should be your goal.

Brian: Yeah, they should — Really, they should be an afterthought, because it’s what you know what’s going to happen and you should be able to do them and, and that’s that. Assuming that you’re signing up for an event that has standard, like the Heavy or GORUCK Selection, I didn’t really want to drop that one, but —

Mickey: Even with the Tough, everybody’s question, “How different is the Light versus the Tough?” and stuff like that is the question I get asked very often. I tell them, “The exercises themselves are going to be the same as the Light. The repetitions you’re going to have to do are going to be a lot higher and you’re going to be doing it in the middle of the night.

Just having that kind of image that you can try to train with that in mind while you’re doing it and still crush the exercises that you’re trying to do, that’s huge for the Tough.

Brian: Absolutely. Is there anything else that you want to talk about before we wrap up?

Mickey: Foremost, you need to keep working and keep Bomber shirtless for as long as possible. I know it’s cold in Florida right now, but come on. GORUCK’s Poseidon and wilderness events, they’re going to awesome. They’re going to be two really, really cool events. Dig the survival stuff and you dig the kind of GORUCK style of teaching. Definitely come check those out, stay tuned.

Brian: That’s awesome. I can’t wait for all of the new events for 2018. Poseidon should be great, should be awesome, especially now that they’re doing it in lakes. It’s not just the beaches, because I know so many people in the middle of the United States who don’t have access to a beach. We’re worried about that. So having it on lakes will be nice, and then —

Mickey: Where we’re going to run them and stuff like that, that has opened up so many more possibilities. As I was going through and researching all these lakes across the country, there’s a lot of really cool, fun looking lakes. So I’m kind of excited about that.

Brian: That’s going to be quite the job for you. So you got to look at all these awesome pictures of lakes, figure out where you want to have a GORUCK vacation to next.

Mickey: Yeah, I mean, not always necessarily paid vacation, but it’s cool. There’s so many like — These countries that are always work, there’s always permits and regulations and stuff like that that we kind of have to work with, especially for events like ours, because they’re not your normal — Working inside certain parameters could be a little bit of a challenge sometimes, but we got an awesome schedule that’s going to launch here pretty soon. I’m looking forward to it.

Brian: Very cool. I can’t wait to see where they end up. Mickey, thank you so much for taking just all the time. We’ve talked for already over an hour now and just taken all these time on a Tuesday to chat with me about GORUCK Constellation, Constellation 6, Constellation 12, what people can expect on those events. I’m really excited about them. I know they had a great run in 2017 and I hope 2018 is just as good or better. Thank you again for taking the time to chat with me.

Mickey: No problem, man. Thank you for having me on, for helping me spread the word about the Constellation, and I’m right there with you man. I hope they crush 2017!

The post ADR 032: GORUCK Cadre Mickey Interview (Constellation 2018) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

Bryce Mahoney is a fellow GRT and the current director of the Darby Project. He completed his first GORUCK event in October of 2017 which was a Mogadishu Mile Tough.

I’m a huge fan of virtual events and when I found out about Run Ranger Run I thought it would be great to chat with Bryce and possibly have him on the podcast.

During this interview we talk about Bryce’s first GORUCK event, how he became the director for the Darby Project, and what to expect with the Run Ranger Run virtual event.

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Brian: I’m here talking with Bryce Mahoney who is the director for the Darby Project, and I’m very excited that he’s here today talking with me. We’re going to talk about his first GORUCK event, because he is a GRT and from the community. His role in the Darby Project and what the Darby Project does, and then we’re going to talk about Run Ranger Run, which is a virtual team event that lasts for the entire month of February. So I’m very excited to have Bryce here with me today. Bryce, how are you doing?

Bryce: I am doing well, Brian. Thank you for having me on the show.

Brian: Absolutely. It’s my pleasure. Before we get started talking about your first GORUCK event, do you want to tell the audience a little bit about yourself?

Bryce: Absolutely. My name is Bryce Mahoney. I’m originally from Virginia Beach, Virginia. I joined the military back in February 2001, served till 2007. When I got out of the military and move back to North Carolina to join up the family construction business and did that for a little while and moved up to Raleigh a couple of years later and have been here ever since, and got into rucking in the military and found F3 in 2012, and it was just really the resource that I needed to be at. So very thankful that I found F3 and the rucking community.

Brian: That’s awesome. Your first GORUCK event, was that custom F3 event?

Bryce: Yes, it was actually. It was this year’s Mogadishu Mile. I believe that’s a Tough event. I think we did it October 3rd, that the actual day of the Black Hawk Down event in Somalia, and what an amazing event it was. I mean, not only to be a part of that and to be asked to come out and share the experience with the F3 Raleigh guys, but I got to hear firsthand from Clay who was a Somali veteran and it just really solidified how important that fateful day in 1993 was in military history, and I consider myself to be pretty up-to-date and up to speed on that whole story, but listening to him and just kind of hearing his insight, they really made the event even more better than it was. Just to see the guys — This is a 12 hour, 20 mile event. There were times when the guys were really sucking and it was great to see a community and a group of men come together and lean on each other and make it through the whole thing. He was a guy that was pretty ready to quit halfway through and they helped him get over the hump and he finished with all of us. So I’m just proud and honored to be a part of that one.

Brian: That’s great, and t’s really incredible, I think, what GORUCK has done with those Mogadishu Mile events. Bringing out the veterans to talk at the start of them, and it’s just been, I think, really well-received this past year especially. So very cool that you’re able to make it out to one of those.

Would you say it was tough signing up for the first one? You were in the military for — Was it six years? So you are getting paid to ruck and now you’re essentially paying to ruck. Was it tough to get out and get signed up for that?

Bryce: It was at first and I’ll have to be honest. I didn’t pay for that event. The cadre actually let me, I guess, I’ll say audit the event, because I was a Ranger in the military, so I guess I got a free pass for that one. But the idea of getting out there and to do 20 miles to most people would probably be a little bit sadistic and crazy. But to be honest, to me, rucking has been one of my biggest coping mechanisms for the struggles that I had after leaving the military. Mostly we put a lot of terms into posttraumatic stress and these things. I don’t consider myself to have posttraumatic stress. I consider myself to have separation anxiety. If I was part of the very tightknit community in the military that was driven by more than just money, it was pride in it was acceptance of mission. When I left the military I, I lost that community and it was devastating to me. I didn’t think about that when I was leaving the military. I didn’t think that I would be leaving. I would be ripping out a part of my soul and leaving it where I was. I’m like I won’t even think two words. I won’t even think two thoughts about these groups of people. I’m just ready to go and I felt empty inside, and it wasn’t until probably late 2008. I had veteran buddy that was working with me. We just decided to go do like a 35 mile hike in the mountains, in the Smokies in North Carolina.

I just remember during the trip, it just sucked so bad, but like that embracement of that suck is what kind of help me get out of my own head and really focus on just what was right in front of me, the next step, and I was able to forget about all my family problems and my business problems and how upset I was at leaving the military incorrectly.

I remember when we got done, it was just kind of like, “All right, cool. We know we’re going to do that again.” Really, it turned into this reoccurring hiking trip that me and him would go on and had some other friends go on it. I did a couple by myself and it’s just been amazing to find a community of people that want to do that kind of thing. You ask the average guy like, “Hey, do you want to go walk 15 to 25 miles?” They just give you this look of like, “Are you kidding me? I drive that distance. I don’t walk that distance.”

To find that group was of men that are willing to go do that with you, it was the light at the end of the tunnel that I was hoping was going to be there. I’m still — Just every day that I get into that community, it just recharges and re-energizes me to continue to do it.

Brian: That’s really, really well said. When you show up to an F3 workout, you’re with a group of guys who are willing to wake up at 5:45 in the morning, so you have that — Already, that collective mentality there. When you show up to a GORUCK event, you’re with people who went to the GORUCK website, said, “This looks like a good idea,” and signed up. So you’ve got that. You’re already with a group of people who are on the same track of thought as you. So it’s great to find those connections, and I’m definitely glad that you did.

Bryce: Yes, I am. Like I tell people, “F3 saved my life.” I go back to that loss of community and I’m thankful that my buddy emotionally head locked me out to my first workout and thankfully Dread was there at that workout as well and he’s the one that bestowed the name Darby on me, which is kind of foreshadowing, because I got that name in 2012, and here many years later, I’m now running an organization called the Darby Project. So it’s funny I like to think of this as I am my own project. My transition from the military and my struggles are exactly what I’m trying to prevent the next generation and the generations after them from happening to them, because it doesn’t have to be this way. We can make the change and we can set guys up for success for when the inevitable day that they leave the military and welcome them in communities like this and just ensure that they are mentally alert, physically strong and, through the group, morally straight, just as it says in the Ranger Creed. It’s one of the things that we typically kind of discard when we get out of the military, like we like to think that we follow the creed, but life tends to get in the way and we make decisions that aren’t conducive to that creed. I’ve been thankful that my F3 community has held me accountable on many accounts when I didn’t want to follow that.

So it’s just been an amazing transformation and something that I’m readily available and willing to express and tell everybody, every man that I come in contact with of, “Hey, you need to get out of this. You need to find this community where you live,” and just show up one day. That’s all I care. Just once, and I guarantee you’ll get hooked, or if you don’t, maybe it just wasn’t for you at that time, but you at least gave me the one chance of trying it out, because I’ll tell you, you’re going to find a community of guys that are willing to break their backs for you, and it just doesn’t exist out in normal society anymore. I look at F3 as that beacon of light, that’d be the change we wish to see. They are doing it. We, as the community, are exhibiting that change, and I’m just so proud to be a part of it.

Brian: That’s awesome, and this podcast will be airing in around the middle of January. So if you’re listening to this and you feel like you need that sense of community or your New Year’s resolutions, we’re two weeks in, they’re not going the way you expected and you want to be surrounded by a group of people who are generally very positive in nature. If you’re a guy, do check out F3. If you don’t feel like F3 would be for you, there’s tons of ruck clubs, tons of supportive rucking groups throughout the entire United States. We’ll have links in the show notes for both those, the ruck clubs and for F3 so that you can get tied in with some community that will help hold you accountable and make 2018 definitely a great year for you.

Bryce: Yeah. I would just add too that anybody listening, you decide your own level of involvement. This isn’t a community that’s going to come and hold your hand. In life, it isn’t about handholding. It is making a decision to be a part of something and it isn’t going to be convenient all the time, just like it was 4° this morning. That is last — Like I don’t want to work out in those temperatures, but people are counting on me to be out there, and there’re days when I want to fark sack and it’s just like, “Oh man!” but I can’t, because my brother is expecting me to be there. I would just encourage everybody. It’s not always going to be pretty and it’s not always going to be what you want to do, but once you do it, you’re going to be glad that you did.

Brian: Absolutely. There’s just something about those blankets of 5 AM where they’re especially warm in the bed is double comfortable. It’s tough to get out, but that feeling after a solid workout in the morning while everyone is still sleeping and you know the you’ve already done something amazing in your day before the sun is even up, before people are even up. It’s just an awesome way to start the day.

Bryce: Yeah, I have been reading Tim Ferriss’ Tribe of Mentors somebody got for me for Christmas. An amazing book, and there was a quote in there that I’m going to start using. It basically said, after something physical like F3 at 5:45 in the morning, you can basically look at the rest of your day as nothing is going to be as hard as what you just did, and it’s just something about getting up in the morning, doing PT, getting those endorphins running, getting your blood moving. I noticed a significant difference in my day when I go to F3 and I workout, when I don’t. When I don’t, I’m groggy, I’m pissed and I’m always regretful of not posting or not doing something that morning, and that’s just kind of building on the community aspect. When you have people holding you accountable, it just makes it easier to break through those barriers and get out of those warm comforters and detach from your warm M and get out there and embraces suck as a community together.

Brian: Absolutely. I’ve heard really good things about the book. I might have to grab it one of these days.

Bryce: I’ll tell you — I mean, and especially for me, as a veteran I feel that veterans typically kind of latch on to other veterans in success platforms, and it’s just really encouraging to read. This book is really just a Q&A that Tim Ferriss sent out to hundreds of people from all walks of life and have them answer these questions. It can really solidify your train of thought, your way of life, and it’s just an amazing to read the kind of the thought process behind some of the most brilliant people on the planet that aren’t veterans. It helps me break out as that very comfortable bubble of looking at other veterans that are successful and looking at what realms their successes in. I like hearing from business people that have had major successes that have kind of not thrown it away, but just kind of given it all up to really — To kind of turn inward, and they become writers or other things like that where they just kind of see the significance in the little things, and it’s comforting that that’s kind of taking place and that you look at a world that’s just so fast and so quick moving, and here today and forgotten tomorrow, that these people are just really slowing down and going — It’s just this concentrated messages, chill. Just focus on what’s good, focus what’s in front of you, discard what’s not valuable, and life is going to be good. Yeah, I would completely recommend getting that book.

Brian: I mean, in a world where social media; Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, just everything’s coming a million miles an hour. Everything’s only speeding up. So I know personally I find the days that I enjoy the most, and I think back on our days where I’m probably furthest from my phone or I get a longer workout in.

I know Tim Ferriss, it was the end of last year that he did. Was it a week in silence, where he meditated in he didn’t talk for an entire week? I think he had Jacko take over his podcast for that week. But is is a four days or a week? But I mean for someone who’s so popular within the space that he’s in, to take an entire — Even if it was just two days or four days, but to take anything more than a couple hours for meditation and to be silent, I mean he’s missing a lot that’s going on, but it just shows how important that is.

Bryce: Yeah, exactly, and Tim Ferriss, he’s definitely out there, but he is what I call a master learner. In a world of kind of having to label yourself or project yourself in this professional aspect of the pecking order of things, like if more people could continue the mindset of always be learning, I think it would just help our society have a lot more empathy and a lot more humility within themselves. I feel that we’re so quick to kind of shot other people off in their ideas, in their thought process, because we’re afraid their pecking order is going to be above ours. There’s just so much knowledge out there to learn from people, and I like that in this book too, it talks about it’s not always about what to do. The greatest lesson my dad ever taught me was you take two things from every experience. What to do and what not to do, and that what not to do is just as important as the what to do, because it is one of these things that we don’t look at our failures as a learning experience. We just look at them as this like burning fire that we shouldn’t touch, and I feel like the more people fail, that the more they should be learning from those failures, and we all could take the time to really adjust and see the value in that. I feel that we would be a lot tighter as a community and as a population, I think.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the big pieces of that is accepting failure and knowing that failure is not necessarily a bad thing, even though it’s in society it’s always treated as the worst thing that can happen is failure, but some of the biggest learning moments have been from failures that I’ve had personally. So it’s always important to embrace it.

If you’re listening to this and you’re failing at something you do, you can always turn that into at least a somewhat positive spin by analyzing what happened. Figure out why something failed and how to turn it around, and even if you are not able to turn this one around, then you can at least learn from it and prevent it from happening again. There’s always a learning opportunity, and I think it’s incredibly important to be open to always that continuous improvement. Just always learning and always trying to improve yourself.

Bryce: Completely. Honestly, truth be told, I would not be anywhere near where I am today had I not failed miserably, and it is really focused around my first marriage and the kind of person I was in the military and then after the military. I wasn’t like I was outwardly lying. It was I just was a dishonest person. I was omitting information.

Another great book out there, real small one by Sam Harris, is a book called Lying. It really explains the definition of lying, lies of admission and then lies of omission, and I feel like we are omitting liars more so than we are admitting liars, and had I not completely failed in that marriage, I mean I lost everything. I lost all finances, house, custody of children, and had I not lost that in beginning of 2012, I wouldn’t be the person I am today, because that failure showed me, made me incredibly humble to where I was. I lived on a friend of mine’s couch for 8 months, reinvented myself. It was really after reading that book, Lying, that I just turned everything around and learned from that experience and became a better man, re-dedicated my life to Christ, and that was the pivotal moment of realizing that it’s when we lose everything, we’re free to do anything. That moment was the snapping of the chain, like I am not connected, I am not tied down to this life and I can do anything that I put my mind to that I realistically think about and I plan and I learn from the failures and I just keep trying in the best way possible to get where I’m going and learn to deviate when I’m not doing the right thing. But just to kind of have a core value and go with it.

Sometimes the hardest part is us taking that first step. Just like these GORUCK events, the hardest part is signing up, and the hardest part about F3 is showing up to your first workout and getting past that intimidation factor of, “Man! These guys —” You go to some F3 workouts and these guys are like borderline professional athletes. They’re so physically fit. I consider myself to be pretty physically fit and sometimes I’m intimidated by their workouts. So I can understand where your average sad clown isn’t too stoked about going out to one of these workouts, but I can’t reiterate enough just how much of an impact it made. I would continually encourage every man to do it.

Brian: The only time it’s too late to make a change is when you’re dead. So if you’re listening to this and you’re alive, you can change anything you want to change.

Bryce: It will be all right in the end, and if it’s not all right, it’s not the end.

Brian: That’s right. This has been awesome. You’re the director for the Darby Project. When did this happen? When did you become the director for the Darby Project?

Bryce: I became director October 2016. Little background on the Darby Project, the Darby Project is the Ranger division of GallantFew, which is a larger veteran service organization that encompasses all branches, all military, all time frames. Darby Project is just a little bit more concentrated on the Ranger community. When I say Ranger, that’s anybody that’s graduated from U.S. Army Ranger school or been a member of the 75th Ranger Regiment. I’ve been the director for about a year and three months now, and what a ride it’s been. From when I started to now, it’s just been an amazing journey.

Brian: That’s awesome. How did you get involved?

Bryce: I got involved with the Darby Project as a volunteer at first. GallantFew has been around for — Going on six years, seven years now, and it was started by Carl Monger, who is Ranger as well, and a couple of years after kind of noticed that there needed to be a little bit of division, because true to form, Rangers typically talk to Ranger. So the Darby Project was born and it was run at first by Grant McKerry, and this was three years ago. But Grant had — I have full-time job and Carl was busy growing GallantFew, so it just kind of ran stagnant for a little while and it changed when Grant’s commitment level, he couldn’t take it anymore. Switched over to another director, and along the same lines, other aspirations and no faults of their. Just it wasn’t the biggest priority for them.

Around that time I had gotten involved locally here in Raleigh. I wanted to do more Ranger kind of link ups. The Rangers are well known for gathering in masses. They do monthly breakfasts around the country in areas where there are large concentrations of Rangers, like Fort Bragg and Seattle and Savannah and Columbus, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. and another places like that. Kind of going back to that hiking and outdoor activities, I saw the value from going in doing those activities back in 2009 and 2010 and I just started putting more events on the schedule. I’ve been a surfer since I was five, so I would plan the surf link ups and ask, “Hey guys, do you want to come out and surf?” And if people wanted to come and they didn’t have boards, I would let them use my surfboards or we’d rent long boards or I had some local friends down at the beach lend their. I’m an avid rock climber and I got guys out on the rocks and got them there and just any outdoor activity that I did. I just kind of tried to rally other veterans out there just to kind of show them the impact that it was making for me and to really solidify and validate why I was doing in the first place.

Just the benefit behind most of these activities is its mindlessness. When you’re 60 feet up on a rock face, you’re not thinking about what you’re having for dinner or the problems you have in your life. You’re thinking about your disco legs that are shaking underneath of you and getting up to the top of the routes. When you’re sitting out in the water on a surfboard and the wave comes and you’re riding that, you’re not thinking about the bad things going on in your life. You’re just in the stoke, and when you’re done on a wave, it’s like a drug. You just want to get back out there and you want to do it again and again and again and again.

These are quick, easy things for people that live around these particular sports and hobbies that you can get into for relatively low cost, and it’s just a way to kind of disconnect from your own head for a little while.

I saw Darby Project and I saw what it was trying to do, so I kind of piggybacked on and started a Raleigh North Carolina Darby Project chapter and posted a couple of local events, just bar link ups and breakfast and things like that. Around September of 2016, they messaged me and said, “Hey, what would it take for you to be the full-time director of the Darby Project? We noticed the necessity of having a full-time person in charge of this, and what would it take for you?” I remember thinking like a pulse, “I’d love to do this.”

Over the month of September with my Ranger buddies kind of helping me out with recommendations, and I had an interview with Carl, and I drove from Raleigh up to Washington, D.C. to interview with the interim director at the time, Duke Durkin, and just getting their sign off on it. It was amazing to see the support I was getting for this particular position.

So I started October 1st of last year and I’ve hit the ground running in and we’ve made advancements, leaps and bounds, and even though it might seem like we’ve come so far, we have so far to go, and I’m really stoked to be able to have my passion be my profession. That is just one thing that not a lot of people get to do and I wake up every day thankful that I get to do this. I get to help other rangers. I get to help other veterans not go through the same hell that I went through getting out of the military.

Brian: That’s absolutely incredible. That’s amazing, and I’m so glad that that worked out for you. That’s awesome. Man! That’s awesome. That’s just an incredible story.

Bryce: Yeah, I can’t believe it.

Brian: That’s awesome. They have a full-time director. I mean, we talked about this a bit previously, but it really takes someone pouring their heart and soul into nonprofit work full-time for everything to truly succeed, and when those competing priorities and people are doing either a part-time or for free. It’s just tough to get that forward progression that you’re really trying to achieve. Like you said, every time you complete one task, that you just learned that there’re two more tasks that need to be done from the completion of that one and it’s never-ending.

Bryce: Absolutely.

Brian: It’s always more to do. You think you’ve hit the top and you realize there is a lot more to go.

Bryce: Right. I mean, ask my family. They’ll tell you. I pour my heart and soul into this. There is nothing more important to me than this being successful. It takes just a different kind of person to want to do this. I guess do I get paid to do it? Yes. Do we have operating cost? Absolutely. The things that we’re doing, they cost money, and I’m very thankful that we have a support base that sees what we’re doing. It sees our mission and wants to support it. If we weren’t making a difference, they wouldn’t be supporting us, and I would completely understand why they don’t.

It is one of these things that — Like it isn’t sexy. I’m not going on awesome veteran vacations with other veteran service organizations and going scuba diving or getting free gear and all these kind of stuff. I’m talking rangers, I’m talking veterans out of suicide and I’m having to hear some of the most people with stellar military backgrounds just completely falling apart and just in other depths of substance abuse. What is the problem with the veteran community? What do I see happening? Disconnection, isolation, self-medication, and it’s tough listening to that, because I take this so seriously, that when guys are in trouble, I’m in trouble. I feel their pain. I understand what they’re going through, and sometimes I feel the way that some guys kind of talk to me. Sometimes I feel like guys think I’m some retired four-star general that’s making six figures and had a cushy transition and went straight from the military into this job. I suffered just like the other veterans. Homelessness, check; broke, check; lost custody, check. Like all that stuff, and it’s so — I hate to say gratifying or amazing, but like when they finally get it — Like I hear sometimes, and like you don’t understand, and then I give them my story and they’re like, “Wow! I didn’t know that you were at that level,” and it’s just reassuring. Like, “Hey man, I was where you were, and I can help you come out of that, but you got to get out of your own way. A thousand hands are reaching for you and you won’t reach for them.”

I take it so seriously sometimes and my wife — Like I said, my wife will tell you. It gets in the way of my family sometimes, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. If I wasn’t as passionate about this, it wouldn’t be to the level that it is.

Brian: I think this is really important before we get into Run Ranger Run, but how can people get in contact with the Darby Project? Where can they find you? Where can they reach out to the Darby Project?

Bryce: You can reach the Darby Project, you can find us at darbyproject.org. You can find us at gallantfew.org, which I’m sure, Brian, you’ll put these links up for people to find.

Brian: Absolutely.

Bryce: I’m Facebook, I’m on Instagram, I’m on Twitter. F3 Darby is my twitter name. Mahoney Mo Problems is my Instagram name. Bryce Mahoney. It’s a big old fat picture of my face on Facebook. I’m all over social media. You can contact us on our websites, but honestly that’s honestly the hardest part, is reaching out, raising your hand and saying, “I’m in trouble. I need help. Can someone help me?”

Anybody listening, if you’re struggling, it doesn’t even matter if you’re a Ranger or not. If you’re veteran, reach out to me. I will talk to you. I will put you in the right hands of somebody that can help you get through what you’re going through.

Brian: Thank you, and it’s just amazing that the Darby Project has someone just as passionate and incredible as you as a director. They’re very lucky.

Bryce: It’s definitely a team effort. Carl, my boss, he motivates me every single day with what he’s doing. My two IC with the Darby Project, Leslie, she handles a lot of the backend stuff where all the fancy posts and pictures and things that we have, that’s not me, that’s her. I can’t emphasize the team effort more, but just having a group of people that are motivated as is the GallantFew team is.

We also have — Sorry, I didn’t mention this, but we have a Marine entity as well called the Raider Project, and they’re another resource. If you’re a Marine, you’re MARSOCk, raiderproject.org. That’s another group that’s like — There are days like anybody. Man, there are days that just sucks, like this job sucks, and I look at what they are doing. I look at what Carl is doing and turns that around for me and I’m like, “Bigger picture. Today’s going to suck. Tomorrow’s going to be great,” and I ball that day up. I learned from the mistake and I drive on. I wouldn’t be able to do that without a team. I’m a pretty driven guy. I’m pretty happy, but I wouldn’t be anywhere where I am today without that team, for sure.

Brian: It’s interesting, I mean you can take the most driven individual, but when they’re coupled with a team, there’s just some you added boost that comes from that. When you’re with people who are as passionate as you are and the ideas start going and — I don’t know. It kind of comes back to F3 and it comes back to GORUCK events, and just when you’re with a group of people and a team, you just get so much more done.

Bryce: Completely. One of my idols or I guess I don’t know if idols is the right term, but just I really resonate with his mindset of what it was, but Chris McCandless, he coined the phrase, “Happiness is only real when it’s shared,” and I completely agree with that. I’m a person that froths on engagement of other people. My wife will tell you that I am a massive eavesdropper. If I want to be in a conversation that I hear at another dinner table or on the bus or wherever we are, I’m getting into that conversation. That’s my energy. That’s what recharges me, is just meeting other people and being receptive to what they’re saying and hearing their story and talking with them. You just never know what you’re going to find out there if you’re not open to just being a part of something bigger and allowing yourself to be a part of a bigger community.

Brian: That’s awesome and it’s so true. It’s so true. Speaking of community and getting involved, it seems a great segue into Run Ranger Run.

Bryce: Yes, I think so.

Brian: Would you like to introduce the event? Is this is the sixth year?

Bryce: This is the sixth year. Yes, it is.

Brian: So it’s an established event. It’s been around for six years. Would you like to introduce it? What the challenge entails? What the teams are like and just how everything works?

Bryce: Absolutely. Yeah. So Run Ranger Run is the GallantFew community. When I say that, it’s GallantFew, Darby Project, Raider Project. It’s our annual awareness and fundraiser campaign. It’s how we raise our operating costs for the year, the message of what we do, and it’s a very simple concept. Teams of 10 located anywhere in the world collectively pledged to run, walk, skip, hop, whatever movement-wise 565 miles from February 1st to February 28th.

Doing that as a team, that works out to about 56-1/2 miles per person, two miles a day. What that does is that raises awareness for what the GallantFew community does and facilitating our mission, which is helping facilitate a successful transition from active duty to civilian life filled with hope and purpose. That’s the GallantFew community mission.

Those teams of 10 can pledge to raise funds, and I’ve gotten a lot of questions about, “Well, is it — Are you having people pledge per mile, or what is it?” It’s really the up to the individual and the team to create a pledged amount. Let’s say $565 for per team. When you sign up, you’re given a personal link and a team link and you share that link with your social media following, your family and friends and they can go on and donate $5, $20, $500. It doesn’t matter. Anybody that does the event or pledges amount of money and doesn’t raise it, no worries it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t meet your pledge goal. I cannot stress enough that just participating in Run Ranger Run facilitates us raising awareness, and your participation equals the awareness. If that connects one veteran with GallantFew, then that’s a win for us.

So the registration for Run Ranger Run has been open since October. This is year number six and we just continually grow. I think we’re like 140% over where we were last year at this time with sign-ups. My goal this year is to have maximum participation across the board. I think we had 214 teams last year. I would really like to see 300 teams sign up this year and run the miles.

Brian: That’s phenomenal. That’s just incredible growth. Congratulations. So Run Ranger Run, it’s a team event, 10 person teams. If you’re listen to this and you’ve got a ruck club or you’ve got an F3 group, this sounds like a great opportunity to get some extra miles in over February.

Bryce: Absolutely. So this is actually the second year that we have done the F3 Darby challenge. This is kind of an internal challenge for the F3 community within Run Ranger Run. We had two teams last year sign up and they raised over $1,000 for the event, which was awesome. I think this year we already have four teams established for F3. We’ve got one in the Pacific Northwest. We’ve got two in North Carolina and one in Virginia, I believe, but even that growth has been amazing. It’s just an opportunity to engage a community like F3. These guys — Two miles a day for F3 is not — That’s at the drop in the hat, and guys that are getting prepared for the Palmetto 200 or the next Blue Ridge Relay, these are the miles that you’re already doing.

Really trying to spark the interest within the F3 community. A little spoiler alert, we’ll be making an F3 Derby challenge patch for everybody that participates this year. Pretty excited that to just continually grow the commitment level within the F3 community. I see guys supporting events all the time through other venues. So it is my hopes that more guys will want to get involved with this, and especially now, I’ve seen — It’s kind of interesting, I’ve seen the growth of rucking specifically over the last year within F3. Truth be told, I’m not a distance runner anymore, and rucking to me actually kind of — I enjoy to ruck more than I do to run, and it’s really awesome to see the rucking communities kind of pop up there too. This will be in another opportunity for guys to get more miles in, because Run Ranger Run is something that your team can be located anywhere in the world and you log your miles online. It’s an honor system. You don’t have to do two miles a day. Heck, you could say you could do all 56 miles the first day and be done. I see something like this as a rucking group doing 14 miles a week on a Saturday in the morning. That’s 3- 1/2 hours, 4 hours of rucking.

So super excited to hopefully see a lot of more engagements and involvement there through the F3 community. This is an annual thing for us, so really excited about the growth this time and I just know next year, it’s going to be even better. Guys are going to see their buddies with their F3 Darby challenge patches and be super jealous and they’re going to want theirs. Next year it will be a different patch or a different trinket to earn. Just really excited to get them on board.

Brian: You heard it here from Bryce. Get that 56.5 miles a done, day one, then point and laugh at everyone else for the remaining 27 days in February. You’ve got this.

Bryce: That’s right.

Brian: That’s awesome. For people who aren’t part of F3, you mentioned the F3 Derby patch. I’ve been on the website on Run Ranger Run and it looks like there are three different medals that are associated with this race. Do you want to get into those?

Bryce: Yes. There are three different medallions for different levels of commitment to Run Ranger Run. I want to be completely clear on what those medallions are. I know one of them, you get one medal for completing your 56 miles. You get a medal for raising over certain amount of money, and then the other medal, I don’t remember what that one was for, but the medallions that we have for Run Ranger Run all come from completing a milestone. It’s always easier. It’s always better when you have something to kind of cared on the end of the stick. I finally found the medallion challenge.

So you get a medallion for raising $250. You get a medallions for you raising 250, your team raising 2,500 and your team logging the 565, and then you get a third medallion for just raising 2,500. So those are the three medallions that you could potentially earn for Run Ranger Run 2018. It’s always nice to have incentives to work towards, and this is a really unique set of medals to win. I’m excited to see people come out for it.

Brian: Absolutely, and that third medal, the 2500, that’s the team raising that.

Bryce: Yes.

Brian: Then all three of the medals, they’re really cool. They’re all in the shape of an R, Run Ranger Run, and when you line them up, its RRR, and they look nice. It’s really well done. I’m excited about this. If you’re listening, I know we have a lot of listeners on here who are taking part in our charity challenges, thousand mile challenge. This is a great way to get your team motivated and get some awesome miles in for that thousand mile goal in 2018. So I would highly recommend checking it out. I’m definitely going to be checking it out, and I’m excited about it.

Bryce: Awesome. Yeah. I would just tell any F3 guys, if you’re interested in getting involved, if you do sign up and form a team. If you’ll put F3 in your team name, that helps to single out those F3 teams, because I am keeping track of all of them. Like I said, F3 guys that sign up and complete their mileage will get the F3 Darby challenge patch and the team that raises the most funds will get a surprise thing, incentive if you will, on top of that as well.

Brian: There you have it. So when is the latest that people can register for Run Ranger Run?

Bryce: The latest people can register would be the end of January, January 31st.

Brian: So if you listening to this episode a little bit late, you have until January 31 two register for Run Ranger Run, and if you’re listening to this past January 1st or January 31st, then unfortunately it’s too late, but there’s always next year, I’m assuming.

Bryce: Absolutely, and for everybody listening as well, even if you don’t want to sign up and create or join a team and pledge to run these miles, you can look and donate to any team that you choose to. If you’re an F3 guy and you’re not really interested in running the miles, rucking the miles, help support another F3 team, and donations can be taken all the way up through February and into March. So just even if you can’t commit to pledging the miles, your donations are still definitely accepted. I definitely want to reiterate that, yes, this is an awareness campaign for us, but it’s also how we raise the funds for what we do with GallantFew, and we wouldn’t be able to do what we do without the support from Run Ranger Run.

Brian: That’s awesome. That’s always good to hear that you guys are just running such an amazing event, that you’re able to bring that in. So if you are listening and you don’t want to put in the miles, you can always post up the money. Otherwise, if you don’t have the money, then I’m guessing sharing just the link on Facebook, Twitter, stuff like that, just getting the word out for maybe you have friends who do want to participate in that, you don’t, but —

Bryce: Absolutely, yup. People sharing their friend’s teams and sharing the information. We’ll be putting a lot of these out on Facebook and Twitter and social media. The more people that share it, the more people that are going to see what we do. Even if they don’t get involved with Run Ranger Run, they see GallantFew, they see how to get in touch with us, and that saves lives. That share, that like, that commitment to pledge those miles. Those miles are going to change lives. It’s going to reach another veteran that’s on the fence, that’s thinking bad thoughts, and they’re going to connect with us and we’re going to get them the help that they’ve been looking for, and I’m just so incredibly excited to start the event in February. We’ve been leading up to it now and I’m just excited to see the involvement across the community.

Also, be on the lookout too. We’ll be having some kickoff events. We have confirmed locations now, January 27th at Point Defiance in Tacoma, and the same day in Columbus, Georgia and Raleigh, North Carolina, and you can find all that information out on runrangerrun.com.

Brian: What could people are expect at the kickoff events?

Bryce: Just an opportunity to — Because the kickoff events are the weekend prior to February 1st. It will be an opportunity for people to get in miles before February 1st. But it’s a chance to kind of spread the word even more. We’ll have a table and a pop-up and things for people to get an information for people to get about GallantFew and our programs. I know at the Raleigh location we’ll have a couple of sponsors that are bringing stuff that we’ll do a little giveaway for the people that show up. It’s really just kind of a community engagement part for Run Ranger Run in their respective communities.

Brian: Very cool. So, Point Defiance, that’s just an hour and a half /2 drive for me, hour maybe. So I’ll definitely try and make it out to that. This is awesome. Where can people go to register for Run Ranger Run? We’ve been talking about it. Is it runrangerrun.com?

Bryce: Yes. Runrangerrun.com is where you can find out all the preliminary information about how to register and either create or join a team. For corporate people out there too, we have corporate packages as well where you can develop your own corporate landing page for your employees to get on board, and runrangerrun.com where you will find all that information out.

Brian: Perfect, runrangerrun.com. Very excited to register. This has been awesome, Bryce. We talked about — I’m just so much more than I even thought that we would’ve gotten into. This has been an awesome call. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Bryce: I’m very excited and thankful to be able to spread this message not only about Run Ranger Run, but just about F3 and to share my story a little bit. For anybody out there on the fence or that’s hurting, just to hear my story in, and my story is a lot like other guys’ stories. For people to just know that you’re not alone, what you’re going through, somebody else is going through it too and I’m just excited and just honored to be able to be on this and spread that message and just put the word out for what we’re doing and what F3 is doing and I’m just very thankful to be a part of it.

Brian: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for taking so much time out of your day to be on the show. Is there anything else that you want to talk to related to GORUCK events, your involvement in F3, Darby Project, Run Ranger Run, anything at all that you want talk about before we go?

Bryce: No. I think we covered everything and more.

Brian: I think so too. I think this has been just an awesome time. Bryce, thank you so much, so, so much for taking this time out of your day to chat. I know you’re incredibly busy. Run Ranger Run starts roughly a month from when we’re recording this. So you have to have your hands just full. I am thankful that you took just an hour+ out of your day to talk with me, and this has been great. Thank you.

Bryce: Thank you very much. I’m very honored to be a part of it.

The post ADR 031: Bryce Mahoney (Darby Project Director / Run Ranger Run) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

Cadre Dan Skidmore (aka Cadre DS) was the cadre that ran our 2017 Santa Ruck Light in Seattle, WA. That event was incredible and Cadre DS really delivered an incredible and motivational event.

After that event I knew I had to have him on the podcast… the motivation and positive attitude he brought was absolutely infectious and that Light was one of the best events I’ve ever taken part in.

This interview is fairly conversational as we talk about how he found GORUCK, the Santa Ruck Light, a recent Spartan Race Cadre DS crushed in Iceland, and how to motivate yourself for a more difficult event.

Thanks so much for listening! If you missed any of our earlier episodes you can give them a listen right now. Hopefully you enjoyed the podcast and are excited about the next one. This is very new to us so we would appreciate it if you would cut us some slack as we work on perfecting our methodologies. Did you enjoy the podcast? We’d love a review on iTunes or even our Facebook Page! Didn’t enjoy it? Leave a comment here in the show notes and let us know what we can do better!

Thanks so much for the support and make sure to check out the links in the Show Notes. Subscribe through iTunes, Android, Google Music, Stitcher, or TuneIn and never miss another episode!

Brian: Today I’m chatting with Dan Skidmore, Cadre DS who is a cadre for GORUCK. I was fortunate enough to have him lead a recent event. It was actually the Santa Ruck Light in early December of 2017 in Seattle. After that event, I knew I needed to ask him if he’d be willing to be on the podcast. Cadre DS is the epitome of having the slogan; Attitude is everything. Keep yours positive.

He was thrown curved ball after curved ball leading up to our event in Seattle, and the way he handled everything and the way he ran the event was just truly amazing and awesome. So Dan, how is it going?

Cadre DS: Great, man. I appreciate you having me on, and that’s a hell of an intro.

Brian: You had a hell of a time coming out here.

Cadre DS: I did. I did for sure.

Brian: Before we get started, do you prefer to go by Dan, Cadre DS or something else?

Cadre DS: Dan is fine. During the event, Cadre DS, but any other times, it’s just Dan.

Brian: Perfect. I’m guessing that stems from the fact that there are a number of cadre at GORUCK with the name Dan or Daniel already.

Cadre DS: Yeah. I wasn’t the first and I probably won’t be the last. I’ve got to actually meet a couple of the other cadre Dans or Daniels or Dannys. Great guys, but DS for me, and I can just give you a little background on it. In the Air Force, being a combat controller, we go through air traffic control first and part of that school is basically getting your operating initials, and so if you do something dangerous or stupid or they’d get in trouble, like the pilot will ask for your initials, so mine are delta sierra, and so it only kind of made sense. Then when they came to picking my cadre name, it was a natural fit.

Brian: That’s perfect. You already had the initials going in. Excellent. How long have you been a cadre for GORUCK?

Cadre DS: I just actually started this last year, summer time or 2017.

Brian: That’s exciting. Fairly new into the GORUCK scene as a cadre. When did you first year about GORUCK?

Cadre DS: I heard about GORUCK a couple of years ago, probably like I want to say three or four years ago, but at the time I had very little interest in doing events myself. I don’t like getting smoked. I think most of the cadre probably say the same thing. We’ve lived that for so long. Who’d want to go and be tortured for a couple of hours or a night? But I think that that is kind of shortsighted by a lot of guys that don’t really even look into it anymore. Then when I started investigating into the company a little bit more, because I actually coached a couple of other cadre before and had that interaction with them and started learning more about the company, but when I initially find out about GORUCK, it wasn’t something I wanted to participate in myself until I started learning more about what everything is about.

Brian: That’s wild. That’s really cool. Knew about GORUCK for a couple of years before you decided to step in and try and be a cadre.

Cadre DS: Yeah, I can expand on that if you want me to.

Brian: Yeah, we’ll definitely get into that. Before we do, I’ve met you at an event. There are a number of listeners who have never met you before. You have talked about yourself a little bit. You’re a trained cadre. You’ve done some training. You’ve got an extensive military career. Could you briefly introduce yourself for our listeners?

Cadre DS: Yeah, absolutely. My name is Dan, I did nine years as an Air Force combat controller. With that, we’re basically in charge of all the air to ground interface and typically the one air force guy on the Special Forces team or the SEAL team, and we’ll catch the team leader’s hip-pocket and making everything, whether it’s infiltration, exfil, all the dropping bombs, runway operations, doing surveys, that kind of thing. All my training was geared towards that.

I did five combat deployments on humanitarian mission. Do a lot of different exercises and missions. Worked with the best guys on the planet, and had a heck of a time.

Then in 2012, I started a cross-fit gym in Fort Bragg, which has now evolved to evolution athletics. One of my really good friend I worked with for a long time in the military. He’s a medics, named Chris McNamara. Worked for the Rangers for a really long time and had this concept of evolution athletics. It’s more than just a regular cross-fit gym, but really a human performance and maximizing your potential, not just through cross-fit but through all the methodologies that we’ve experimented with that are on ourselves, we’ve seen other people do. So we changed our outlook from just a regular cross-fit gym to coaching people at evolution athletics and offering more services, more comprehensive. Whether it’s through our daily classes, individualized training, remote training, and then offering things like personal — Physical therapy. Then we have a registered dietician and nutritionist that help people with that side of things. It’s all about just helping people up. I really came into that in like early 2012, 2013 where I found myself wanting to coach people and just find a passion in that, and that’s kind of driven me all my actions since.

Brian: That’s awesome, and it’s through evolution athletics that you met some of the pervious GORUCK cadre?

Cadre DS: Yeah. Actually, we ended up working with a couple of guys. Cadre Feary, Tod is his name and he was actually involved in GORUCK and still is. Work and army life has called up. He’s paying a little bit more attention to that. A couple of other cadres as well over the last couple of years and just learning about the company and like the different events has definitely piqued my interest, because till about two years after I got out, I kind of was in the flow or coaching at the gym and being in Fayetteville, North Carolina and anybody that’s been in Fayetteville for an extended period of time eventually gets that itch of like, “Man! I need to do some traveling.” That was a main stay in my life through the whole time in the Air Force, is I’d be here and then go, temporary duty, whether it’s like training, to whatever kind of training, but everything is out of Fayetteville, North Carolina. It allowed me to travel a lot, and I definitely miss that side of getting out, experiencing new places, new cultures, new people. And so that’s been another awesome thing through GORUCK is like it’s allowed me to get out of my hometown and see other places, meet new people and just continue to mission of making yourself better every day. I think that GORUCK is a perfect vehicle for that. It really tied hand in hand.

Brian: That’s great, and it definitely seems like you get a ton of opportunity to travel, different cities, different events. Every event needs a cadre.

Cadre DS: Yup.

Brian: When you first heard about GORUCK — I’m really interested in this. You weren’t too keen on signing up for an event. A lot of cadre that I’ve talked to and a lot of people who I’ve talked to with military backgrounds aren’t too excited at first, because they’ve done the PT. They’ve done that once and gotten paid for it. So why would they do it again and have to pay for it? What was the turning point to get you to register for the first event?

Cadre DS: Well, that’s such a great question. What was the turning point to register for an event? When I initially heard about it, I wasn’t looking for another like a hobby or an outlet to go and go do this really tough training iteration, whether it’d be like starting a race. I had a lot of competitive backgrounds. I competed in cross-fit from 2011, and I still do local competitions through cross-fit, but I didn’t really feel that like a smoked session would be really my alley and I didn’t fully understand the other concepts behind what GORUCK does. It’s not just a long night of mission walking around through a city, but all the other intrinsic values that GORUCK and the events get off; mission-based training, doing some real-world, like, “Hey, I can learn about medical training, or I can learn about shooting or climbing,” and then also just becoming a better American and a better version of yourself. I didn’t really know about that, but when I first heard about the events, and from the outside looking in it was just like, “Oh! These are a bunch of people that just want to show up and get crushed like a selection day.”

Having already done that, I didn’t really feel an itch to do that. Then when I kind of started peeling back the layers of the onion, found a little bit more about what it was. My first event that I did was with Cadre Nick and it was in Riley, North Carolina. I showed up not really knowing that to expect like everybody else had and just everything that unfolded throughout the night was awesome. It reminded me of my hardest days of training in my selection processor and even assessment for some of the highest level.

That really worked my interest and I was like, “Man! This is pretty bad ass, that you can create this environment outside of military training,” and I think that’s one thing that GORUCK and the cadre solely do really well. It could be done really well and sometimes we miss the mark on it, but I think that being the intent for guys to get out there and create these environments, whether it’d be a light event or tough event where it’s like, “Man! This is a little taste of some of the hardest stuff you can put yourself through and come out way better and more confident on the other side.”

Brian: That’s great, and it’s awesome to see that transformation, especially during people’s first events where they’re putting themselves through something that they’ve possibly never done before and might not have been fully prepared for and seen them succeed and realize that they can do much more than they thought they could.

Cadre DS: Yes. Absolutely.

Brian: When you did that first event, it sounds like you weren’t planning on going into that being a GORUCK cadre.

Cadre DS: No, I was, and I already had the interest in becoming a GORUCK cadre, because I saw it as more like — It’s an instructor role, and I already had that background of being a coach at the gym, evolution athletics, and it’s my continuation of that, the GORUCK cadre thing kind of totally fell right in line with it. Throughout my time in the Air Force, I never go the opportunity to be an instructor. I was operational the entire time, and from a really early age, high school age, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher, and that’s kind of the direction that I feel like it’s taken with adult life now, is that I coach people in fitness and health. Then GORUCK has allowed me to instruct on this other level of, “Hey, these are kind of a military type training.” There are some different avenues there, but it’s given me that instructor role that I really like and it’s outside of just like fitness.

Brian: Yeah. Absolutely.

Cadre DS: I knew going into it, and I knew going into the Riley event, “Hey man, this is —” The way that I kind of went about it too is every day, for me anyways, is a selection process. I showed up to the Riley event like, “Hey, well I want to see what this whole GORUCK thing is about. I want to be able to have the opportunity to lead other people,” and I treated it basically like a job interview for myself. So the way that I went into the event was like, “All right. One, I know I’m a bad ass operator, and so I want to be that member on the team.” I showed up not really knowing what it was going to entail not having what the idea what the night was going to bring, but all I could do is show up at the right time, right place, right uniform and put out on the team. Going into it, like I had my goal outlined for me, but that’s how it unfolded.

Brian: How did that night go?

Cadre DS: Well, it started off with a normal GORUCK procedures and we started off a lot of lunges across the football field, basically like interlocked arms with each other. By that time once there was a couple of people that were ready to call it a night, we moved on and went to a couple of different objectives. It happened to be a Memorial Day event, so we, at the time, told some stories about military members. Then eventually picked up the big dummy that we used a lot in training and had a bunch of other heavy stuff that we’re trekking across town. It was painful, man. It was a lot of movement and I hadn’t really been ruck training that much, that I knew that like I had a solid fitness base.

But long, heavy, I saw the team dynamic and it was fun. A lot of the time, right in the middle of the suck, I looked around and there was a retired marine — Well, he was getting ready to retire as a marine. He was right next to me the whole time. As we were going through it together, it just reminded me of some of the toughest training that I had done and really like breaking it down. Really have to center your focus and complete an objective and be the best member of the team that you can be. It felt good and it reminded me of like the grind that you have to put yourself through, and I really enjoyed.

Brian: It sounds like a great first event.

Cadre DS: Yeah. It was well ran, and I think that most of the time that’s the intent. You never know what’s going to sign up for. I don’t know if you guys noticed, but that’s how we kind of — That’s the initiation process of a cadre and I think that’s one of the best things you can do. Like a lot of guys in the military and for all branches. You’d get your green beret or your red beret or your whatever That’s not permission to just like stop. It’s not permission to stop training really hard, and for a lot of guys, just kind of slack of and might get soft. Man! You wouldn’t make it through a GORUCK event, a hard GORUCK event, but if you stayed on it and you maintain your capacity and your level, you could be a great member of the team.

For me, that was a big push. Yeah, definitely a good event, eye-opening, and there are some lessons learned in there where like little team drama things that — Little things that happen and you have to problem solve them, and I think that that can only happen at that really stressed out level of like, “Hey, I’m carrying a couple of hundred pounds of this stuff and all these stuff that’s just really uncomfortable to carry,” and people’s tempers get up and they start looking at little problems differently, but you can’t really get to that point without all work that you put in beforehand. I felt that was pretty special.

Brian: It is. I’ve noticed that you problem solve a little bit different when you’ve got a giant log in your shoulder and you’re carrying a jerrycan in one hand or under a substantial amount of weight.

Cadre DS: Yup. That is definitely the case.

Brian: That’s awesome. For those who are listening, Cadre DS mentioned that to become a GORUCK cadre you have to at least go through one GORUCK event, and I think that’s really cool, that you have to take part in it before you lead it. So I’m glad that you had a great first event. Have you participated in any events since then?

Cadre DS: Well, besides the one that I’ve led, no. I actually do make it a point in my events. I won’t say. A point in my events that I lead is to get in with the team and like help carry the log, help move whatever that — If there’s a point where I can interject myself, I like to do that with the team and not just be like over the shoulder and yelling and just kind of, “Hey! Move this there,” but man, everybody else is doing it and I like to make it a point to get in there and help out where I can and be not just the cadre, but also a part of a team. For me, that keeps me on the same level and keeps my head straight. But I would totally do another event. I’d be up for the challenge. I’m not really got called out yet by anybody, so I could make it work something. When and if it does happen. Those days are upon us.

Brian: Absolutely, and I noticed that at our Santa Rock Light, when we were shouldering the log up that giant hill over by North Gate, looked over and saw you there and I had to do a double take, because I thought I was losing it, because I was like, “There’s no way that cadre is under the log with me right now,” but there you were.

Cadre DS: Is that not something that a lot of guys do?

Brian: It’s not too common.

Cadre DS: All right. Well, maybe we can change that paradigm a little bit.

Brian: Yeah. I’ve only shadowed a couple events to take pictures, but whenever I do, I always get jealous of the people in the event. That’s why I don’t shadow events, because when I figure I’m there already, I’m doing the miles. I want to be under the log and I want to be taking part in this. I always wondered for cadre, watching the team do this, if they ever got a little anxi and wanted to get under the log and carry some stuff too.

Cadre DS: I do. Personally for my own training, and I think that there’s huge value in just like you said, like looking over, and there’s a big different between like — We’ve all seen a picture of the guy that’s like leading the way or like the big king that’s like, “Hey, just go do this,” and then the guy that’s out there helping you move everything. Man! I would get to the point in my training where I’d be like, “Hey! All right, can you move this log? Can you push it back over your head?” Are you doing this work or are you just saying go?

In my events and hopefully it catches on where other guys are just like, “You still got to show up and put out.” For us, for my standard, I’d like to be able to do the work, but also be the leader and be able to teach and keep my mind about me when things are really tough. Maybe it catches on. Maybe it’s a cadre via special. I don’t know.

Brian: We will. I thought it was really nice especially for the type of event we were doing. So for those who are listening, we did the Santa Rock Light in Seattle and we had a giant slay which was our team weight of sorts. We actually had another team weight, it was like a 15-pound child dressed in a Ranger costume, which something I’ve never seen before. It was awesome. The kid was adorable, and he was very well-mannered. I was shocked, but we had this giant sleigh. It was filled with toys, and it was just awesome that you were under it with us for at least part of the time and it really cemented that we were there doing something greater than just ourselves. We were delivering all these toys to the Ronald McDonald house, which is an awesome place. It’s this house that has a ton of rooms of families can stay there. It’s next to Seattle Children’s Hospital. So specially that time of year, the holidays, the kids have a ton of appointments and it’s a place for the families to stay so they can be close to their kids and they can spend the holidays with them. We rucked a ton of miles to deliver these toys, and just having Cadre DS under that sleigh with us cemented that this was bigger than all of us. Thank you for that.

Cadre DS: Yeah, and if I could add on to that. Man, as I was getting to Seattle and it was a kind of a whirlwind trip as it was. It was kind of a last minute, “Hey DS, can you go and run this event.” To my best ability, I always take on the events. Like if I don’t have anything else going on, if I’m not with my daughter, man I’m there. I was looking at the map and I’ve been to Seattle one time before, but I wanted to make this event really badass and that’s been like a whole goal of my own, is to do something special at every single one.

When we initially looked at it, I was trying to brainstorm about how I could make this really special, and the point that we like pulled together to a public transportation. We loaded like 15 adults and 15 small children on to a bus. Drove across town, used your quitting money to buy more presents. All the little kids got to go in and pick a present that they wanted. They used all the money. It was already in the pot anyways, so you’ve already committed to it. But man, really filled up the sleigh. We went from like carrying 100 pounds in the sleigh to probably carrying close to 300 pounds. For the kids, they got to pick something that they wanted and then turn right around and give it somebody that really needed it. I thought that that was the biggest lessoned learned, because kids — Man, they might put it together, but doing something selfless like that really had a big impact on me and hopefully other people saw that as well. Just the hoops that we went through to accomplish that mission of getting the kids at the Ronald McDonald house and the families that are staying there in a really rough period in their lives, some more support, and that was — At the end of the day, that was the mission and the way that we accomplished it was by foot and carrying the sleigh. Man, that was probably one of my favorite events that I’ve run so far and each one stands out itself. That overall, making a good impact and teaching along the way of selfless acts of service and throwing the GORUCK spin on it. That was a great time.

Brian: Yeah. It was an absolutely incredible event, and it was phenomenal that you’re able to pull it off given your whirlwind tour of Seattle.

Cadre DS: Yeah.

Brian: We’ll get into your travel in a second. For those who are listening, Cadre DS did an incredible job at this event. We did things at this event that I’ve never done at a previous event. I think at this point done well over 30 GORUCK events and every time I do an event, there’s always something slightly new, slightly different that keeps me coming back. But Cadre DS really, really brought it.

We met in this park and the first thing we did after some warm ups was we took a bus across town, which is something I’ve never done at a GORUCK event. We took this bus across town. We spent our quitter cash, all the $20 bills that we all brought on toys. Like he mentioned, the kids were instructed. This was a custom light and so kids were allowed to come. There were a number of kids who were, I think, ranged from 5 to 16, 16, 17 and they were instructed to go with the quitters cash, buy a toy that they wanted. Something that if they were given, they would be very excited about.

They went and bought the toys and then we delivered them. We rucked them over to the Ronald McDonald house, which was about half way or three quarters of the way back from where this bus took us. Then we had to ruck back to the start point from there. No one’s got quitters cash. No one can quit. The best way to keep the team together, no one’s got money to get out of here anymore. It was awesome.

One last thing before I get back to Cadre DS’s travel plans, is he mentioned that he teaches a lot during his events and it was incredible. The lessons he brought out specially for the kids who were present. There was one point when we were buzzing over and I noticed that when these kids came on, they kind of bunched and the first one paid, and I think there were either two or three of them and either the second one just tried to slide by or the first one paid. Second one paid, and the third tried to whistle by so you didn’t have to pay for the bus fare, because apparently you didn’t have the money. The bus driver called them back and told them that, “Hey, if you just asked, if you had said, “I don’t have bus fare. I’m trying to get to this place with my friend,” that he would have just let him go. He was disrespectful trying to slip by, sneak on the bus.

When we got off the bus — I caught that when we were on the bus. So did Cadre DS. When we got off the bus, Cadre DS did just an amazing job distilling this into a very applicable life lesson for all the kids who were there at the event, and it was just awesome how he grabbed these small moments that happened at the event and turned them into giant teaching lessons. It was very cool.

Cadre DS: Man, I can’t believe you caught that. It’s given me goosebumps just thinking about it and like, “Hey, that’s crazy. That’s cool.

Brian: It was. I was just paying attention to who is getting on and getting off the bus where everyone — We had a ton of kids with us, so we wanted to make sure we had eyes on everything, but it was quite the moment. Thank you. Thank you for that. It’s just amazing what you brought to that event, especially the way you tailored it to the kids that were there and still made it amazing for the adults.

Cadre DS: I hope everybody had a good time. That’s the main goal, right?

Brian: Absolutely. Hopefully the way I’ve described this event, it makes you think that Cadre DS knew about this event well in advance. He had flown out to the city probably at least a day or two in advance to plan this out. I talked to him at the event, this was his second time in Seattle and we had a start point that was set. We rode public transportation from there. The Seattle bus system, it’s a very webbed system. It’s not like the Chicago train or anything like that where it all it makes sense. It’s a very interesting system. So for him to come in and pull these all together was amazing.

Do you want to talk a little bit about your travel experience?

Cadre DS: Yeah, absolutely. I’ll make it relatively quick. I found out about the event. It was kind of like a last minute thing. So I was looking at like a time sensitive target, and having the only other time being in Seattle, probably drank too many beers because I was out there doing a big mission with the Rangers and flying — Or well, picked the trip from McChord, the Air Force space there.

Going out, flying out of Riley, I knew it was going to be a cross country and I initially planned it out that I’d get to spend a decent amount of time in Seattle, because man I’m a huge coffee fan and just wanted to like check it out. I planned in a good amount of time on the ground. Well, in Riley, ended up having air craft issues after one, after another, and another, and another. Actually, loaded the plane like two times and they took everybody off. So I’m making all my coordinations with the GORUCK guys backside so that everybody would know, “Hey, we might have to delay the event a little bit.” Ended up finally getting to Denver. I had missed my connection flight. I had to spend the night in Denver. Woke up super early the next day, like 3:30 in the morning to get back to the airport and then have another — Once again, another delay. It was going to keep me from landing in Seattle till about an hour before the event started.

Finally made it. Talked to Molly who was the event point of contact, and we were totally on board with, “Hey, we’ll just get everybody there. I’m going to do everything I can to get there on time,” so just communicated. But I wasn’t going to quit and I wasn’t going to like turn around and that I wanted to run the event. I landed in Seattle, ran outside with everything that I had. Got in an Uber. Actually, like negotiated, taken a limo because I thought it would be a little bit quicker than an Uber. They ended up not working up. So took a Prius up there. But got into an Uber, jetted up to the start point, started the event and then had to immediately, after the event, go back to the airport and fly out. Over all, I think time on the ground was 9 hours in Seattle. That was kind of a whirlwind, but definitely made the most of it.

Brian: Yeah, I’d see you made the most it. That’s probably the best well-spent 9 hours in Seattle, but that also has to be the quickest turnaround for you, and that’s going to be some record, right?

Cadre DS: Oh, yeah. For sure. I don’t know, like cross-country travel. That was a tough one, but it’s what you got to do.

Brian: Absolutely.

Cadre DS: That’s what the mission call for.

Brian: Easily more time in the air than on the ground.

Cadre DS: Yeah. Not ideal, but not all circumstances line up all the time, but we got it done.

Brian: Absolutely. It was an incredible event like I said.

Cadre DS: Thanks.

Brian: For those listening, find out where Cadre DS is going to be, and do an event with him. He makes it good.

You did an amazing job cadreying our event. How events have you run as a cadre so far?

Cadre DS: I think between 20 and 30. Somewhere in there.

Brian: That’s less than I expected, honestly. It makes sense, since you started in the summer, but the amount of professionalism and the way you run the events makes me feel at least that you had, I don’t know, 60, 70 under your belt already.

Cadre DS: Yeah, I’ve got that a couple of times, but with my background — Not everybody that comes into GORUCK has a background of like coaching and teaching already for a couple of years beforehand. So I think that that my prior experience has kind of accelerated a little bit, and then also we didn’t necessarily get to do this at the light event, but I’ve had some great mentors along the way. Gotten to do a couple of the other Ascent, like the GORUCK Ascent event. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with that, but I’d love to talk more about those type of events as well. I think the learning curve is it’s pretty easily to climb if you can manage it properly, and event talking to guys that have done hundreds of events over and over and over and learning who those guys are every event and then cornering them either in the backline as they’re taking off of the log and talking to people and finding out what makes GORUCK special and what they love about the event, what a bad event looks like. I try to really take that feedback and make the most badass experience that somebody can have, whether it’s a light or a tough or like spinning the whole bay, rucking around on a heavy, or even like the Ascent where we climb a mountain and learn about backpacking and rock climbing and repelling and doing some amazing other skill work. Man! If you can listen and apply the feedback that people are giving and just kind of like put your own personal spin on it, you can make it awesome.

Brian: I think Ascent this year is in August, end of August if I recall correctly. We’ll have to do another one of these, and we can have an entire episode about Ascent, because there’s just so much to talk about it sounds like with that event.

Cadre DS: Yeah. Really, whether it’s an Ascent or constellation or like a navigator or any of the other — Anything else besides light, tough, heavy, there are so much that everybody can learn outside of those events. I really hope that we see more of those on the schedule, and I think that it boils down to what people want. Americans are using their voice and saying, “Hey, who better than to teach them than special operations guys and with some help from guys like Chris Way,” who, man, if you haven’t met Chris or listen to him talk, do so. I think you guys have. Just saying like, “Hey man, if GORUCK will listen, I think.” Be verbal about what kind of other events and training opportunities we want to see. I think that could be really valuable.

Brian: Yeah. Chris Way has been on twice so far and he’s an awesome guy. I have not had the pleasure of meeting him in person yet, but it’s going to happen.

Cadre DS: Yeah. Well, sign up for an Ascent or go out to Boulder.

Brian: Yeah, he’s a very accommodating person. I would love to go out there and hangout with him sometime. It’s been great to see the GORUCK calendar expand, constellation 6, constellation 12. There’s just tons of events in 2018 to sign up for that are outside the realm of the traditional light, tough, heavy.

Cadre DS: Yup.

Brian: So it sounds like there’s going to be a lot of opportunity for people.

Cadre DS: Yeah, absolutely.

Brian: In terms of running events, what’s your favorite to run?

Cadre DS: If I had to say my favorite event so far, has been the Ascent event where we’re getting out and we’re doing some rock climbing and we’re getting in nature. Man, it’s unfair for me to pick a favorite. It’s like picking your favorite kid. But I’ve had light events that I’ve loved, tough events that I’ve loved and some that I’ve ran and I’ve just been like, “Oh man! That did not go the way that I would have wanted it to go.”

So I can’t pick a favorite style of event, just because they all have — They all have different value. I’ll tell you, the hardest for me personally to run is definitely the tough, and then running through the night and then starting up like a couple of hours later for a light. That’s definitely — It’s challenging for the cadre to stay like mentally checked in the whole time. My favorite event would be just getting out and doing stuff outside of cities.

Brian: Very cool. That’s got to be — Especially tough on the events you travel for, flying to a city, possible time zone change, run the tough through the night, run the light the following day and then fly back out. That’s got to be exhausting.

Cadre DS: Yeah. Hey, every day is a selection process, right?

Brian: Yeah, that’s a great way to look at it. I really liked what you said about the lights challenges and heavies, or I guess the lights, the toughs as they’re called now, and the heavies. You definitely get a different group of people at each of them all looking to achieve something different. Like the big goal for the people who are showing up for their first light is different than the goal for the people who are showing up for the tough or the heavy, and so you can probably bring a lot to that, because if you’re training background, you’ve been — You’re running your gym for 4, 5 years now, but being able to tune in to that, the need of the participant being different and unique is awesome.

Cadre DS: Yeah, and I think that’s the kind of the nature of the beast and an entire weekend of heavy, tough, and then a light. Well, the people that showed up for the heavy probably should have signed up for the tough, and the people that signed up for the tough could have definitely been more prepared for the heavy than anybody else. Or even the people that showed up for a tough and then like they just probably should have went with a light first, and then the crew that signed up for the light, they would have done much better with the heavy.

There’s no telling like who shows up at that time at that part with that gear what you’re going to get, and it’s part of the team dynamic, but also part of the cadre, like instinct and intuition and just like reading the people of, “Hey, how hard can we push this group and how much can we do?” It’s just more of like, “Do we need to scale back a little bit or just turn it in to like a bloodbath?” Well, I don’t necessarily enjoy the bloodbath that much. I just don’t. There’s a point where everybody’s got what they need out of it, and we talk a lot about minimum effect of dose at the gym. If the doctor says take this much, but if you take way more, it’s going to turn into a shit show. So I try to apply that to the GORUCK events too and not make it absolutely crazy, but meet the intent every time with who shows up, whether it’s 15 kids or a bunch of pipe hitters.

Brian: Yeah. It’s so true. So true. It’s like I said before, it’s just great that you’re able to acknowledge that and adjust accordingly, which probably goes back to your training background.

Cadre DS: Yeah.

Brian: I was going to ask what you bring to an event to make it unique, or like a Cadre DS event. But I think we covered that getting in with the team, getting under the log and shouldering some of that. I want to flip that question a little bit and ask what’s been the most interesting time or what’s been a really unique time that you interjected yourself into an event.

Cadre DS: Let’s see. I’ve done a bunch so far, and it’s always different. None of these — No event is anywhere near the same. Most of the time it’s been a different crew of people where you get — I’ve had a couple of guys do a couple of different events at this point. Man! I don’t know. I don’t have a great — I’ll give you that. I don’t know.

It’s been really fun. One memory that sticks out to me is — I always talk about it, is the Ascent that we did. There was — The plan was there was me, Chris Way and then Cadre Doug, Doug Doug, and I think Doug’s done a bunch of events over the years and has a great reputation as being a great dude. How it panned out was I was going to be out in front with the guys that wanted to go real fast and just make it up both mountains, and the plan was we were going to summit one fourteneer, and depending on the schedule and how fast they made it up, we were going to be able to summit two 14,000-foot peaks if the time allowed and we had the energy to do it and the weather was good.

We got going and a couple of guys really kept up with me and my girlfriend who was doing the event and kicked ass at it, but we made it up. Within five minutes or so of each other, and so there was me and about five other guys standing on the top of this mountain out-looking over everything, and then it kicked in of like, “Hey man, that was great. One mission is good.” I told them the story about Robert Ridge, and the Air Force combat controller, John Chatman, who basically went in after one of the SEALS had fallen out at the back of the helicopter on their infil. So Bill Roberts who’s one of the SEALS basically started taking contact, Neil Roberts falls out of the helicopter. They land, basically crash land. John Chatman, who is combat controller runs out, starts assaulting and basically up a snowy peak and eventually was shot and killed after a long battle. He’s actually getting looked at for the Medal of Honor upgrade from an Air Force Cross that he got.

Basically, pulled that story of that mission and everything that came out after it, because man it was a long day for a lot of guys, and so framed that scenario and then moved together as a team to conquer the second 14,000-foot peak. So just that changing the mindset of what we’re out there doing. We’re not just like hiking around, but man, like this is a mission. That’s kind of definitely been one of my favorite points that really stuck out to me. You can carry a lot all day, we know how that feels, but if you can change your mindset from just out on a casual Saturday hike, to we have to get this done in this amount of time with these people. This is a team. Let’s make it happen. That’s one thing I love about doing these events.

Brian: That’s awesome, and that’s definitely one of the things I think that makes doing Ascent and doing those GORUCK capstone classes or expeditions, I think they might be called, special. Going and doing that with the team at a GORUCK event versus going in and doing the 14,000 peak by yourself or with a smaller group.

Cadre DS: Yeah.

Brian: That’s awesome. Are you going to do ascent this year? Are you planning on that?

Cadre DS: I hope so. I want to do all the events that I can, and I really — Like I said. Every trip is different and every location, every team, every ruck club or whoever shows up to the event. You never know what’s going to happen. What I’ve tried to do is kind of form each one differently, and you can’t really set — You never know when the magic is going to happen, but it always does. Something badass always tends to happen and all we can do is get out there and keep doing stuff. I’m not going to hold back. If they call out, I’ll look at it as like a different mission for myself and go and show up and have a badass time and hope everybody else has a great time too.

Brian: That’s a great mindset. That’s an awesome mindset to have, and I think by — You probably know this, because you’re living it, but by being that open to those challenges or mission, the experiences that you probably get to travel to a lot more cities than people who — If it doesn’t fall in the schedule or if it doesn’t, if they hadn’t been planning it for months in advance, then it’s not going to happen.

Cadre DS: Yeah, totally. I hope that that keeps going. Got to factor in ops tempo and getting burned out on things. Man, I don’t think that — It’s how you attack life. Like you just got to put yourself out there and if you need a break, calm it down. If you’re going like making the best time that you possibly can. Even if it’s like, “Hey, I’m going to plan this. I’m going to plan this mission out on the way to this location.” You can plan it all day, but you get boots on the ground, it’s going to be different and you’re going to have to flex and you might have to take a metro or a bus or whatever it is and just go with it.

Brian: Absolutely. You might have to forgo the coffee experience in Seattle unfortunately.

Cadre DS: Yeah. That was a short trip.

Brian: Yeah. Maybe you’ll make it out here again. You can do the coffee tour, the roastery, the Starbucks roastery in Capital Hills is pretty cool from what I hear.

Cadre DS: I plan on it.

Brian: Speaking of unique towns, cities you’ve been to. Are there any other places that you haven’t been to yet that you’re hoping to get to through a GORUCK event?

Cadre DS: Miami. I haven’t done Miami yet. Phoenix, Arizona. I need to hit Arizona. I was actually just looking at a map last night. My daughter for Christmas, my daughter got this — She got a big map of the U.S. and I was looking at all the states, and I actually love taking her to all these states and then bringing her back something from every place that I go to.

We’re looking at it and like making all of our little memories of like, “Okay. Seattle, Portland, California. Check, check, check. Got them. That’s west coast stuff.” Utah, Colorado, right? Really, man I’m trying to knock out every state, and I don’t really care where it’s at and I’ll even do some off names in between. Yeah, it doesn’t really matter to me. I’ll go wherever.

Brian: That’s awesome. What a great Christmas gift too. You don’t hear about too many maps. That’s great.

Cadre DS: Yeah.

Brian: My foster son asked for a hammer, a screwdriver and a new pair of pliers for Christmas.

Cadre DS: Nice.

Brian: Yup.

Cadre DS: Man stuff. I like it.

Brian: He’s 3-1/2, and in addition to that, he got a drill. He slept with it for the past two nights. He’s stoked.

Cadre DS: Power tools. Excellent. That’s one thing that a man now that I wish that I would have done more as a kid and even like learning that. It’s been a steep learning curve for myself of like putting stuff together, and now I love it, like building tables and benches and working with your hands and making something. I wish that I would have done that more as a kid. But that’s awesome. You guys are getting him into that.

Brian: Yeah. I don’t know if we’re getting him into it or if he’s getting me into it. That’s one of the things I wish I had done more too as a kid. Yeah, he just loves fixing things, building things, climbing ladders, playing with all the heavy stuff. Obviously, we’re talking about this. It’s slightly after Christmas. We’re talking about the gifts that our kids got. We’re going into the New Year. People are obviously goal-setting, planning for the future. A lot of the people who listen to this podcast have never done an event, and we’ve got another group that listen that they’ve done a couple of lights or they’ve done a couple of toughs, but they’re looking to push to that next light to tough event or going for the heavy.

What advice as either a trainer, a GORUCK cadre, do you have for people who are listening who’ve never signed up for an event before? They’re interested in rucking. They might have done a couple of rucks, but they haven’t committed to a GORUCK event. What advice do you have for those people?

Cadre DS: Well, I would say that one, what works for me is pick an event that you’re far enough out, that you can train for. Not too far that’s like, “Oh, it’s going to lost in the sauce.” Typically, like three or four months out and pick one that almost like scares you a little bit, and it should scare you. But then that should be what wakes you up and helps drive you every day.

If it’s in that range of, “All right, this is three, four months away. I’m going to have to wake up and go hard, and maybe I got to lose 15 pounds. Maybe I got to work through an injury and rehab up to this point of like capability.” What I would do is pick a spot, pick a location. Look at flights if you have to, but get outside of your comfort zone and maybe leave everything behind. If you know that you’re rucking right around the corner from your house, it’s going to be that much easier to say, “I don’t really want to be here anymore. I’m cold. I want to go inside.” But if you put yourself in a new environment and you just show and you know that you’ve put work that you can and you’ve done everything up to that point, those 12, 16 weeks of hard training, then you’re going to show up and you’re going to crush it.

If you don’t do that, then you’re going to get stuck in that cycle of self-doubt and not being able to get off the couch or not even be able to get started. It could be just as simple as like, “Hey, take 10 minutes in the morning and knock out as many pushups or as many burpees as you can or like do a workout.” It doesn’t have to be crazy, but just chipping away at it every day and building in those little life patterns that are going to help you achieve that goal. Or me, I just complete, and maybe this is a great time to talk about the Spartan race thing if you want to.

Brian: Yeah.

Cadre DS: For myself, I’m very goal-based and goal oriented, and so I found myself last September. Basically like I was getting into doing GORUCK events and knocking them out and traveling a bunch and having a great time and I saw my fitness program change from doing strongman competition. Probably posting up like 300-pound rocks, 300-pound stones and like kegs and big logs and lifting up cars and doing like crazy strongman stuff for the last year or so before I got into doing GORUCKs. That kind of drove my training, and that and cross-fit, and so doing local competitions.

Then picking up, doing other outdoor events. I just wanted to get outside and do some rock climbing and just be doing activities more than like competitions. Then one of my friends who runs events for Spartan race put out online that they needed — They were putting together these military teams and they wanted some volunteers.

I was in the Air Force, done one Spartan race before so I was like, “All right. Well, whatever. How bad it can be?” The race ended up being — That was the Ultra race, which is a new style format. It’s a 24 hours, get as far as you can. I’ve done some 24-hour events. Fitness is pretty good, but at the time I didn’t really have a goal that I was working towards and I was just kind of training just to train, just to maintain. I knew that it was going to be about three months out, and so I saw that and it kind of scared me a little bit. I wasn’t doing a lot of running. I was doing plenty of rucking with GORUCK and like knocking out 30 miles on a weekend. No big deal, right? We can knock that out.

I felt like I had that base already set, but I didn’t know how bad it was going to be and I had to spill the rest of my week of objective-based goals training that I could prep myself for for a middle of December event. That really led my training program and like what my focus was from just strength-based cross-fit style training to more endurance base. Still doing like plenty of powerlifting and gymnastics movement, but going for those longer domains.

I had my goal set, started training up and really like surrounded with great training partners doing some obstacle courses around Fort Bragg and like going to gyms. I was out there in Portland, Oregon. Ended up doing the Halloween events out there, ended up going to like an American Ninja training gym where they had all these obstacles set up and run through all those and like just testing myself in different ways. That’s part of what it’s all about, right? Learning new sports and being able to be good at them and like cross-training that.

Prepped myself as best as I could. Showed up to Iceland where the 24-hour event was and absolutely crushed it. I felt great. No body issues. Didn’t fail any of the obstacles. Ended up going close to 40 miles and had a great time. That was kind of the look from start of, “Hey, Dan is kind of training.” It was not a lot of without an objective in mind, and then taking almost like everything on me of, “Hey, this is a 24-hour event. I’ve never been to Iceland before. I want to go knock this out.” So setting that goal and then letting everything kind of drive that train and then being able to show up and absolutely crush it. You could make that correlation between the GORUCK event.

Man! If you’ve done a couple of lights, check it out. Sign up for a tough. Figure out where it’s going to be at and make it a trip. Show up a couple of days before and shout it out and maybe take a weekend off, but get outside of your own backyard and go an event. Then that can help drive your training, because if it scares you, if you’re nervous about it, you’re going to prep a little bit and then train that little bit much more intense that you might not if you’re just like, “Well, yeah this is what I do.” But if you’re looking at taking that step, you got to have some kind of motivation and I think fear — Maybe fear of failure for me is a big driving motivator, and people get scared of that kind of thing, but you’re going to embrace the unknown, but set you up that much better.

Brian: That’s just amazing advice, all around right there.

Cadre DS: Yeah. I kind of rambled on for a little bit, but man maybe you can take some stems on that.

Brian: Absolutely, and what a way to just embrace what you’re talking about too. You said that 24-hour event, you’ve only done one Spartan race in the past in Iceland. A place you mentioned you’ve never been to before.

Cadre DS: Yeah, it turns out it’s really ice there. I mean like it was just like a sheet of ice everywhere you went.

Brian: That must have made it really interesting. Really something, I’m sure.

Cadre DS: Yeah.

Brian: If I can just add one little bit about traveling for GORUCK events, one of the things that I think is really, really cool about traveling for GORUCK events is that it almost forces you to get more involved in the community, because if you’re not traveling with weight or if you’re not sure about the start point, you have to post out on the event page and you have to get tied in to whatever local ruck club or rucking groups are out there, and it’s just a great way to meet new people and get some extra roots out there.

Cadre DS: 100%. If I can go in a little tangent about that if you don’t mind.

Brian: Please do.

Cadre DS: One of the most badass thing that I’ve seen. So I do the event in October there in Portland, and then got scheduled for the Seattle event. Same neck of the woods, the travel squad. A little shout out real quick. They kind of reached out and one of the guys, we became Facebook friends. I hit him up and I was like, “Hey man, where’s a good spot to stay?” Usually I do like Airbnb for a night or whatever if I’m doing the event. But just reaching out and building that community and building that network of people is amazing.

I hit him up and I was like, “Hey, what’s a good spot to stay at? What’s close,” and just trying to build those relationships. He immediately hooked me up with one of the other dudes and I was like letting other people stay at your place or get on little tips of, “Hey, stay here. Don’t stay here. This is close. This is a good area.” That’s one thing that I thought was amazing with the Seattle crew, was just how open everybody was, just, “Hey, do you got a spare couch or a room at your place?” Like building that community.

Inside of GORUCK, there’s plenty of people, plenty of weirdos. Hopefully they’re not too weird, that you wouldn’t let them like crash in your couch or whatever. But if you’re going to do that and travel somewhere else, just getting tied in with like, “Hey, who’s in this area?” And so that’s one thing. You’re talking about networking and getting outside of your comfort zone and having to integrate into that other new community. That’s a great way to do it, and I think that’s a pretty cool way to travel to and you can meet some really awesome friends and people that you stay in contact with and see what their journey is all about.

Brian: Absolutely. If you have a couple of days on the tail end of your trip, you do the event and then you got to back and you get to see some of the spots that you hit during the event, but you get to see them during the day with actual people around, and it’s always a different view.

Cadre DS: Yeah, for sure. If you could walk, that is. You got to be able to crawl around and —

Brian: Absolutely. Yeah, considering that you haven’t wrecked yourself from the event, you can explore the city and have fun with that.

Cadre DS: Yeah.

Brian: Yeah, there’s just some great crews out there, some awesome communities and there’s almost no better way to get hooked up with them than to do an event with them in their neck of the woods.

Cadre DS: Yeah, absolutely.

Brian: So you’ve probably noticed that a lot traveling for different events. All the different crews come out and if Cadre DS says that they’re good, then there’s ruck clubs allover.

Cadre DS: That is cool interesting dynamic.

Brian: I didn’t realize that you’re out here for the Portland, the zombie events.

Cadre DS: Yup.

Brian: We’ll have to talk about those sometime too, because I’ve always been intrigued by the zombie events and what makes them special. So maybe we can do an episode on GORUCK zombie events.

Cadre DS: Yeah, I would absolutely love to. That would be super cool. I think that’s a part of GORUCK that you can — The zombie apocalypse, right? It could be anything from the walking dead to the walking hungry, or civil outburst of like civil disobedient or riots and how do you get inside of town to the outside. What are you looking at? I’ve done a couple of the zombie events so far, and they’re cool, man. I definitely recommend somebody that is just getting into it to check it out. Cool theme.

Brian: Absolutely. Before we wrap up, is there anything else that you want to talk about relating to your event schedule, what you do for fun, hobbies? Any events you’ve got coming up? Is there anything that you’ve got on your mind you want to talk about?

Cadre DS: I’ve got — The 2018 schedule just came out. I’m scheduled out through January, February, March. I know that I’m going to be in Washington, D.C. for Martin Luther King weekend. I got a couple of other really cool — Like I want to keep filling up my schedules as often as I can and hopefully it all packs in there and I can connect with as many folks as I can and just see America. Like I said, I don’t really care where I’m going. It’s going to be badass wherever we go.

Then I’m going to Missouri, going to Florida, Tampa for St. Patty’s day. It’s going to be a hell of a trip, I’m sure. But yeah, through the summer time, and I’m going to put myself out there as much as I can. Just keep posting those like trackers and hopefully we can all link up and have a great time and I will put out — This is the first time I’m making it public, is the Cadre DS patch, and I think some of the other cadre do this. Maybe like a couple of different criteria for it, and I’ve started doing this where basically like I did it for the Seattle event. You get my patch.

I always do this. I played high school sports, and I thought that was a big thing, is you get the game ball, right? If you’re the player of the game, you get my patch that I rucked around. Whether it might mean to some people, it might not to others, but it’s just that little bit extra respect of somebody that really pulled their way, whether it was in a leadership position. Mostly leadership, because I think that’s a great avenue that you can really step up inside of a GORUCK event, whether it’s a light or a tough or whatever it is. But there will be a Cadre DS patch, custom deal. Do you want to hear about the requirements?

Brian: Absolutely.

Cadre DS: I’m going to put it out there. You got to do three events with me, one of which has to be tough that you have to — Three events, one has to be a tough. The other two, I don’t really care. You have to be able to at one time do something, some kind of skillset, like tying, knot tying, come up with something, like problem solving. You have to be a leader. You don’t necessarily have to be the team leader of the event or like any part of the event. But man, like your leadership and followership has to be on point, and then also you have to bring somebody into the fold. Bring a new member into the community, and that’s part of growing this network and continuing the community. You got to bring somebody new.

Brian: That’s awesome. Those are definitely unique criteria, and that’s great.

Cadre DS: Yup. I’ve got a couple of dudes that I’m connected with already that are already on — Actually, females as well. Not just — The ruckers and the ruckets, but man like that’s the criteria and it will be a badass patch.

Brian: Very cool. I’ll post a link of Cadre DS’s upcoming events so you can check them out. One tough, two other events, and bring someone to the fold and some skillset criteria, leadership. It’s going to be awesome. I really like where you’re going with this.

Cadre DS: I think it’s a small enough community. I know the guys and I know who showed up before, and so it’s keep connecting, letting everybody know. Man, I’m all about testing people too. I know who you are. You show up a couple of times: two, three, four. I’m going to put you in those positions and really get after it.

Brian: Awesome. Is there anything else that you want to promote or any other shout outs you want to give?

Cadre DS: Well, I think the community speaks for itself. Keep doing awesome things. Checking out everything — The entire network. I talked about Chris Way a little bit. Just getting out and doing stuff, and I think that one thing that he’s kind of like mentored me on is, man, just getting out and doing stuff. It doesn’t matter what it is, but keeping your life super entertaining and getting outside of your comfort zone. So keep doing that.

If you’re looking for programming or whatever, or ways to get stronger and healthier, we do that at our gym. You could check out evolutionathletics.com, on Instagram, Facebook. If you’re looking for places to get started, shoot us an email and we’ll can do it remote or you could come in if you’re local. But something as simple as like weight loss or strength training of whatever your goals are. We’ve got a coach that can help you out with it. that’s something we do at my gym. Shameless plug, Evolution Athletics.

Then, yeah just staying with it and seeing what else is in the community. There are awesome Americans doing badass stuff and the vehicle right now is GORUCK, and I think that that’s awesome, right. If you see somebody with a bag on, say what’s up. We’re a pretty small community. That’s a good thing.

Brian: Great advice. All around, and I’ll post links to everything. Instagram, Facebook site, website, contact info, hit up Cadre DS.

Cadre DS: Yeah, man. Please do.

Brian: Please do. Like you said, be open to new things this year. One of the things I always try and do is I try and do something new every year so that when I look back at previous years, I can say, “2016 was the year I did this, or 2017 was the year I did something else.” If I look back at years and they all mesh together and there’s nothing special that I did in any of them, then I just feel like that’s kind of time that could have been spent better or could have been continuous improvement, improving skills, improving something. Try and do something new in 2018. If you haven’t signed up for a GORUCK event, make 2018 that year. If you’ve done a number of toughs and lights and you’re on the fence about a heavy, make 2018 the year. There’s no better time than now to set those goals and do that.

Cadre DS: Yeah, and if you don’t know, reach out to somebody and find out, man. Sometimes we like the inspiration of what to do, and so having those conversations of what else is there. There’s plenty of creative ways that you can get with it. So yeah, I’m all about that.

Brian: Absolutely. Dan, thank you so much for taking nearly an hour and a half out of your day. Just so much time to talk with me about everything you got going on, your gym, your events, all the cool stuff that you’re bringing to the community and what’s important to you. This has been an absolute blast. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day for this.

Cadre DS: Yes, thanks for having me and hopefully maybe we can link up again and chat it out.

Brian: That will happen. Absolutely. Thank you.

Cadre DS: Yeah, thank you.

The post ADR 030: Cadre Dan Skidmore Interview (GORUCK Cadre) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

MILRUCK is best described as the Swedish equivalent to GORUCK. They have been around for a few years and have run some pretty intense events.

In this episode we have the opportunity to interview Cadre Dennis who is both a cadre for MILRUCK as well as the founder. We get into the different types of events MILRUCK runs, how MILRUCK got started, and what’s planned for 2018.

Cadre Dennis took a ton of time out of his evening to chat and if you’re interesting in other companies that put on ruck events then you should surely listen to this episode.

Thanks so much for listening! If you missed any of our earlier episodes you can give them a listen right now. Hopefully you enjoyed the podcast and are excited about the next one. This is very new to us so we would appreciate it if you would cut us some slack as we work on perfecting our methodologies. Did you enjoy the podcast? We’d love a review on iTunes or even our Facebook Page! Didn’t enjoy it? Leave a comment here in the show notes and let us know what we can do better!

Thanks so much for the support and make sure to check out the links in the Show Notes. Subscribe through iTunes, Android, Google Music, Stitcher, or TuneIn and never miss another episode!

Brian: So, I’m talking with Dennis who is the founder of MILRUCK, which is a company that runs ruck events led by Cadre that have either a ranger or a soft background in Sweden. I’m just really excited that Cadre Dennis has taken time out of his evening to chat with me today. It’s a nine-hour time difference so definitely not the easiest thing for him. But I’m just honored that he is on here, this is very cool.

Dennis how is your evening going so far?

Cadre Dennis: Oh, it’s good. Thanks for having me. Time difference is to my benefit right now because I usually sit up late and work with MILRUCK since I have ordinary or not that ordinary to be honest, day job. You know, I spend evening working on the side job.

Brian: Perfect. Well, I’m glad it’s working out for you then. So, for those who are listening and have never heard of MILRUCK before. How do you describe the company and what you did to someone?

Cadre Dennis: Well, to someone who’s totally new to MILRUCK or even GORUCK. I would say it’s a non-conventional challenge based on assessment and selection on military elite forces. But to someone who’s familiar with GORUCK. Let’s say we are a Swedish equivalent, I guess. To GORUCK we are, I mean I haven’t been inspired by GORUCK and being in contact with Jayson, the CEO of GORUCK, since the beginning.

Brian: That’s very cool and I’ve seen familiar website that you recommend GORUCK gear and your GORUCK affiliated partner as well, so it definitely seems like you guys have some ties right there.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, that’s right I don’t have any gear and we are searching for X factor you know. We are an endurance event company right now and we need something more to broaden our spectra and also financially to be more profitable. So we need something more we’re not looking at gear at all because the best rucking gear is already out there. We are looking at something else, so I guess we are made going to speak about the online boot camp coming out next year and maybe that would be it, the online maybe it will be something else, we don’t know yet we are just an endurance company.

Brian: Awesome. I’m very excited to talk to you about the online boot camp. For those who are listening we will be touching on that and probably half an hour or so but a MILRUCK’s got an online boot camp coming out. The first class starts on the 7th of January 2018, so if you’re listening to this before that you can definitely self-time to check it out. Before we get in to MILRUCK, the events that you’re running and the online boot camping just everything that you’re doing with the company, I’d love to hear just a little bit about yourself and your background.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, sure. I joined military back in 1999 or did selection back in 1999 and joined marine rangers in the year 2000. I have no immediate interest in staying in the military and so I just got my trident and I wanted to get out and around the university and show off my trident like most of us. But the regiment at that time was setting up a deployments to Kosovo because they have conflict there which is pretty fierce and had been going on for just about one year since NATO went in. Sweden is not a NATO country but no with all these different corporations, Sweden tagged along like we done ever since.

And during my time in Kosovo, I was deployed with not, with fellow marine rangers but with rangers and that’s a platoon leader there who convinced me to join the army, join the army ranger reconnaissance with that of Kongsberg as an officer and during that time something very special happened, actually 9-11. And, when 9-11 happened I was in the upside down world of Kosovo, of course upside down because we were getting support from the Muslims ever the Kosovo Albania Muslims and they were putting out candles, painting American flags from the walls and the Christian serbes – they were burning American flags and they were sharing on that Al-Qaeda guys that we had never heard of before.

As a real blessing to me to see the Taliban’s go down, really motivated me to stay start screenshot from the Taliban’s driving their Toyota Land Cruiser’s and I knew that we are going to war and, yeah, that conflict played a really large part in the rest of my military career on the ranger reconnaissance which I’ve stayed for about 10 years and including the military academy. I was six years as a commissioned officer ranked captain. Brian and – I was in Afghanistan at the time and a friend of mine asked me about one come work for a private security company in the same company, a Swedish company.

They were doing embassy protection down in Caldwell and living in a small city like Carlsberg I didn’t like it socially. My career was fine, I love the work, I love the team but socially it didn’t work out. I went back – funny enough I went back to Afghanistan directly off to I came home It’s a work of a private contractor for your that will also open up a new roll to me with civilians getting jobs so.

After that year, I found another security agency in Sweden, a homeland security actually where I started to work for and during that time I was seconded to, I don’t even know if that’s a real word maybe that’s a Swedish word but they sent me to New York to work for the United Nations, the headquarters and that’s where I found God.

Brian: That’s incredible, that’s quite the history then I mean who would have – did you imagine that you would get to where you are now from where you started out? I mean it sounded out like you’re pretty excited to get your trident and then be done but here you are. You spent 10 years in there and ended and then private work afterwards, that’s quite a career.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, I know I didn’t see it coming. My plan was to go to San Diego to study at a small university in there. I think it was a community college even because they had diving classes so I figured that would be great, go there and you know. In America, you can dive. We can do that until then, so I found that sounds is awesome.

San Diego starts hot and that is warm so that makes sense but Kosovo happened, 9-11 happened and so many things I couldn’t foresee and yeah, one job led to another and it didn’t really end there during my time in New York when I got back I got a new job in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a security advisor and that’s where I am working in North Africa section and this is purely back from a different protective and I deploy bodyguards who want or personal security operators now. I love deploying myself and on my spare time I run MILRUCK because I guess I miss the fee of time and I miss the stuff we do and I work to the tough mentally exhausting, endurance, the teamwork, the camaraderie; I miss that part from the military now I get it so I know it’s a great time.

Brian: That makes total sense. So, when you were in New York how did you stumble upon GORUCK?

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, I went to New York with a couple of suits, briefcase to work at UMHQ and once I was there and I just looked around I realized all the vulnerabilities of such a metropolitan area with about 10 million people living on basically a couple of islands in a city that had been attacked before in that crazy world. So, I started buying Vortex clothes again. I started to train on land navigation again and I was browsing the web for a rucksack backpack and I found a backpack that looks really sleek. I could tell the quality was great just from the pictures, just from ho it was made and that it was really smart and obviously I’m talking about GORUCK and the GR0 or 1 as it’s now called so I ordered it. I didn’t really reflect on the price because in dollars everything sounds so cheap to me. I can tell now it’s probably not but you know.

So I just bought one it was twice as good as I thought it’s going to be and also found the events. There weren’t that much information back then but I found this really, really good. I think you’ve seen it. I think it’s famous even – I can’t find it anymore and after actual review done by a pretty fit black guy sitting – I think he’s talking about an event in New York even not sure and it was about 15 minutes long. He just talks about the GORUCK challenge and how crushed he was and that really motivated me, so I thought it was a crazy idea, stupid idea even so I signed up and after a couple of them I fell in love with company like many of us, right?

Brian: Absolutely and I know what exactly what video you’re talking about. I ‘ll try to dig it up, I haven’t seen it in ages but it’s a good one.

Cadre Dennis: Oh it’s awesome I hope you find it because I can’t find it anymore and it was great. I hope he puts it back on.

Brian: Absolutely, so you’ve done a couple GORUCK events then.

Cadre Dennis: Yes, I have to fulfill the story of MILRUCK we ran these network of former marine and the parachute rangers and they were all civilians here in Stockholm. Emotion Stockholm and they are very successful in their post military work life: doctors, lawyers, bankers, whatever, traders, police, fireman, they were everywhere. They kind of have this romantic memory of the military and they were talking about it a lot when we met and we went to have cigars at the club and stuff. Typical man stuff. You meet up in clubs and sit and talk and brag about which year was tougher.

And, we figured we would start a company who do all the cool stuff like the rib boats, like in fill, ex fill. Infiltration, exfiltration, insert and extract missions, teambuilding missions for CEOs, bankers, lawyers and we tag this with really, really high price and we call it the Project Lunar, being lunar is the moon and we’re thinking there will be night time events like a 12-hour extract mission or insert mission whatever.

As teambuilding, and you’ve never realized obviously and when I went to New York and from GORUCK I think it was during my first heavy I just drifted off in my mind and as you do journey the night time and I came up with – this is what I was looking for. It’s not the cool expensive exclusive stuff for former rangers it’s the heavy lift and tough stuff or people out there who are not typically rangers or personnel. I kind of pivoted in my mind and just realized this is it. I need to talk to Jason, I didn’t know his name was Jason. I need to call whoever runs this business and learn how he did it.

Brian: That’s wild, so the idea from what we see as MILRUCK today came from your mind during the GORUCK Heavy event.

Cadre Dennis: Yes, in San Diego, yeah.

Brian: So, you made it to San Diego.

Cadre Dennis: I was traveling all over the place. I did events every time I could and it was a great way to see America. I don’t understand GRT’s who just do events on their own city. The best way to do events, I even stop doing events in New York and did New York big events everywhere else because otherwise I wouldn’t have been to places like Buffalo, Baltimore, obviously San Diego and even if you’re in Normandy – I would probably go to anyway. But a few other small places where there are interesting American cities, I wouldn’t have seen. So those actually are my best memories and I jumped on a night bus after work and ended up on a day bus or whatever coach were in a flight –

Brian: That’s awesome. Yeah, you can really get a good feel for a city at a GORUCK event and I don’t think enough people travel for events. I know I certainly I don’t travel enough for events, there is nothing like getting out to a new city that you’ve never been to before and seeing places and eating at places you never knew existed and experiencing that all through a GORUCK event.

Cadre Dennis: Especially those small cities you wouldn’t go to. People probably go to San Diego anyway but you know maybe you don’t go to Buffalo for instance.

Brian: Absolutely, Cadre Ronnie runs a yearly event called Snow Drop Out in a smaller city in Wisconsin so hoping to make it out there sometime but there’s tons of little spots like that, that you probably never get to otherwise.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, absolutely, I love to see Denver some day and I’ll probably do it if there is a GORUCK event there or Colorado anywhere really. I just have this romantic picture of Denver, might not be true but, yeah.

Brian: Only one way to find out right?

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, exactly.

Brian: So, how did you get in contact with Jason, you’re at the heavy, you’re envisioning MILRUCK in your mind and you still have to talk to that person who started GORUCK. How did that process go?

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, I did look him up at social media, I think. He was pretty quick on coming back to me. We were talking about possibilities on me applying as a Cadre. I didn’t know that time if I was going to stay in America or maybe head back, whereas my contract going to be continued or discontinued, it was off and on. I faired it would take too long to setup a European business, I mean a GORUCK a business if that would have been the alternative. So I wanted to get a running start and I wanted to test the market here because I wasn’t sure it was going to fly. I’m still not – we’re almost three years in and I’m still not sure it will work out because we only have a few clients, that’s the truth.

And, it’s hard to be a small business owner for sure. But I wanted to get a flying start so I didn’t have time to wait and Jason was supportive. He said, “If you want to go, if you want to tag along with us, you probably have to wait and we’ll pick a time to get John if you want to go for MILRUCK, you should go for MILRUCK full steam ahead.” That’s basically what he said and I took his word for it. I’ve checked our standard similar to GORUCK for a reason if the possibility will come in the future to transition MILRUCK to GORUCK Sweden or whatever happens.

I wanted to make a smooth transition, I didn’t want to – you never know.

Brian: Absolutely, you never know and that must have been nice to hear positive words of encouragement from the person who runs GORUCK. He could have just easily said, “No I run rucking events.” GORUCK is the rucking company but instead what he said was, “If you want to do MILRUCK then by all means that sounds great.” So I think that’s pretty cool.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, he’s a humble guy and him being supportive of this enabled it. I probably wouldn’t have done it if he would have just said, “No don’t do that, that’s for us”. Then I would’ve waited, I would’ve waited and I would apply for GORUCK Cadre as soon as they reach Europe but since they didn’t really have a plan for it. I don’t know where their stand is right now. We honestly speaking about six months I think on facetime.

So, if that happens I’m ready to speak, yeah.

Brian: You’re there and you’re ready.

Cadre Dennis: And as I have said before they’re leaving the rucking revolution and we are tagging along with and we discussed me and my Cadre if we should. I’m the only one who has done GORUCK events within my Cadre, out for additional Cadre, and we were discussing if we want to keep a similar standard or do something different in terms of distance and time basically how we setup the events. We came to the conclusion – took us about four or five hour, a 12 hour and a 24 hour, that’s well thought out.

Everything GORUCK does is well thought of. You can be really better, so we couldn’t come up with anything better. This was just the way, this is the standard, it’s great it’s really well thought of. It’s not a coincidence, nothing is. I mean it’s very smart.

Brian: So, when you’re getting MILRUCK off to ground it sounds like you got the support from Jason and the support from GORUCK. Where there are people who said that you shouldn’t try and start MILRUCK or giving you a negative feeling towards it?

Cadre Dennis: Not for that reason but for a million other reasons. Running a company, coming out of the shadows, being public person, taking the financial risk, taking I don’t know other risks there might be, yeah absolutely. I was also being cheered on and encouraged by people close to me and acquaintances, yeah both sides I didn’t listen to none of them. I was totally focused.

Brian: Good.

Cadre Dennis: This is really what I wanted to do and I’m pretty sure it will lift off, actually I’m confident. Even the market here is really small compared, especially. I’m very confident that this is going to work. The events are great, people who do our events just like in America, they’ll love it and they come, they really come back so – for more and for more.

Brian: So when was the first MILRUCK event?

Cadre Dennis: Well, it was summer of 2015, so I get heavy that we’re talking about San Diego – it was in February of 2015 and I launched a company, I came home in April and launched the company in May. I opened the Facebook page in May and did all the paperwork in April, May, June to there and we ran the first event in July. It was a break which is equivalent of light and a month later we did the tough the equivalent of

Brian: That’s wild so you got back from the states, hit the ground running, it sounds like and ran an event nearly as soon as the company was formed. So you have the first brave event, how was the turnout and the response to that?

Cadre Dennis: The turnout was, we had six people who signed up, one was Gabriel, one of my Cadre to be and I was mainly happy about every person signing up but I was a little bit – I expected more, I don’t know why. People haven’t heard of this. People have been doing and they didn’t know what rucking was, right? But even that I expected more people to sign up but I had six people sign up and only five showed which have turned out to maybe pretty normal about 20% don’t show up.

They sign up but they don’t show up, you know, that’s one important rule in life. Always show up and of course it was brave, everybody finished even though I mean the standard there was to turn in to a selection pretty fast. We went wild with my Cadre, me and Chris and it was a tough walk. So, we learned a lot, we learned a lot. It was five tough hours and I’m glad almost all of them have come back but you know.

Brian: So did any of those five individuals come back for the second event a month later?

Cadre Dennis: Yes, three of them I believe, yes, Cadre, Gabriel and two more, yeah, even three more, actually four out of five came back, so that’s pretty good they came back for the tough.

Brian: That’s great, I think that’s where GORUCK season was a lot of success too is the repeat, people are coming back for their second, third, fourth, tenth events.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, the repeat defenders, yeah.

Brian: So, that’s awesome that four out of five came back. So that was 2015 so it’s been a couple of years since then, we’re chatting right now it’s the end of 2017. How many events have you run between those times?

Cadre Dennis: That’s a good question, I think it’s 24 now.

Brian: Somewhere around that, that’s awesome, congratulations.

Cadre Dennis: Thanks, yeah. We have fewer events next year that we didn’t have. We had to cancel some events as well. I don’t count them in that 24ish events but I would probably have around 28 posted, we had to cancel a few because we didn’t have people showing up. I know people don’t know what that is. We do events if it’s five people are coming obviously but –

Brian: It makes total sense. So, from the website it looks that you have a couple of different tiers of events. You’ve got the rucking events which kind of mirror GORUCKS, there is The Brave which is the equivalent of The Light, then there’s The Tough, and there was the Elite which is the heavy equivalent-ish. Have you run any Elite events yet?

Cadre Dennis: Yes, we have done one and it was a 27 hour event, it turned out to be because of land navigation problems in the team which they have to suffer for and take the consequence for it. It was a great event, I mean being a participant is obviously worse than being a Cadre. But when you plan a 01 first event. You tend to over plan, that’s what we did. So, I think we’re up and away for about 55 hours meaning Cadre Chris who was running a big event and it was a good night sleep after that, that’s for sure.

Brian: Oh, I bet.

Cadre Dennis: We had I think we had twelve or thirteen signed up which was actually our biggest event which shocked me a little bit. Yeah, you have some few people showing up who haven’t done an event before. That’s pretty impressive. I’ve seen that in GORUCK as well. People showing up to Heavy as their first event.

Brian: Yeah, some people are just crazy like that. One of my good friends his first event was the first HTL and he did all three of them.

Cadre Dennis: Impressive, well done. Because he didn’t know what to expect so –

Brian: That’s the thing right, if you don’t know what to expect you keep on pushing on because you don’t know what’s coming, yeah, shout out to Harvey Doti for that, that was pretty crazy. So you’ve had one Elite event so far and it sounds like it was quite the time. Are there any components of the events that separate them from each other besides difficulty and time?

Cadre Dennis: Yes, the standards of course. We have our selection part of the elite and that’s why it’s called the elite and it’s the first four hours where you can actually be performance dropped if you don’t meet the standard. The standard are derived from the ranger standard in Sweden which is very similar to the American soft standard. Obviously it’s the same, yeah, a 12 miler and we have a 20k and that’s about the same.

And, we also have a callisthenics test, essentially previously similar to the patient that had to go to GORUCK Heavy, you had to do pushups and situps. The numbers are a little different but basically I’d say the Swedish one is a little bit easier I think you had to do 40 pushups, 40 situps, 8 pullups, we just took a range expander.

Brian: That’s awesome. So you can be performance dropped on your lead events which are the equivalent of the GORUCK Heavy, good to know for those signing up.

Cadre Dennis: Yes, as for now, that’s where we keep it right now because I wanted people.

Brian: I like it.

Cadre Dennis: Well, I’m not going to say too much about our next one but our first one we did that because we went into a pretty rural area. There was no way you could drop out of the event once you got in to the woods to be honest and we also we have a very maritime theme to it being marine rangers who lead the event. We did a lot of thin work, swim, surface swimming and zodiac carries, zodiac paddles a combination of both swim, paddle, and boats. We wanted to make sure that they reach a certain standard to maintain short distance security during the whole event. So, we would pick with the selection part.

Brian: That makes total sense if you’re going to be going out in to a location where people can’t physically quit because there is no next to no way to get home or back to the start point. You want to make sure that we are taking people who are capable of completing it.

Cadre Dennis: Yes, and even though we had our drop out in the 25th hour obviously the person didn’t know it’s the 25th hour and I had to carry the person’s ruck blades because the person just dumped them in the woods. I took them off. I had to carry six kilometers back to a bus stop where I gave the person the ruck blades back, because they’re pretty costly.

Brian: Wow.

Cadre Dennis: So two hours later it was over. That is horrible decision. We couldn’t convince the person to stay, me and Cadre both tried, there was no way.

Brian: That is rough to watch to see someone quit when they’re that close to the end and you know that, that close to the end and they’re just, their minds are not in it and they’ve checked out.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, I was still going back in to the water and it was a pretty cold summer. Summers here are usually pretty cold. I think just like in Washington State maybe and so the last time that we’re going in to the water for a swim was a pretty long swim with Vince and also with vests, you know what I mean, safety vests. It was a cold, I didn’t go in, refused to go in to the water no way.

Brian: That’s if for some people sometimes, that wild. So, when you complete one of your events the brave, the tough, or the elite you get a patch similar to the GORUCK events that you get a patch at the end. I saw in your website in addition to those patches you have a MILRUCK silver standard patch and a MILRUCK gold standard patch. Can you go in to details about how you get those or earn those, I guess you would say.

Cadre Dennis: Yes, absolutely. The silver standard is when you have completed all three events and you don’t have to complete within timeframe, not a year or so you just to have done all three events, that’s a silver standard. You’ll be handed out this year as well I think we will discontinue it from them.  Next we now have the gold standard. Once you have a gold standard you don’t need a silver standard. A gold standard is the HTL, it’s that you start with elite event back to back in to the tough event finally in to the brave event and we are doing that in August next year.

So, if a gold standard and you also have to meet certain standards, which is there are 20k ruck run and in under three hours. You have to complete the ranger PFT test to its standard. Well, there is some more informal things about being living up to our three rules. Our three rules are essentially do your best in all situations, be a good teammate, never give up so if you are sort of gray man, that’s a phrase that you probably come ever with and the GR community or the gray man or you being a dick. That’s not gold standard.

Brian: That’s awesome, so I think most people here listing notes what being gray man means but for those who don’t it’s trying not to blend in to the group and not put forth your best effort. So, if there is eight people on the log and then, eight people who are rotating in and out, it’s just hiding within that eight and trying to hide in with the eight who rotate off the logs, so that you can avoid it at all costs.

Cadre Dennis: Exactly, actually in the reconnaissance regiment when we are referring to gray men it was positive. It was blending in it was, we always refer to it said, “Be the gray man” but that was in our reconnaissance mission where you are operating in a civilian clothes. Don’t walk around looking like a hockey player or a ranger, look like a normal person, don’t show your abs or your biceps, or dress down, dress casually, act normal, don’t sit around in a bar like James Bond with your back facing the walls staring at the exit. Sit with your back towards the exit and look like a drunk in a bar, be a gray man.

Brian: That’s funny how that words kind of changed for the GORUCK community because it’s up until this point when I heard it involved with rucking and GORUCK events. I’ve always heard of it as well as other positive thing. You don’t want to stick out, you don’t want to be the one who has noticed and those types of situations where you’re the person everyone is looking at but at a GORUCK event or your job is to complete the mission with the team and help the team. I guess it kind of it makes sense that in those cases you do want to be the one who’s stepping up and doing as much as you can.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, it definitely ask different meaning to if you are being a gray man in your own team or you’re being off, being out gray man in a third party environment, that’s way different.

Brian: That’s a great way to describe it, your own team versus a third party environment. So far how many people have earned or has anyone earned their MILRUCK silver standard or the MILRUCK gold standard patch yet.

Cadre Dennis: The silver standard we handed out I think around five patches after last elite’s class and we are on a so far not, gave anybody to opportunity to earn that gold standard but it’s the first elite, tough, brave will be held in August next year.

Brian: So for those who are listening and might be looking to take a trip in August from the United States to Sweden or just anywhere around Sweden, that might want to take part in these events. When they are doing the event is it mostly spoken in English or is it in Swedish. I mean all my Cadre can speak English, they are at least bilingual some speaks up to six languages, so they will adjust and adopt the situation for sure.

I’ve had foreigners from Finland and Denmark, they are urban survivor events for instance and also rucking events and haven’t been a problem. If we speak Swedish at some point the team will forward to mouth and translate.

Brian: But it’s not a limiting factor?

Cadre Dennis: If there is foreigners and their Cadre should be able to speak in English, absolutely yeah.

Brian: So, if you are speaking to this and you speak English, it’s okay to sign up for events, you’re not going to get turned away at the door.

Cadre Dennis: No we won’t turn anybody anyway not even if you can’t if there’s somebody who shows up and we speak French, it will be very interesting especially Cadre Gabriel is not there because that would be just very interesting. But the Green Berets they are very similar to that. They are very familiar with that so they would vote the Americans from the Green Beret Community they know all about that so – you have to be working with those, dance off.

Brian: So you briefly mentioned the urban survival MILRUCK event. I definitely want to talk about that. Is there anything else you want to talk about within the rucking events before we move on to those urban survivor events.

Cadre Dennis: We also have an event called the Evolution or Evolution Event, which is we had so far have done it for corporate events, custom events and it’s not a rucking event it’s more like a long, long welcome party. The name Evolution comes from to evolve as an athlete, to evolve as a man, as a woman, to push your limits, to push your boundaries toward beyond your comfort zone and really know what you’re really about. It’s a really tough event and we custom and incorporate events. They don’t have to gear up for rucking. They haven’t had time or the possibility to do a build up training for rucking event. We don’t want to unfold on the heavy ruck sack and throw them out there.

So, this is an event where you start basically in your plain clothes.

Brian: So, you’ve run a couple of these so far?

Cadre Dennis: Yes, there is on the Swedish page you can actually find some movie clips or on YouTube channel from those who dance. We don’t call them Evolution there, they have different names but they are essentially evolution and balance. We had ruck sacks at some part of the event just for shorter time just to try out a test rucking for the first time. Maybe for one or two hours instead of the full event and then we just, we do PT, we do physical, emotional and mental stuff.

Another thing that I didn’t mention earlier about separates especially elites from the other two events that we use to something that we call Special Skills. We always seem to review some rappelling or we use both for things or something that is derived on our background that is a little bit more unusual for a civilian to try. Or has a special skill case in the elite event and a lot of the Toughs as well because we have to time there and Brave we don’t have time to do that.

Brian: Very cool.

Cadre Dennis: And it’s usually something on water, if it’s somewhere at marine ranger or if it’s army ranger especially we have two arctic rangers in our Cadre that usually do some kind of mountaineering rope, special rope skills stuff. 

Brian: So the special skill you learned and work with is mostly dependent on the skill set of the Cadre.

Cadre Dennis: That’s right.

Brian: That’s really cool. Awesome. How long do the corporate run in The Evolution?

Cadre Dennis: It’s a 12 hour event but you also have a shorter, it depends on the customer but we – there are meant to be 12 hours because you really need some time, you’re going to push people above and beyond their limits, you need time. I mean you could do it and you can put so many in plank position for an hour and they will push their limits and you really want to push them worth beyond that so we need time, so it’s a long event like in Tough.

Brian: Very cool, that’s awesome. So, the survivor events, when did those come on to the scene for MILRUCK?

Cadre Dennis: They came on exactly a year ago and we launched them on the web page about same time as constellation came out. I have of course I don’t have any insights in the GORUCK HQ. So I had no idea that they were working on similar to them and for me survivor came from that. I’m an officer in the reserves so in order to remain in the reserve and to upheld my status as a ranger officer I have to do this kind of repetition training in SERES survive, evade, resist, escape, every five years.

So they pulled me in one and a half years ago for a shorter SERE training and it will also take seven days long and they tweaked it a little bit.

And, as I did it I was just like wow, this is an event. This is so great so I have been doing it in the woods, and people see it’s really hard from a safety perspective. How are you going to get in control with people being under well in the middle of nowhere that’s really a complex event and you want to avoid complex for simplicity to speak.

So, when we did this urban and I have a lot of training from urban warfare, especially urban reconnaissance working the same post operations on my military background, so I felt that was on tandem and fit like a glove and took it home and started working on it ASAP and launched it. I saw a constellation came out. What I think is great minds think a like and of course I understood that at some point they would do this as well because it’s a great idea.

Brian: It is and it definitely looks different. The MILRUCK Urban Survivor looks slightly similar to Consolation but they’re definitely some differences there. First off your event is it 15 to 20 hours, is that correct?

Cadre Dennis: Yes. It’s 15 to 20 hours.

Brian: And I’m just going through the map on your site and there’s some pretty cool stuff there it provides weapons in traps, use a live and dead butter boxes or water crossing, there’s some really interesting skills that you’re going to learn at that, it sounds like.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, we have a pretty big grip on for this one and we don’t have the time to do everything at all events and we’re also keep a lot hidden from this event. So, some things essentially are not on this theme that you’re looking at but it’s essentially a SERES of events and I think you’ve heard of this acronym before so initially we have a training phase where we focus on how to survive and if you’re isolated in an urban hostile area and in order to survive you need to need to be able to keep warm or to remain warm in an isolate from the cold and to isolate from the rain or from being wet.

We focus on those things in training. We also focus on how to hide things in plain site. How to move undercover essentially in an urban setting. How you move technically and without being compromised by legal armed groups or anybody that could be looking for you. We have to hunter boars, we had hunter boars from our crowd model and that’s an Israeli. I think you know about it.

Brian: Absolutely.

Cadre Dennis: Hand to hand combat club or training box. We haven’t hunter boars from them seeking out the teams that were evading him in central Stockholm during the nights. I know at some point they got caught and the set up is you will get caught and you will end up in a basement and you get beat up and in order to do this in a safe manner, we really need professionals, that’s why we do this in cooperation with a krav maga team, as they are expert in beating people up in a safe manner and also get beat up in a safe manner.

They have all the equipment, all the training and right mindset to do this, even though as an elite Cadre of this event, I was nervous about interference from court, being sued at whatever and it’s internal to us. Absolutely great and this was probably our biggest success and we need to do it again. I wasn’t sure when we did over the phone that I was going to do redo it but this will come back, we already have it on the page with that as a success.

And the last, was the resistance part of it. That’s resistance of being able to withstand the psychological and physical adversity that happens during capture and Cadre Gabriel was also a khaki, which is a conduct after capture instructor. So he’s a SERE officer, he’s our man in this area he totally goes in to this role character and it will be great after the most are caught. They are all former elite unit police or elite military personal. Absolutely crucial to have such professionals to conduct such a complex event. There are some risks to it you know and plan for everything, mitigate all risk, that is the motto we build on when we are doing this urban survivor. Finally it ends with basically a Lighter Brave or a Light Light escape phase.

We finally escaped the urban area which is a place that you don’t want to be in if you’re are isolated.

Brian: That’s incredible, that sounds like just some amazing event, it sounds like you’ve got, I mean just a ton of true professionals that are supporting you and supporting MILRUCK survivor. So what was the response like from the participants.

Cadre Dennis: That’s what I said it was probably our biggest success. People were absolutely, I think it’s the same with – I haven’t done a constellation or I haven’t read any AAR surrendering but I’ve seen people go crazy about them and a lot of them are not even GRT threats. We have the same that a lot of people will show up or a urban survivor hadn’t done a rucking event and I was especially worried about them because we didn’t know what’s personal. We didn’t know about what kind of persons we were and they might just be absolutely crazy. But, after this resistance phase, which is the toughest part essentially.

There will be a lockdown in the basement and you’re actually getting beat up and I had a short debrief with every single person participating. Ask meet Cadre my other Cadre Gabriel the khaki instructor, we had the same just you know, “Can we find anything here that is being misunderstood or being wrongly interpreted or a little bit too harsh?” But they actually asked for even more. They were like, “I think it’s really great but it should have been harder.”

“You should’ve gone harder.” which well I understand that you get a feel for it, you might want to go the whole way but this is not a SERE course, this is not the necessary training. We want to keep feet on or the overview not in depths level and we also did theoretical training for the resistance phase in an abandoned apartment. Where we had a typical Powerpoint presentation about how you should mentally prepare and also how you should work as a team if you’re being captured and how you should cooperate. How you should report the capturers. How you should find ways to escape and to daydream and to keep physically motor active and to ask for water and to ask for food.

Brian: Makes sense.

Cadre Dennis: Repetitions, yeah.

Brian: So you’ve taught them the skills, you didn’t just round up the sucky boost sign up in Muslim city, capture them and beat them up. You gave them the skills that they would need the encounter and escape it, so that’s awesome.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, I think almost 50% of this 15 to 18 hours will be theoretical, not maybe 40% we spent a lot of time on training just on training to prepare them for events. That’s absolutely crucial, somethings are really good learned the hard way but if you don’t have any theoretical tools or any tools to deal with it and cope with it. It wouldn’t give you as much.

Brian: Right.

Cadre Dennis: It won’t make any sense.

Brian: Especially the people who signed up who had never done another MILRUCK event. This could’ve been the hardest thing, the most difficult thing that they’ve ever signed up for, so they would have nothing to fall back on and they would just be a chicken with its head cut off the entire time.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah exactly.

Brian: Man.

Cadre Dennis: I was especially worried about them but no we dealt with it.

Brian: That’s incredible. So clearly you guys haven’t done as many events as GORUCK. You’ve done roughly 24 to date but just the gamut from The Brave events to the corporate events, the Elite event, to the Survivor event – I mean you guys have been all over the map of this, that’s amazing.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, were moving pretty fast and, yeah, but we have so many ideas and we’re actually trying to face down where 2018 will be a little bit to regain control and we’re not bringing as much new out to the curriculum but we are improving what we have done so far. The other thing that we’re actually introducing is the x-factor or the online boot camp because we need more people to our offline events. We need people to go offline but in order to get them off line, to turn off their cellphones and show up to our events and for the training, they need discipline and we need to mentally prepare toward events.

We need to do something and it’s an online world whether you like it or not and so we need to get people to start rucking remotely. Even if you don’t live in Stockholm where we upgrade from you need to get some rucking all over Sweden. So, we’ll bring you this, an access all over the world online event to get people out there.

Brian: That’s awesome. So, the online boot camp the first one starts on January 7th, 2018. What languages is it going to be provided in?

Cadre Dennis: It will be provided in English because the Swedes are bilingual, so the curriculum is essentially crossfit and functional movements derived from crossfit and rucking. So, most workouts already have English, everybody knows what a squat is even if you don’t say the Swedish words very often even here. So, push ups, pull ups, squats, lunges these will be in English and also the video materials that we have prepared have been in English. As well we will probably provide a Swedish version in time when we have on board. But the one we made so far is in English.

Brian: Very cool what kind of equipment do you need to take part on this online boot camp.

Cadre Dennis: The equipment you need is essentially a ruck sack, you needed weights, you need boots or shoes that is as usual, you need GPS watch or a smarphone with an application. I don’t know if I can do mention any specific apps but Runkeeper or something equivalent that can measure distance and time, if you don’t have a GPS watch that is. You need your water bladder or something to carry water and you need an additional coupon – different if you are a man or a woman.

Brian: So when you say weight at the beginning, you say there is ruck sack and there is a weight, is that the weight for the ruck sack or is that a weight like a bench press or a squat bar?

Cadre Dennis: Oh, you need – the weight is for the ruck sack.

Brian: Perfect.

Cadre Dennis: And you also need an additional weight, it could be anything it can be a bag of sand, it can be a bag of flour or whatever and we recommend our standard weights which are pretty equivalent with GORUCK but this is one thing about the online we can’t control. We can buy pictures and films and online coaching we actually have control that they’re doing and at least part of the workouts but it’s hard to really see how much your rucks are being weighted. How much they weigh but accountability and ownership that’s on a personal level.

Brian: Right and if they’re going to be cheating themselves on the training then there’s a good chance that they probably never would have survive one of the events to begin with. So, what prompted you to start this online training program. Well as I said early it was two things, one was we need more people to show up to our events and we were thinking about training all the time but it’s very limited it’s the Stockholm is our biggest city even if we open up a crossfit box or anything here locally we won’t get people from the other side of the city to travel to go to our location.

So, we were actually looking for this. We were searching for HQ with a training facility but also very inspired by SEALFIT which I haven’t mentioned yet but I’ve been there as well. I’ve been training with Mark Divine and doing some of his events Seal-X and academies and that’s also an amazing company which on there the inside film but the online part here is give people training and give them to prepare for our events. Introduce rucking to everybody no matter where they live with our way and get people to train with a ruck sack and get people who hate running to start doing endurance by rucking. That’s a lot of people.

And also to introduce, roughly people who haven’t been in the military because military everybody knows rucking and maybe you are in the inventory unit, or maybe you haven’t rucked that much or you know about the basics. But this will give you a little bit more of a deeper comprehension or understanding about the rucking as a way of training, endurance and mental toughness.

Brian: That’s awesome, I mean you can’t knock that trying to spread rucking to more people and around the world. So, I’m excited, I’m excited to see what this brings.

Cadre Dennis: Yes, and also we are looking for an x-factor. What Jason said was the event when he was trying to push his gear who started the events right and to promote gear, take pictures, and slight of word. Events uses x-factors. We are searching for that as we already have the advantage, we don’t have the gear and we’re not interested in what the latest gear provides and also we don’t want to compete with GORUCK brothers.

So we are looking for our x-factor this might not be it, we don’t know. We might be in security consulting, some kind of security consult work and who knows right now I’m limited to doing that it’s the work in the government. As we stir it up as soon as we can do that and no work I need my job refund to start to do that. I don’t what our x-factor is, this might be it, I hope so.

Brian: I hope the best for you too. I mean it sounds like just everything you’re doing, you’re incredibly dedicated and involved with, so I truly you guys find the x-factor. I’m just so excited to see what 2018 brings for you guys. It sounds like there will be some great events, the start of the online boot camp and who knows what else.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, absolutely. We also have – we’re using a software as a service to do online boot camp. It’s essentially an application on your phone or on your computer where we can learn to do training from and also to deliver the program. It was made for online coaches and suits us very well. It suits this idea very well. I think it’s an American company I’m not even sure maybe Canadian and so the only limitation it has, it’s limited spots so for every class there’s only 20 aka two zero so and it’s filling up fast.

Brian: So if you’re listening before the 7th of January and this is something that you’re interested in. There were only 20 spots to start so check it out. Where should people go to learn more about MILRUCK and to find this online training program?

Cadre Dennis: It’s MILRUCK.com or MILRUCK.se whatever you prefer and you just hit boot camp and interesting word boot camp, right? My Cadre absolutely hates it and but in the end Chris made a logo for it with the boots and I think it’s starting to change minds a little bit. But the idea of boot camp is not really our base of values but, everyone knows what it is and there’s a lot of boot camp companies out there already.

So, if we want to event or invent another word like ruck camp or whatever people wouldn’t understand – we are already fed up with people not understanding our ideas and it took something that people know about. So this is online.

Brian: Absolutely.

Cadre Dennis: We’re not going to stand there as drill sergeants screaming people on the face and that is what my Cadre don’t want to do, they want to lead and push people. They don’t want to drill sergeant or drilling instructors. The online gave us the remote part of coaching. I think that they’re now happy with the word boot camp, I’m not sure, they might hate me for it but yeah, it’s MILRUCK ONLINE BOOTCAMP, that’s the name and the practice and it’s already here. So, if you’d like to try it.

Brian: Very cool and so in addition to MILRUCK.com and MILRUCK.se if you’re listening you should check out MILRUCK on Instagram because there are a ton of pictures there and you can definitely see the feeling behind MILRUCK on that account.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, that’s right and Facebook as well that’s where we are.

Brian: Perfect, so before we get going are there any other shout outs that you want to give.

Brian: I’m so glad to have you on Cadre Dennis, I mean it has been just awesome talking to you for – it’s already been 80 minutes which has been so time flies it must be pretty late over there now. But like I’ve said at the beginning I’ve been following you guys since roughly around the time you started and it has been so cool to see all the pictures come in and it has been so much fun to hear the story of MILRUCK and your history and the history of the events and just the wide range of events that you guys are running over there, it’s truly incredible.

I’m beyond thankful, men that you took the time out of your evening to chat with me about this. This has been really fun for me. Thank you.

Cadre Dennis: Sorry Brian and if I don’t see you at the MILRUCK event maybe I’ll see you at the GORUCK event, maybe even in Washington State to set on every Tuesdays I haven’t been to yet. I’d love to go.

Brian: Well, I love my email address if you are coming in to United States for an event send your schedule over. I can’t guarantee I’ll be there but I would at least would love to have the opportunity to meet you in person.

Cadre Dennis: Yeah, absolutely. Great.

Brian: Alright, take care Dennis thank you so much again.

Cadre Dennis: Thank you Brian.

The post ADR 029: Cadre Dennis Interview (MILRUCK Founder) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.