All Day Ruckoff Podcast

This year in review episode wraps up what happened at All Day Ruckoff and GORUCK throughout 2017 then gets into what’s to come for All Day Ruckoff in 2018. We hope you had a great Christmas and have an amazing New Year! Thank you so much for all of the support over the year and we can’t wait to show you what’s in store for 2018!

Don’t worry, these solo episodes will not become routine. We’ve got some AMAZING guests coming up and are very excited about the new year!

Some quick 2017 stats from the podcast:

Thank you to absolutely everyone for the amazing support over the year. We truly appreciate you and are excited to keep pushing forward into 2018!

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!

Coming soon.

The post ADR 028: All Day Ruckoff 2017 Year in Review & Looking Forward appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

Mark Guenther joins us in our second to last episode of the year! Not only has Mark has dome some incredible rucking events, including a double heavy, but he has a great story. If you’re looking for motivation to push you into the New Year then give this a listen because Mark went from Couch to GORUCK Tough in 30 days.

In addition to doing amazing events Mark is also the rucking coordinator for F3 Nation. He’s the guy who runs the F3NationRuck Twitter account as well as their F3 Nation Rucking Facebook Group.

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 Mark Guenther, who has been a member of F3 Nation since 2013. He is currently the rucking coordinator for all of F3 Nation, and they just keep putting on incredible GORUCK custom events. I’m very excited to have him on the show to learn about how he got involved with GORUCK, and to talk about some of the upcoming customs they’ve got, as well as just some other awesome aspects of rucking and F3.

Mark, how are you doing today?

Mark: Doing great, Brian. Happy to be here.

Brian: Awesome. Glad to hear it. Just to start off, how did you first hear about GORUCK?

Mark: I first heard about GORUCK, or found it online I was actually – I got married, had kids, got fat and was looking for something that lit the fire for me to have a reason to get back into fitness. Was looking at OCR events and I think I saw the banner, the old Tough Mudder banner for the early days GORUCK events.

I looked into it and in those days there were a few events, and maybe one per state and there just wasn’t a lot going on. I couldn’t sign up for any of them without traveling a long distance, so I forgot about it. Then when I got involved with F3, shortly after I started we had the second F3 custom event with GORUCK and I went and watched the welcome party which was a North Carolina standards, a snow storm we probably got four inches, but it just happened to be on the day off and I went out and watched it.

It sparked that fire. I felt that thrill of competition and pushing yourself. I knew that I had to get onboard for the next one. That’s how I heard about GORUCK and got involved in doing events, the short story there.

Brian: That’s awesome. It’s not every day you talk to someone who found GORUCK back when the only real mention of them was off that Tough Mudder website. If you joined up F3 in 2013, that means you’re looking at GORUCK probably 2011, 2012. Like you said, back when there is only one event, they have the challenge and they would make one stop per year in each city. You definitely didn’t have opportunity that you have now where they come to cities a dozen times a year. It was one and done back then.

Mark: Yeah. It was limited availability. “I wish I could say that I was one of those people who did it back when the events were hard.” We get involved when we get involved.

Brian: Absolutely. The events were so hard. It’s via pill both ways in the snow scenario.

Mark: Yeah. I think that you have to be 70 now to say that you did a GORUCK when it was hard. It’s just like the grumpy old man saying that.

Brian: Yup. Too true. You watched that second F3 custom GORUCK event’s welcome party. That lit the fire. What was your first GORUCK event?

Mark: The first event was 707. I imagine not typical, so I actually right after watching that welcome party, my wife was very pregnant and I stopped going to F3. I told myself that I stop going because she got tired of me getting up early, but the reality was I just was not happy with my fitness and just fell out, because I get tired of feeling disappointed with how not fit I was.

I played division one college soccer, so I had at one point in my life a really good fitness base. To get back out and thinking I could do it like I did when I was 19, 20, 21, I was just so below the standard that I had. I’d quit F3, actually started going back out because my wife basically told me I was getting too fat. Like there is an acceptable fat and I had gone past that.

I was too fat, so I went back out. Then from there, we had the third F3 custom which ended up being class 707. I heard about it, all the thoughts of wanting to do an event came back. I signed up right away, and only had about 30 days from being too fat to event day.

I added a crash course on getting ready for my first GORUCK event, which is not recommended. It can be done. I always tell people it could be done, but you have to have a very serious plan for getting yourself fit in that amount of time.

Brian: Yeah, that’s not much time at all to train, especially going from what your wife would call an unacceptable level of fat. You’ve passed da bod into the next space. A lot of people try Couch to 5K in 30 days, but couch to GORUCK Tough, that’s a bit more of a commitment.

Mark: Yeah. I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, it was still in the days where there was not a lot of info. I mean, there were some AARs, but it was somewhat limited. There was the GORUCK training website that used to exist and I did some of that, but the rest of it was just me doing dumb stuff with a ruck on. Some of it worked and some of it didn’t, or should not be repeated, I should say.

Brian: Yeah, I remember training up for my first GORUCK event, I did a lot of running with weight. I know OBT and Dredd did that too, running with weight. There just wasn’t that much information out there. Kudos to you for finding out a decent training plan and making that work.

Let’s get into your event first. I want to come back to this couch to GORUCK Touch in 30-days thing. When you were at the event, how did you feel lining up at the very beginning? Were you questioning anything with your strength, or were you doing pretty good?

Mark: I questioned everything. I felt like I was the outsider already, because I didn’t know a lot of people in the event, because I was again relatively new to F3. I was the only person who didn’t have an F3 shirt, because I hadn’t bought one yet. I had this black, like running top that I wore. I had no idea if I would make it – actually off the whole thing.

I went through it. I always say that GORUCK events are like jeopardy. Sometimes, you can get a category that’s just easy and sometimes you get a category and you got no answer for. Luckily, we did a lot of things that were on my strings list. I got through the welcome party. Once I got through that it was just – my confidence was there and I knew I would be okay.

We went through it. We spent forever in just this disgusting creek that runs through Charlotte, where there is baby diapers and syringes and the bottom is rocks, because it’s man-made and it’s slippery. We spent three hours wading through this creek.

Then we humped it to a park. We did some PT. Then they asked for – the big guys to come with – there was Cadre Nikki who let us. We went running off down this trail and then we stopped. He shined his light into the woods and says, “I need eight big guys to get this log.” I just remembered thinking to myself, “How the hell did he find a log in these woods?”

It’s just off a beaten path. It’s just, “Where’d they come from?” We pull it out and the eight big guys and I was one of those guys, we’re moving it and going five steps and drop; you know the drill of you get it up. “This sucks. We can’t do this.” Maybe if we looked like a bunch of dummies, then they’ll just stop, which of course, they didn’t.

We bring it back to the parking lot where the rest of the people were and then they put us on a volleyball, beach volleyball court and had us throw sand all over each other. Then we had to move this log out. What had been the eight big guys then became like 16 to 20 people. We’d thought, “Let’s strap it and carry it,” farmer carry style and did that for a few miles. Then the straps ended up starting to break, so that I did carry it the rest of the way home.

I thought I was doing well, and then like towards the end – I’ve been kicked off the log, because I was taller than everyone who was there. I was just pushing the log to the side because I was trying to get under it and my butt is sticking out and it’s just awkward. The cadre actually kicked me off the log, which at that point in time I was more than happy to accept.

I’m carrying some coupons and then ended up talking to Nikki. Finally he says, “You know, your team is up there working and you’re talking to me. Do you think that’s the right thing to do?” Then there was like the lightbulb of like, “I suck. I’m just terrible.” I got no idea what the hell I’m doing. I think I’m doing good, because I haven’t quit. When in reality, I’m not doing anything of any real use.

That moment was actually the catalyst to me getting in and doing more events. Rather than just doing one and feeling like I was a Green Beret, because I spent 14 hours doing this. It pushed me to do more. That feeling of even though I had some success, I really had a level of failure in that.

Brian: That’s wild. That’s a really interesting way to look at it too, because you completed the GORUCK event, but it’s almost like completing it is what drove you to do more. When you finish that event did you know right away that you’re going to sign up for another one?

Mark: Yeah. I had an idea. I mean, you get that high and you think that you’re great. You wear your patch everywhere, you tell everybody and it was the toughest event ever and the log was so huge. I’m a badass for doing this. Then you go home and you’re like, “I’m really not.” I wasn’t. I was a weak link.

Then I was like, “Okay, I didn’t do well by my own standards. How can I improve that?” Then I was like, “Okay, brag heavy is out there. It’s two hours away.” Brag heavy one was just a total disaster, where everybody is quitting left and right. I’ll do that. That will force me to get better, because I know the standard is high.

From there, ended up getting up hurt; about a month out, my ankle just started blowing up. I couldn’t really walk right, much less do an event. I pulled the plug on that. Then took a little bit of break from pondering events to get healthy again. Then the itch was still there to keep on doing them. I signed up for another F3 custom in Raleigh, and then we had the first F3 heavy the following year. That’s when it really became an obsession for me in doing events.

Brian: That’s awesome. Just to take it back quickly a little bit, this episode will be released in December, which means a lot of people are planning their New Year’s resolution. This will be the year I do something big, or get in shape, or finally sign up for whatever event I’ve been putting off.

You went from couch to GORUCK Tough in 30 days. What advice do you have for people who are listening and might be in a similar situation? I know a lot of people has seen this podcast when they’re out rucking, but they might be sitting on the couch and listening to it thinking, “I would love to do an event in February or March, but I’m just not in shape right now.”

Mark: Yeah, absolutely. There are people who’ve done light and don’t know if they’re going to do it tough. They want to, or take the next step. For me, I’m part of F3 Nation. If you’re within an area where there is F3 – F3 is men only. We also have a women-only group called Females in Action. That’s a perfect place to start. It’s no cost, it’s early in the morning, most places are Monday through Saturday.

There is the Pathfinder Program. I know that you had Lionel on here. Lionel is a great dude. They have down to a science with the different levels. A lot of the pathfinder is actually geared towards people who are in F3, because the roots of teen spearhead are in F3, but they broke off, just have a little bit more freedom with what they do, but they’re very intertwined with how they go about things.

Those would be the best ways if they’re available. If you don’t have access to those, just walk out your door with a ruck on. I mean, you have the greatest gym outside your door. F3 is huge on always being outdoors, because there’s something that happens when you’re working out outdoors. It gets into your inner caveman.

Embrace that caveman, get out, do that, get some sandbags, put a weight on your back and just start doing exercises. I mean, for most events doing something is probably the best that you can do. The resources out there are pretty much unlimited for how to properly train. For F3 Nation Rucking, we have a Facebook page, we have a Twitter account, we have lively discussions mostly about rucking, but we get into some goofy stuff. Reach out to us. You don’t have to be an F3 to be a part of our group, and hopefully we can bring F3 to you sometime in the future.

Brian: Sounds great. I’ll post links to all of these resources in the show notes. If you’re listening, you can check those out. Check out F3 in your area. If you’re a female, check out FiA, F-I-A. If F3 is not in area, just grab a pack and go outside and start rucking. It sounds like you know what you’re saying Mark is the biggest thing you can do is just start – just start.

Mark: Yeah. I mean, your plan for parenting can’t be that – don’t just do something, sit there, plan. It won’t work. I mean, there are some people who can just show off and never done anything and finish the event, but that’s a loser strategy for most people. Getting out there doing something, preferably with other people and just knowing that it can be done. Doing the work and then visualizing yourself completing the event is a great foundation for doing your event.

Mark: Hell, no. F3 and GORUCK have other than my family been some of the biggest life-changing things in my adult life. I mean, GORUCK is about building better Americans, F3 is about building male leadership in their community. Between those two things, I have had a radically different mindset day-to-day and have really removed a lot of limitations as to what I think I can do in my life.

There are some things that I wouldn’t have done, like the ruck running. I did a ton of ruck running. Just I’m going to go out, I’m going to run 5 miles with a ruck on. That’s just dumb, unless you’ve done it before. Sometimes even if you’ve done it before, it’s still dumb. Ruck running, would not recommend, unless you’re already a really good runner and have good form.

The couch to event training plan, I would take ruck running and throw it in the dumpster. But ruck PT, overhead stuff, running in general, rucking in general, those are your foundational items that are going to lead to success, and getting F3.

Brian: There you have it. I love that advice. If there was any advice I wish having given to me when I was training for my first GORUCK event it would be, “Don’t run with your ruck. Just ruck with your ruck.”

Mark: I mean, some of us still do dumb stuff like that. We had a – have marathon in Charlotte at rucking division and ruck-ran most of it. About 8 miles in it was just like, “This is so dumb. This is dumb.” I mean, I was that far so I had to finish. Afterwards, it was just one of those things, “I’m not going to do that again, unless I do.”

Brian: That’s wild. That’s a one and done self-thing. Well, at least as a race aspect you might set up for the race again. It’s not something you’re doing every morning, because everybody can handle that in one-off situations, but just that perpetual pounding on the knees from weight, especially the amount of weight people are rucking with. That can be rough.

Mark: Yeah.

Mark: By accident. I opened my big mouth. I coordinated an event last year, and then afterwards I talked with some people upper levels of F3. I mean, we don’t have a real fine structure, but there are people who are at the top and said, “There should be a support system for people who are doing these events, because F3 has a lot of custom events.”

We started out to get events to where the people were. Then it’s broadened out to some of our areas that are not in major metros, getting them events. Now it’s branching off into getting events that are not offered by a GORUCK.

I started talking about that. Thought it was going to be one of those, “You know, that’s a great idea, and nothing ever happen.” Then it happened. OBT is one of the founders and you had them on and said, “Hey, we want to create this position to grow and support rucking within F3, because it’s a huge thing for F3 members where we call them packs, to do.” It just keeps growing and growing.

We spread through a new area. The next thing you know, rucking becomes a thing. It was like, “How did that happen?” “Well, it just did.” They wanted someone to be able to help those areas continue to grow it, support people who are doing events and really just build rucking overall to support the wants and needs of people in F3.

As F3 operates, basically the guy who’s willing is the guy who’s qualified. I ended up in the position. Didn’t really asked for it, but happy to have it. Here we are. I mean, I got social media up and running, just so we could have a point of contact amongst the people. We’re 500 and closed it on 550 people who are following on Twitter. We have a Facebook group that’s over 300.

We have a lot of people who are just conversating around it. Now I’m trying to figure out the best way to support it, because I can’t realistically as a part-time job support every single person. Going to look at some of the closer to ground people in some of the regions to have a local point of contact for it and we can just support it that way, so that not every single person who wants information has to wait for me to respond to them. But have a better ground operation.

It’s funny, I’m not big on institutions and setting up rules and hierarchy, but it just happens that way. But anything to grow rucking within F3, to track people to F3 with rucking – there are thousands of guys who have had their lives improved, because of being part of F3 and/or part of rucking. We want to really keep that alive and grow it and push people to new levels and give them the events that they want, in places that they want. That’s how I got there and hopefully I can have a long reign over F3 rucking kingdom.

Brian: That’s great. It really is a double-edged sword isn’t it? You’ve experienced a lot of success with F3 Nation Rucking. Because of that, you have a lot more work to do.

Mark: Yeah, we term that problematic when you have too many guys for workout. Then it’s time to split it up and grow some more. I mean, it’s the good problems.

Brian: Absolutely. Speaking about 2018, as the rucking coordinator of F3 Nation, what are some of your goals?

Mark: Really, I just want to get events to people who want them to get some of the smaller regions involved in rucking. We have the GORUCK events that we’ve been putting on that is a weekend event that supports relatively young F3 regions and bring them together and having an F3 grow school, which is teaching them to grow their region, bring new guys in; guys who have gone past that acceptable fat to too fat, getting them fit.

Then in conjunction with that having a GORUCK Tough to build relationship with people. You know the bonds that are built. My three best friends have been met through F3 and GORUCK. A lot of guys unfortunately when they get older, have kids, start losing friends and they don’t even know that they miss them until they make new friends, and F3 does that.

We really want to grow that, because it’s a great incubator for guys getting together and doing guy stuff. Also, got a big push to get people to heavies. We have two custom heavies that are already on the books. There are whispers of a couple more that may happen, but there’s a lot that has to come together for that.

Brian: That is awesome and pretty ambitious. I’m very excited to see all of that happen, because it’s just so cool. It is so cool to see rucking continue to expand like that. You mentioned pushing people to heavies, you mentioned the custom GORUCK events that are coming up. We’ve already seen a number of custom F3 GORUCK events announced for 2018. What are some of the events that you’re most excited about?

Mark: I mean, all of them. The grow-ups, I don’t do. We have somebody else who works on getting that off the ground. I don’t have all the inner knowledge of – even though it’s with Cadre Danny and I’ve done an event with him before.

I mean, I always get really excited for heavies. I think that anybody who’s done a heavy knows that heavies are just the best events. They’re all great, but there is something that happens in the 24-hour period, just the additional together, the additional stress, the additional work, that everybody is pushed a little bit further, gets a little bit more afraid and then comes together.

I’m really excited that F3 guys are in bigger and bigger numbers coming to do heavy events. Because I feel like it’s the next step for our F3 guys who are into rucking, of pushing themselves forward, they’re getting to know each other better, getting those stories from a heavy.

I’m really excited about the heavies that we have going on. I have a tough and a light that are happening. They’re coming to cities that are not – they’ve never had events in them before. That’s really exciting in itself, but the heavies are exciting. We have one beach-heavy and one mountain-heavy. Whatever a person wants, they can get. It is going to be unique. I know that the mountain-heavy is going to be really, really unique, unlike any event that GORUCK has done before. I’m signed up for that one. The beach one is going to be great, but I did beach last year, so I’m doing mountains this year.

Brian: There you have it. Almost no excuses. If you don’t like the water, then head to the mountains. If you don’t like the mountains, you’ve got to be trio. That’s great. Well, I can’t wait to hear how both of those events go. I have to do a little follow-up call after the mountain-heavy, because it sounds like it’s going to be a little interesting and quite a bit different.

Mark: Yeah. I’m really excited for it. I’ll probably have two heavies in the beginning of the year that I’m doing. Hopefully some good stories with that.

Brian: Absolutely. It’s exciting that there is even more F3 heavies coming, because GORUCK is great for introducing members of F3 Nation to rucking and GORUCK events. It sounds like things are really expanding for the F3 Nation members who are – have already started rucking and are looking for that next step. That’s very exciting.

Mark: Yeah. In F3, we have a term called a bat-flipper, which is basically your hard charger, always pushing the envelope, likes to beat their chest and tell everyone how great they are. Creating these bigger events, the longer events to accommodate those bat-flippers and hopefully the events won’t disappoint that guys come through, get patched and they keep on pushing.

We’ve had some people who have gone on to attempt selection. Haven’t had a finisher yet, but I feel like there are some people who have the capability, but the stars have to align for them. We’re going to keep on pushing them and supporting them wherever we can.

Brian: Awesome. That’s very cool. Very, very cool. I just can’t wait to hear how everything continues to shape up with all of these. For those who are listening and didn’t listen to the OBT and Dredd episode, I’ll post a link too in the show notes, but those are two founders of F3 Nation who put on the GrowRuck event that I took part in Seattle.

They’ve got a really cool thing going. If you’re listening to this and you’re in an area that F3 is a part of, which you can check out the F3 Nation website. Again, I’ll put that in the show notes. You should definitely consider checking it out, because it will help you get into the shape that you want to be in and that you deserve to be in. Then you can take part in all these awesome events that Mark is talking about here, because I’m just listening to it today and I’m really excited about what 2018 is bringing.

Mark: Yeah. Right now, so GrowRuck for 2018 we have events in South Carolina which is the Columbia area. That’s going to be men only. We have Greenville, North Carolina which is going to be women only. We have an event that’s going to be coming in, the exact location hasn’t been determined. Then we have one in Toledo, Ohio which we – Toledo has been the miracle by the lake. Instead of a mistake by the lake, it’s a miracle by the lake. Toledo loves some ruck. We have a GrowRuck that’s coming there. As of today, there is 55 people who are signed up. It could be over a 100 by the time it’s all set and done.

Then we also have ruck in Harrisburg, Concord, North Carolina; that’s one event. We have one in Greensboro, North Carolina. Then the Wilmington heavy and the mountains heavy. We are close to a lot of people in the Ruck Nation. Reach out to myself, or F3 in general and we can connect to you if you’re interested in participating.

Brian: For reaching out if you’re on Twitter, that’s f3nationrucking?

Mark: Yes, that is correct.

Brian: Perfect. There is also a very active Facebook group called F3 Nation Rucking. As Mark said, if you’re in F3 Nation and want to get started with rucking and join it, and you also mentioned if you’re not in F3 Nation but want to be and are interested in rucking, can those people join as well?

Mark: The only real criteria with F3 is it’s just men only. It’s nothing exclusive to keep women out. It’s just giving men an opportunity to be men. I mean, a lot of married guys that get in there, we become domesticated and the world’s better for it, but the world also needs to have guys being guys. F3 allows people to do that.

We get nicknames, so you can have this F3 persona where you can let your hair down and you don’t have to worry about what your wife might think so much. You just get to be a guy. For the Twitter, anyone can follow. For that Facebook group, it’s going to be men only. We have great discussion and we’re always talking about gear, training, events; both our custom events and then public events. F3 is very present in public events.

We’re always there to be helped out. We want to be good teammates who were just part of the community. Have you seen an F3 in an event, come up and introduce yourself, hopefully we introduce ourselves before that and let’s do some work.

Brian: When you’re talking about the 2018 events, I mean we just mentioned that F3 it’s all males. But for 2018, there is a FiA GrowRuck event, correct? It’s GrowRuck light, I believe.

Mark: It is FiA. It’s women only. The details I don’t have all of them, because it’s the GrowRuck, yeah there’s a different team of guys that handles it. The principles that are taught in GORUCK and F3 and FiA workouts, they apply to everyone. We like to say we don’t have the solution, we have a solution. For a lot of those things that are going on in the world, people just getting together and getting to know each better makes a huge difference.

We started to do some events with women in given opportunity to do a women-only event. We got that first event that is going to be coming. It’s going to be great. I mean, I’m excited. I’m a huge advocate for women and events. My last time, I think women outperformed the guys because they have something to prove. We’re really excited about that.

Brian: That’s awesome. I’m excited for that too. I can’t wait to see how the FiA GrowRuck event turns out. Hopefully once that is complete, I can have someone on the podcast who either took part in that event, or helped form that event because it would be great to have that second aspect from FiA. Very cool.

Mark: Yup. We’re really excited about it.

Brian: Awesome. Yeah, I’m super excited. Are there any shout outs you want to give? Is there anything else you want to promote on here while we’re chatting?

Mark: I mean, F3 I can’t say enough. I mean, people who listen to this obviously are family with GORUCK, but they might not be familiar with F3. F3 is a difference maker in the lives of a lot of guys. I mean, guys getting together and building relationship just like you do at a GORUCK event. But basically, we get to have a little sample of that every single day. In the morning, you get together with your friends, with new people, you work hard, you joke around, then you go your separate ways. You get to find out about people and how their lives are and why work sucks and how marriage and parenting can be challenging. F3 is a huge thing. If you have F3 close to you, come and check it out.

We want to give a special thanks to OBT for trusting me to not screw this up. We’ll see if that’s actually the case, but given the opportunity. For GORUCK for putting on kickass events and pushing me to my limits, and still doing it and making really expensive gear that I spend a lot of money on. Thanks for all those things.

Brian: That’s awesome. As someone who found GORUCK first and then found F3 years later myself, I would say that the communities are very similar and there’s a lot of overlap. It was really fun stumbling upon these group of guys, because it’s like a community aspect. I think I said this in the OBT and Dredd podcast, but going to F3 workouts, it’s like the community aspects that you build at GORUCK events, but it’s free workout and they happen weekly.

If you’re listening to this and it’s December, or even early January and you’re finally getting around this episode and you want to make a change, you’re a guy, just check out F3 Nation, because they will definitely give you the tools via the workouts to make that happen. If you’re a female, then check out FiA.

I don’t have any personal experience with FiA, because I’m a guy, so I’m not allowed there. I do here very good things about the FiA community, at least local to us, the one that’s down in Tacoma, Washington. Definitely give that a check.

Mark: Yeah, we’re everywhere. We’re growing. I mean, F3 has expanded to Austin, Texas, the Chicago metro, St. Louis, we have some in Minneapolis, St. Paul. We’re everywhere. If you want F3 to come to you, reach out to F3 or me and we’ll get it in place and see what we can do as far as some expansion, because there will be a day where F3 will be close to most everybody. I’m really excited about that and the expansion of that. Then we’ll keep bringing GORUCK events to those areas. We’re really excited.

Brian: Well, I’m excited too and I’m just so glad I have to say that Mark, you’re really F3 Nation Rucking coordinator because I feel like it’s just going to get that much better. More custom events. I know you guys have had some amazing ones in the past, like a double-heavy that OBT mentioned when he was on. I know you took part in that. Maybe we’ll have to have an upcoming episode as well, talking about prepping for a double-heavy or a similar event that is more challenging than your standard line of GORUCK challenges.

Mark: I love it. Would do it. Just let me know.

Brian: You got it man. Is there anything else you want to talk about before we wrap this up?

Mark: No. Not at all. If any of the events that I listed off were in your area, just reach out and we’ll see if we can get you onboard. If you’ve never been to an F3 workout, don’t let that stop you. We have lots of people who get involved in our events, who it’s their first event with F3 and they get their F3 name there, then they get plugged in the community. Just reach out through the Twitter, Facebook group, whatever you want to do we’ll get you plugged in however you want. My tough, heavy, heavy, heavy selection, we’ll support you however we can.

Brian: I love it. No cost to go to F3 workouts. That’s not a barrier either.

Mark: Never.

Brian: Awesome. Mark, thank you so much just for taking so much time out of your day to talk to me about F3 Nation Rucking, how that started, where it’s going in 2018 and just all the exciting events that you guys have lined up, as well as how people can get off that couch at the end of December or early January, get in shape and sign up for what I’m sure is going to be a ton of amazing events in the future.

I am super excited about all of it and I’m so thankful man that you just took the time out of your day to chat with me about this.

Mark: Happy too, Brian. Maybe 2019 we’ll finally do our custom selection that we talked about. That would be great, so that you could have two of them for people to do nothing over a weekend.

Brian: There you go. We’ll see 2019.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. All right, well thank you Brian. It’s a privilege.

Brian: Thank you. Take care, Mark.

Mark: All right. Bye.

The post ADR 027: Mark Guenther Interview (F3 Nation Rucking) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

Corey Modrowski joins us again for another AAR through one of his favorite GORUCK events. The GORUCK Tough Battle of Lake Erie – War of 1812 was the brainchild of Bryan Singlyn from CARC.

It’s always awesome to hear stories from GORUCK events that I haven’t done as some of these customs are truly unique. Hopefully you enjoy this episode as much as the previous episode we had Corey on… he’s a great storyteller and has experienced some amazing events so far!

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 Cory Modrowski who you might remember from a previous podcast where we talked about GORUCK Beached Tough and GORUCK Beached Light which were both beta events. This time we’re talking about a custom event that Brian Singland who you might know as the head of CARC, the Cleveland Area Rucking Crew, spent over a year planning. It’s called the Battle of Lake Erie, War of 1812 Tough, and it sounds like it was quite the event. I’m really excited to have Cory back here because I want to know more about this event.

Cory, how are you doing?

Corey: Hi. I’m just doing fantastic fine sir.

Brian: Awesome. I cannot wait to hear about this. Brian, I know he pours his heart and soul onto everything he does. So if he was spending a year on this, I’m sure it’s quite the event. How did you get involved in this event and how did you find out about it?

Corey: I actually got added to the CARC Facebook page and I remember Brian saying how he’s organizing a custom event to take place at Put-in-Bay which is a little island right off the coast of Port Clinton which is halfway between Cleveland and Toledo on the map. So there’s a nice little island right there and probably its most notable thing is for having a billion bars.

Brian: That’s something that’s kind of nice to be notable for.

Corey: I think they call it the key west of Lake Erie.

Brian: Really?

Corey: That’s one name I heard.

Brian: This is sounding like an interesting place already.

Corey: If you remember anything after going there.

Brian: Yeah. That’s the issue, right? You might head out there, but not know what happens once you’re back.

Corey: I’ll tell you what this event — Last time when I talked to you about beached, I said that beached was in my top three. This event was number one. This is by far my most favorite event I have ever done. So I found out about it on the CARC page when Brian was like, “Hey, this is going to happen.” I was kind of like worried at that point too because I had done a Light in Cleveland for the 4th July and Jeff and Erin were the cadre and I think that Light ended up being like 6 to 8 hours. It was a longer Light and it was more like a Tough.

I was like like worried, because I know Brian and Jeff are pretty tight and I thought for sure that Jeff was going to be a cadre on that. So I started training over time for this event.

Brian: Yes. I see some of the similar workout set Brian and the CARC do, and they’re not easy.

Corey: He’s right in the middle of developing what’s called heavy drop, which is kind of a CARC training for Heavies, I guess.

Brian: Very cool. I’m excited to see what he brings with that.

Corey: Yeah. So I started training my butt off for this and actually I started forgetting about it when I was — Because I was so worried about beach. I remember talking to Brian at beached and I’m like, “Yeah, I got beach and then I got this event and then I got this event and I got et this,” and then he steps in, like, “1812. 1812.” I’m like, “What? Oh, yeah! I signed up for that.

Brian: That’s what happens when you’re signed up for so many events. I have run into that issue a couple times where you get the email from GORUCK a week before and you’re like, “Wait. I’m signed up for something?”

Corey: Yeah.

Brian: Oh, man! Signed up for a lot of events, signed up for 1812, and Brian, it sounds like he’s pretty excited about this.

Corey: Very, very. The guy was just bursting at the scenes ready for this. Before we even get into the start point of our meeting, I remember about a month out we started getting a message on the Facebook page for 1812 and it’s like, “All right. You guys need to organize yourselves in the boat cruise. Ld let me know who the captain is and then I’m sending out a gear list to the captain.”

One of the ships that was at the 1812 Battle, or I should say 1813 battle, because it’s a war or 1812, but the Lake Erie Battle didn’t happen till 1813, was the HMS Detroit. So you know all the D-squad guys are going to be on that ship.

Brian: Absolutely.

Corey: So we ended up being the HMS Detroit and Captain Dean released the gear list. I remember thinking to myself, I’m like, “What did I get myself into?”

Brian: Let’s talk about the gear list a little bit. What’s going on with that?

Corey: Okay. So the gear list was something like you had to pick a boat color and you had to have been bandanas and you had to have all the same T-shirt and then you needed like a bunch of contractor bags, you wanted a bunch of paracord, you wanted like a standard rope. They wanted us to make flags, and then there’s talk of getting like PVC pipes, and they wanted us to make our own boat when we got there. I was like, “What?”

Brian: This is definitely not your typical GORUCK Tough event.

Corey: Right. I’m like, “I got to work. This is more than I planned on chewing.” But then we found out there were some logistical problems, like us trying to put all these gear on to the Jet Express, which is boat line that goes out of Port Clinton to Put-in-Bay and we found out that it’s going to be real hard for us to take whole boats on this ferryboat and go a mile and a half out to the island and then do more stuff out there.

They kind of nicked the boatbuilding thing and we ended up doing something different, but we’ll get to the end of that later.

Brian: Sounds good. So was this event after your beached Tough and beached Light?

Corey: I believe it was about month — A little more than a month after the beached events, I want to say. I could be wrong. It was about — Actually, beached was — It’s about two or three weeks after, come to think of it. It seemed like it was a lifetime.

Brian: Yeah, it happen sometimes.

Corey: Yes.

Brian: That’s nice though, because Battle of Lake Erie, there’s going to be probably some water involved and you’ve just gotten probably 16 hours’ worth of water survival.

Corey: I’m pretty sure Brian took a lot of material from beached and added it to the 1812, because there’s stuff that kind of cropped up again.

Brian: Very nice. So it’s an interesting packing list. Everyone has to get themselves into these boat crews. How many boat crews were there?

Corey: Let me think. I know there’s Scorpion, Niagara, Detroit. I want to say there was about five boat crews, because I can’t think of the other two names. Yeah, about five of them, I thinking, and we had roughly about 8 to 10 people per boat crew. There is a lot of — At the last-minute, people dropping out and people subbing in. It was really kind of hard to keep track of everybody prior to the event start.

Brian: Yeah, it’s always tough. Tough when stuff like that happens.

Corey: Shredder just kind of basically came into the Facebook group and he’s like, “You better get your head straight. If you want a regular GORUCK event, get out of here. Go talk to HQ. Get them to transfer you get. Get your credit. But if you want something truly extraordinary, you just get together and show up on time.

Brian: Man! I’ve had shredder for one event, and he’s a very, very awesome cadre, so I’m glad he was out there for that.

Corey: It was no different this time around. He’s a cool dude and so is cadre Jody, who is the other guy that was there making sure everything went down right.

Brian: Did you have to take a ferry out to the starting point for this event?

Corey: Negative. What happened was it started in the area of Ohio called Catawba Island, which is actually a really nice park that’s real close to Port Clinton. We met up at a park — It’s probably a couple of miles from where the ferry is, but of course the ferry has free parking, so we parked over the ferry and the we had to walk into the park, and we showed up there, it’s like 9 o’clock at night. By this time of the year, it’s pretty dark around 9 o’clock, so we’re just kind of all milling around at the little shelter there getting our gear ready, checking everything, making sure we’re good to go. Then Shredder and Cody come rolling and tell us get in our lines, and that’s where it really started getting tense.

Brian: I bet. So what happened?

Corey: We were instructed to pull out our contractor bags, and from there we had to load all of our gear inside the contractor bags and he wanted us — Essentially, we were conscripted into the Union Army at that point, or not the Army, but the Navy. So we weren’t even technically seaman yet. We were just conscripts.

There was our kind of fitness test I guess or kind of our basic training where we had to run — I think it’s a mile and a half or two miles down the road to a nearby boat launch, and they said, “Get there any means possible, but you got to have all your gear inside that contractor bag.”

Brian: Wow! That’s quite the start to the event.

Corey: Have you ever lose your strap privileges?

Brian: Yes.

Corey: Yes. Well, that’s it exactly like that, except you’re ruck is now covered in a giant slippery plastic casing too.

Brian: Oh!

Corey: I had the poor judgment to also be carrying the team weight at the same time. So the HMS Detroit was what we lovingly referred to as the teabag, because we’re British and the British love tea. So we had a 25-pound bag of gravel in a GORUCK sandbag, and so I’m like, “Do I load this sandbag into the contractor bag or do I try to carry that separate?” I think I ended throwing it inside the contractor bag and halfway down the road I’m like, “There’s no way I can carry all these stuff.” So I ended up taking the gravel bag out and carried that on one shoulder and then slinging my ruck my contractor bag over the other shoulder and getting to the boat launch.

Brian: Trying to even that weight out just a little bit.

Corey: Yeah. I’m like, “If this is what the whole night is going to be like — Oh man!”

Brian: No kidding! For those who are listening and haven’t done a GORUCK event where you lose strap privileges, what that means is that you can no longer use the shoulder straps on your ruck. So you can carry it by any means necessary except for the way you’re supposed to carry a ruck, which is with the shoulder straps. It’s fun for 10 seconds, and then it’s terrible.

Corey: I think it’s even shorter than that, but to each their own.

Brian: Yeah. The novelty wears off quick. You get excited, you’re like, “Oh! We lost strap privileges at this event. I heard about this once,” and then it’s a real, real quick.

You guys get over to the ferry. You’re lugging all these stuff, your arms are probably smoked at this point. What happens next?

Corey: Okay. We go from the park to a boat launch. The ferry is not even in the picture. That doesn’t happen until tomorrow. We go to this boat launch and Shredder instructs us that at some point throughout the whole event we’re going to get 1812 reps in. It could be man makers. It could be burpies. It could be situps. It could be fluttered kicks. We’re just going to do 1812 of stuff.

I think we got down to the boat launch, we get lined in our boats and I think the first thing we did was like 60 burpees.

Brian: Ooh! I was going to say Shredder, he’d start either with burpees or 8 count bodybuilders.

Corey: I don’t remember seeing 8 counts in there, but it all kind of was a blur after a while.

Brian: Yeah. You have to make 1812 somehow. That is a ton of reps, and they probably didn’t buy the whole we’re one team, so all of our reps count individually. Updates in 12?

Corey: No. Definitely not. We were trying to lawyer that one because that just means we’re probably hurt more.

Brian: That usually just upset someone and you’ll just pay for it dearly later. So you’re starting off with 60 burpee.

Corey: That was rough, but it was doable. The people had sign up for this one were fairly athletic crowd and we are kind of hurting, but it was a good warm.

Brian: Yeah. What happened next there at the boat launch?

Corey: I think after that, it was time to go down to the beach. I don’t know what it’s like out where you guys are at. Usually when I see pictures of the Seattle and the West Coast, there’s these nice sandy beaches. The Great Lakes, the beaches are rocks. So it’s just like this whole beach. It’s nothing but real round hard freaking rocks. Immediately, they got us in the water doing a surf check.

Link arms, walk out there until you’re about waist-deep, turnaround. All right, get your heads under. We did that a couple of times. We did some surf PT laying on our backs trying to do — Trying to think of what the maneuver is where you try to almost do like a somersault backwards and touch yoru feet behind you and then come back up.

Brian: The rocking chair.

Corey: I forgot the name. Yes, that’s it. The rocking chair. How could I forget?

Brian: One of the worst exercises ever. How many reps did you have to get for the rocking chair?

Corey: I don’t even remember at this point. I was just like — I read the books, the endurance athlete books and I remember the one piece of advice was get one foot in front of the other. So at that point I was just like, “I don’t even care. Just keep doing reps until they say stop.”

Brian: Yeah. So for those who are listening and haven’t ever had to experience rocking chairs. The ones that I’ve had to do and it seems most cadre make you do is you sit down in the water, you all lineup, you lock arms and then they usually just ask for one rep. One rep for everyone and does it together. If you’ve been to a GORUCK event, you know that means more than one rep. That means you’re going to be in this like 10+ times.

Corey: I think we’re shooting for 10, maybe 20 at that point.

Brian: We’ve got some heavy hitters over there with the solid rucking crews out there.

Corey: Yeah, we still had to do it a couple of times.

Corey: You lock arms in the water and you’re sitting there and they say, “Go,” and you kick your feet up above your head and you kind of do like this reverse somersault thing where your feet go over your head and your feet have to touch the water, so your head is underwater in like this gravel. You’re trying to stay over for a couple of seconds, because everyone has to be doing this at the same time for it to count, and then you come back and you essentially mini-drown yourself multiple times.

It’s quite the way to start an event if you’re doing this. I mean this is probably what? Like an hour in?

Corey: Yeah, roughly. I think at that point — Yeah, I wasn’t keeping track, but I would have to say it’s probably 11 o’clock at night at that point maybe, maybe 10:30. Not sure. I need to learn how to read the stars like Crocodile Dundee or something.

Brian: Yeah. It might distract you little bit from the rocking chairs.

Corey: It’s beautiful. I didn’t realize how much starlight you could see when you get away from the city like that, because it is really nice. I realize I could see that nice of a view at the sky, I just get outside of Toledo.

Brian: What kind of a location are we at here? We’re at a boat launch. Are there small towns nearby? It sounds like there are any major cities if you’re missing all that city light.

Corey: Pretty much the biggest town nearby is Port Clinton, which is the main thing with Port Clinton is you got the ferries to go to Put-in-Bay where the bars are — Everything else, you got Camp Perry nearby, which is where they used to hold the NRA nationals every year, and then they’ve got Davis Besse, which is a nuclear power station nearby. Other than that, it’s pretty devoid of light pollution.

Brian: That’s nice. It’s really nice. You’re out there enjoying a nice night on the beach doing rocking chairs. What’s going on next?

Corey: From there it was time to break up into our boat cruise, and I think it was time for another swim assessment at that point. They wanted us to bring life preservers, and we did. So we had a body up and I think it was — Shredder cracked a couple of cam lights and whipped them out there pretty good and said, “All right. You and your body, swim around my cam lights and get back to the beach,”

Brian: How did everyone do with that? And did you get to bring your ruck with you?

Corey: Rucks I think stayed on land for that portion. One of our instructions I forgot to mention was that we had to make sure our rucks float. That’s a very important bullet point for later on in the event, and that’s going to be a great story that I don’t think enough people pupil heard about that one, but I’ll just tease you a little with that.

So we got our lifejackets on and my brother and I, we were big small boat sailors on Lake Erie. So I was able to grab his life preserver which is one of those ones where you just pull the ripcord and it inflates on its own, but I was like, “I’m not going to waste the CO2 cartridge. I’ll just leave it leave alone,” and I inflated it by mouth. I’m about probably halfway into the water initially and then I hear, “Pss!” and I do realize that my CO2 cartridges went off, so I’m like trying to hit the air release valve on my life preserver so that it doesn’t accidentally pop, and thank God it didn’t, because I needed that life preserver on this event.

Brian: That’s wild. Yeah, I’m glad it didn’t pop too.

Corey: Oh men! I would’ve been so screwed. We did the swim assessment. Got around with glow sticks and then I think it was time to form up as teams, and then it was another swim assessment. I think we had to swim a Budweiser line, which if you’ve never swam it. Basically, your whole team just grabs a hold of a rope. Sometimes you’ll have knots in it, sometime you won’t, but it kind of reminds you of like a six pack holder for beer cans. And so we were swimming as a group. We had to go swim to Shredder at a dock over there at the boat launch and then we had to turn around swim back to the team.

Brian: You’re spending a decent time in the water. What’s the water like?

Corey: Pretty cold. Not as bad as Traverse City, I think Traverse City helped me out there. I was feeling pretty good in that water, but there’s definitely some other people that were feeling the love.

Brian: I’m sure. There’s always someone there who hates the water.

Corey: Darn skinny folks.

Brian: Yup. No kidding. You’ve got this Budweiser line going. You’ve spent a decent amount of time in the water. How are you feeling?

Corey: Me? I’m feeling pretty good, but we’re all kind of checking on each other making sure no one is hyping out, and I know a couple of people were complaining of cramping up during the Budweiser line swim, so those people, you’r ejust like, “All right. Just try to relax and float.”

I remember being like the front of the line — There’s two fronts of the line. We swam one way and then all we did is we just did about-face and swam back to the beach. I was tailing it to swim to Shredder and I was leading it on the swim back from Shredder. I remember feeling my pec start to cramp up and I’d have to switch arms and kind of do a side stroke with my other side in order to get the job done.

Brian: Absolutely. And I hear those Budweiser lines, if you’re in the front, it’s a decent amount of work.

Corey: It’s not bad, could be worse.

Brian: It could always be worse.

Corey: After we got done with the Budweiser line, the Portland police showed up. I already gave you little teaser about what Put-in-Day like. So you’re just imagining the quality of people that those officers have to deal with on a daily basis, if not like at least a weekend basis. They get a lot of people enjoying their grandpa’s cough medicine a little too much and they got settle them down from time to time.

They see this big group of people standing in the water, they had backpacks, they got American flag shirts on and all sorts of weird stuff and they know this isn’t your average crew. Shredder kind of talks to them and tells them what we’re all about and comes back to us and he goes, “You know, those guys are really impressed with you, and now we’re going to start a different phase of the event. Basically, you’re going to do 10 minutes of silence in that water while treading it and these guys are going to watch.”

We get out to the point where we can’t touch and we got to treat water and we can’t be moaning and groaning. You know how it is when you’re in front leaning your ass. There’s always that, “Oh! Mmm! Aah!” noise going on and we couldn’t have any of that for 10 minutes in cold water while treading it.

Brian: Man! I bet there are some people who are not enjoying that.

Corey: There definitely were a few people, but they managed to do a great job of suffering in silence, because we got through that without a problem. The Port Clinton and police were just so impressed with us.

Brian: That’s great. Would you say that the beached, going back a little bit to the beach Tough, you had to tread water for half an hour to 45 minutes. Did that help you at all with this event?

Corey: You could say there was a little bit of muscle memory left over from that.

Brian: So what happened with the police that showed up?

Corey: They were real happy to see some people enjoying the beach in a different way and they pretty much said, “Don’t worry about a thing the rest of the night. We’ll keep anybody away from you,” and they kind of went on back to their patrolling, but the quality of people they usually see is not the GRT quality, So it was a treat for them to see us doing our thing and suffering in honor of something bigger than us.

Brian: I’m not quite sure what they were expecting when they showed up, but it’s probably not what they saw. So that’s really cool.

Corey: We got out of the water briefly to do a little bit of rehydration, grab some gear from the list, and from there we had to unload a U-haul van with lots of interesting looking PVC pipes and various implements, which brought us to our next phase where we broke out in our boat crews and we had to start constructing rafts out of PVC pipes and 550 cord.

Brian: Wow! So did you or anyone on your boat crew have any knowledge of how to construct a raft out of PVC and 550 before you started this?

Corey: I don’t want to brag, but man I know Capt. Dean, Dean Aiken, the guy who is running the Detroit HMS was very, very thankful for my knot tying skills because I still remember how to do my lashes from Boy Scouts. So I was able to go in there and just bang out a couple lashes, get those PVC pipes together.

I remember doing a clove hitch too and just having the hardest time because my hands were cold, but after getting a little light on there and taking a couple of deep breaths, I was able to get it started and then just lash that thing together like a rock star.

Brian: That’s amazing. That’s awesome that you had that prior knowledge, because I for one probably struggle a little bit, at least start getting that together.

Corey: I remember seeing other boat crews not quite sure how they were going to do it. I remember just seeing like two poles, you just lash it. We had one big lashing with paracord on one end and one big lash and a paracord on the other and we were ready to rock ‘n’ roll.

Brian: There you go. Did every boat crew have to make their own boat?

Corey: Essentially. We did some maneuvering with hat those there in the water. I think we had a race or two with those. You know how it is with races. It pays to be a winner.

Brian: It sure does.

Corey: I don’t remember if we are winners. I don’t remember. We probably were. So there was definitely some swimming and some repercussions with exercises for that. Then from there it took a very interesting turn, because these PVC pipes we had like rubber caps with, the device is a hose clamp around it. So these PVC pipes were waterproof and they tell us to drag it up on to the beach and pull one end of the caps off. I’m like, “Okay.”

One of those PVC pipes we had to fill with water. The other PVC pipe we had to fill with rocks from the beach. So then now we’ve got a giant like flush tube and we got a giant tube full of rocks and we’re told that boats had to carry provision, so one was your water in the other was your gunpowder.

From there we had to carry our PVC pipes as a team back to the park where we started, and I didn’t get a real good look at that park when we started, but there’s been a fairly sizable hill in it. I didn’t realize.

One of the things they had to do back in the day would be to ford boats over land and they would have to tie ropes to the boats and drag them across land to get to the next body of water. That was shredder’s next little fun activity for us. We were at the bottom of a hill. We had to drag our boats with — I think it was at least two members from our team on top of the PVC pipes plus rocks up that hill, go down the other side.

Brian: That must have been a fun surprise.

Corey: I can tell you from the HMS Detroit’s standpoint, we were killing it in the other areas and then we would miss in other areas. So this is where we really missed, because during the trip up the hill, one of those rubber caps came loose and we lost all our water. So that was a strike against us.

Then we finally got it up the hill, and then I think we’re going back down and one of our caps came loose and we lost our gunpowder. So we’re double screwed.

Brian: Did any other boat crews lose their water or their gunpowder?

Corey: As far as I know no. So yeah, we looked real bad at that point.

Brian: So what happened with that?

Corey: I think we had to add more people to the pipes at one point. It turned into a Charlie foxtrot. We were trying to push and pull this pipe up hill and it just wasn’t working for us, and I think it got to a point where Shredder just like took pity on us. He’s just like, “All right. Just get down the hell. Get in the front lead and rest,” because it was just taking so much time.

Then I think after that there came more PT. We did probably 120 reps of something. I can’t remember if it was burpees. I remember being on my back a lot, so maybe it was flutter kicks. I can remember because all I can remember seeing is this big long field that we’re in and it was foggy as I’ll get out. It was spooky as heck. I was just astounded at how much the landscape had changed from when we started, because it was probably about 2 o’clock in the morning when this all went down and it looked cool as heck, but at the same time it sucks like hell.

Brian: Oh, I bet. Probably wondering if you actually made it back to the same park you started in.

Corey: It gets better, because from there I think he had us load our stuff back up and go back to the beach, because we had to dump out the rocks and the water on to the beach, which obviously we didn’t have to do. Then we did another little jaunt from the beach that we were at to a park in the Catawba Island area. That’s where it got really interesting, because during this whole event we had to start using code terminologies. So if we’re going to move forward, we had to say make way. If you’re going to turn back, you had to say port. If you’re going to turn right, you had to say starboard.

At one point they took us to this park and we got in our boat teams, they made us put our rucks together in the center and we had to all face out. So we’re kind of this big like reverse group hug. One of the items we’re instructed to have was a bandanna, and we had to blindfold all the people on the boat crew, except the captain. The captain was in the center and it was up to the captain to basically guide us through a trail on this park and we all had to be blindfolded folded. So we had to trust our captain in the directions he was giving us.

Brian: Wow!

Corey: I have no idea how long that was. I just remember taking forever, because I think either the cadre went in and put like a huge freaking log down in the trail or they just hadn’t taken care of the park if there was a huge log in the trail. So we ended up getting like lost in the dark and we had to re-circle around a couple of times, but apparently we’re doing better than the other boat crews, because we are one of the first to finish, I guess.

Brian: Wow! That must’ve been something.

Corey: You got to remember when you’re in a circle like that, not everybody — Nobody’s facing the same direction. So if you’re in the back of it or the stern of the boat, forward is your back and port is going to be your right. So when he calls port, you actually are going to go right, not left. It turns into a giant teamwork exercise.

Brian: Yeah. That’s a lot of stuff to consider, and you’re blindfold the whole time. So you got that going for you too.

Corey: Yeah. It definitely is interesting, because people are calling out about the terrain. I remember at one point being not on the trail and having my footing slipping and thinking, “God! If I go down, I’m taking the whole boat with me,” and I can let that happen.

Brian: Yeah. There’s a lot going on with that. You’re one of the first boats back.

Corey: Supposedly. I couldn’t see it with my own eyes, and I don’t know if they were just bolstering their ego, but I’m hoping that was true.

Brian: Yeah. I was going to say, it must’ve felt pretty good after you guys lost all the water and all the gunpowder previously.

Corey: It definitely gave us a new hope for not being the worst boat.

Brian: So how long did it take for all the other boats to get there? Were they taking different routes or was everyone on the same route?

Corey: I think they started half the group at one end of the trail and the other group at the other end. The trail kind of looped around and came back to itself. So at one point we would cross paths with the other boats and then we have to maneuver around them.

Brian: Oh, wow!

Corey: Then they’re calling out directions too. So you got to try not to listen to them. You’re trying to listen to your boat captain and not get tangled up with the other boat.

Brian: No kidding. That’s almost more difficult than a log.

Corey: It was more mentally taxing than a log I think.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure. So all the groups are finally back together. How’s everyone feeling? Were you able to take your blindfold off that point or were they still on?

Corey: No. Once we finish, we are able to take our blindfold off, get some water and just kind of chill for a few minutes while we waited for the other boats to get done. I think it was probably — We had a good 15 minutes maybe standing around before we headed back to that boat launch/beach for the next evolution, because I think at that point we’re starting to get a little bit of sunshine peaking in maybe or we were getting close to dawn. So that’s when we gotten to some more technical aspects of the event and where we get to probably my favorite story about this event.

Brian: I’m excited.

Corey: Earlier on I told you that one of the requirements was we had to figure out how to get our rucks to float, and this is with standard challenge weight. You got a 30-pound plate if you’re over 150 pounds and you got to figure out how to make that thing float. A couple of the guys on my boat came up with the bright idea, “Go over to Target. It’s the end of the season. They’re selling all their pool stuff. Get a couple of clearance kick boards,” and I think one guy was able to fit like three kick boards in his ruck to get it to float. I opted for cutting a noodle down the middle and hundred mile an hour tape in it to my plate and then just doing to kick boards, because I need a room for all the other junk, and that help float it pretty good. People on the other boats, their rucks didn’t float so good.

Brian: Oh! Let’s hear it.

Corey: We’ll just move ahead. The next evolution was learning how to take tarps and kind of burrito roll them into making rafts out of your rucks. So there is a couple of different ways you can do it. Luckily my know tying skills came in handy there, because you had to basically do another clove hitch and it really was like making a giant burrito.

We got that going and then we had to get in the water with these rafts that we made and maneuver with them. After a few maneuvers in the water you’re going around buoys or swimming here, swimming there. The quality that you put into your work started to show, because some people’s rats started kind of coming apart a little bit. Started taking on water.

One unfortunate individual whose name honestly lost me, otherwise I would name him. His ruck fell out of the raft, and he didn’t do a great job of making sure it floated. He did a great job of making sure it kind of floated. Well, he lost basically his GR1, his plate and everything that was inside it sunk to Davy Jones locker there in Lake Erie.

Brian: Wow!

Corey: Yeah, that’s a huge, huge thing. Shredder pulled us all out of the water and had us to walk a police line and the beach, and we could not find that sucker.

Brian: Wow! That’s rough. That’s something.

Corey: Shredder kind of came out and he’s like, “Listen, We lost a ruck. We’re going to get with HQ. We’re going to make this right. It was but, but we’re going to make it right.” I got to believe at the end of the day they hooked him up real good, and it wasn’t a horrible loss, but man there might be some Lake Erie fishermen that comes across that ruck someday, like he’s got a whopper of a fish. He’s going to find out he’s got a little treasure trove.

Brian: That’s crazy.

Corey: At least that’s how I sleep at night.

Brian: Yeah. Someone will find it. So what happened with that individual?

Corey: He’s still stuck with us. It was just kind of like — I think they end up sticking with the team weight or something, because like, “Well, what do you do now? No ruck.” We just kind of continued on. I mean, we probably spent a good half an hour, 45 minutes trying to search that ruck and Davy Jones took it. So there’s nothing we could do at that point.

I think Shredder could see that morale got a little low at that point. So he had us pleased the beach for garbage and whatnot. We find a couple of gel wrappers or some power beans or whatever or whatever. The junk food that most GRTs pack in their rucks these days take long. He’s like, “Listen. In 1813, they didn’t have all these carbohydrate things. They crackers and they had sardines. So they come rolling out with a couple boxes of crackers and a couple of packs of sardines and they wanted us all to have a little bit of that.”

Brian: How did that go for you? Did you have any?

Corey: I couldn’t bring myself to watch the video that Cody shot, because I had to sound like the biggest nerd, because at one point I remember someone asking me, he’s like, “Hey, Cory. Get in there and get some sardine,” and I’m like stuttering, “I have a fish allergy,” so I must have sound like the biggest nerd, like, “I can’t. I have an allergy the sardines.” I think Cody was videoing the exact moment and I can’t even watch the video, just in case. I do look like the biggest nerd there standing like that.

They’re like, “Well, get the cracker.” I’m like, “No. I can’t eat the crackers man. I’m keto. I don’t eat gluten and definitely not carbs.” So I kind of sat back and fasted.

Brian: Yeah. That is too funny. Maybe I can dig up the video. No I won’t. Just kidding. I won’t dig it up.

Corey: Yeah, I’m sure it’s there. I haven’t watched it, so I don’t know if he stopped it and you don’t see there or what, but I’ve never had the stomach to watch it.

Brian: That happens to me too. The first time I ever I was an interviewee on a podcast, it took me like two weeks to listen to it, because I knew I sounded terrible. It’s like, “Man, I can’t even stomach this. I can’t stomach listing to this. Please, it’s going to be so bad.”

Corey: You’re never 100% perfect at whatever you do the first time. So you’ve only gotten better with time my friend.

Brian: Thank you. Thank you. I know that feeling all too well. They bring out these sardines and crackers. That must’ve been a surprise to everyone. What’s going on from there? It sounds like the sun at this point might’ve come up a little bit since it was peaking earlier?

Corey: It’s got to like seven, maybe 8 o’clock at that point. I think I want to say it’s seven. I can’t be 100% sure. We’re sitting around trying to chow down on these sardines and crackers. Some of the people are like — They’re trying not to blow chunks, because they had a squeamish box of sardines. Other people are just like, “Yeah, this is great. Can I have yours?” The typical trying to gross the squeamish guy out type of thing.

We just kind of sit around chilling, get some calories in us, getting some water in us, replenishing some the electrolytes and just to — You know that magical moment in the middle of a Tough where you’re all just sitting around sharing food. It’s that moment.

Brian: Yup.

Corey: So snack times over and we’re behind schedule, because we spent so much time searching for this ruck. Basically what we got to do is we got to load all the gear into the U-haul van, and you got to remember at the same time this is happening. All the fishermen are trying to come down to the boat launch and drop their boats in the water. So we’ve got like hundreds of people just staring at us like, “What the heck are those weirdos doing?”

We carry PVC pipes up to the U-haul and we get them in the truck. Basically Shred is just like, “All right. We’re behind schedule, so we got to expedite this.” He just points to a boat team, “Get in the van and we’re going to take over to the ferry,” and then that’s kind of what they did, is we got in the van. They took one team to the ferry. The rest of us kind of sit and chill.

I remember during that point, I was getting a little sleepy at that point. So I remember Cody like peeking down, like getting his face near mine and I saw it out of the corner eye and I snapped out or I was just about to fall asleep and I could see that smile on his face, like, “I got you!” We just kind of sat and chilled.

Cody got a pretty good inspiration at one point. He’s looking over their and he’s like, “Hey, Detroit. Are those picnic tables?” We’re like, “Yeah. What are you thinking?” He’s like, “We’re going to send a little love message to Jesse Hein.” And we’re all like, “Heck, yeah.”

He tells us to get over on those picnic tables, hoist them above our head and he’s like — He just goes, “Who is this for?” And we all yelled, “Jesse Hein!” “Who is this for?” “Jesse Hein!” “Who is this for?” “Jesse Hein!” Then we’re done with that. I don’t know if Jesse ever got the video, but I hope the heck he did, because that just sounded cool us call getting out.

Brian: That’s awesome.

Corey: Fast forward. We load out into the van, get to the ferry point. So I think the ferry to get Put-in-Bay, it was like $12 maybe. Something like that. So they’re all like, “You brought your 20s, right?” Everyone is like, “Yeah, except for one guy.” We all get in line and we pay our soggy 20s to a lady and she gives us our ticket and then we’re just kind of milling around waiting for the boat to come in talking about this, that and the other thing, just kind of chilling.

I remember sitting there and like, “Man! How much longer is this going to go on?” Because I had — It was my on-call weekend for work and I’m like getting worried, because I got to go see patients this afternoon and I want to be somewhat coherent to treat my total hip and my lady with a fractured tibia. So I’m like getting a little nervous here, because it’s probably like getting closer to like nine, 10 o’clock.

Riding the ferry, and I remember there’s a great video of Captain Dean. He’s like nodding off on the ferry ride and he’s like drifting through his right I remember Cody was videoing that. It’s on the Tough page, I think. He’s like almost going to fall out of his feet on the ferry and then he snaps out of it at the last second. Sits up and he goes, “And that’s a hard starboard.” Without breaking face or anything. I remember when I got back and I saw that video I laughed so hard.

Brian: That’s amazing. I’m going to dig that up. I’m digging that one up for sure.

Corey: So we ride in the ferry and everyone’s kind of like nodding off. Some of them were talking. I remember, actually we’re sitting next to a couple and the husband had actually written a book on the war of 1812. So like Cody and Shred and I and Brian are currently sitting around listening to this guy talk, and then we finally get off the boat and we got to unloaded and we got ruck it to another beach.

The U-haul van goes ahead of us. Cody is with us and I’m like, “Hey Cody. Man, I’m going to work after this. How much longer we got?” He’s like, “Listen dude. I got a flight to catch out to Cleveland at like 3 o’clock. So I’m on the same boat with you.” But he’s assuring me, “No. You’re not getting fired today. We’re going to end this. It’s not too much longer.” “Okay. Cool.”

We ruck it a couple — I think it’s a mile or two from where the Put-in-Bay ferry puts in to another boat launch/park nearby where Shred takes and instructs us to build a raft out of the PVC that he brought in the U-haul, but we have to have our rucks attached to it. You know, this late in the game people ain’t thinking straight.

We came up with a great idea and like, “Just put your freaking backpack straps through the PVC pipes.” It was like, “Dant! You’re genius, man! So we do that and then we made a burrito out of a couple of rocks and do the whole raft thing again with that. That’s where it gets a little chaotic, because Brian come up to me and he’s like, “All right. It’s time to go. Oh, wait. No, we got a few minutes.” So we took our rafts and we loaded them into the water and we reenacted the Battle of 1813 Lake Erie, and this was so cool. This is probably the best part of the — This was the apex of the event, because what we had to do was we had to kind of mimic the movements of the boats during the war, and what we have to do is we come alongside, the long side of the boat is where the cans were. So whenever we got close enough to one of the other boats out there, the Niagara, or the scorpion, or the others, we would have to fire on them.

We came up with a great idea while firing the cans, mean we splash their asses. So just started splashing like crazy any boat they came close to us. So it was fun. It looked like fun. We had a good time.

Let me describe the situation at this beach. Some of the listeners might know about how the toxic algae blooms in Ohio, or I should say in Lake Erie. They actually get so bad at one point the city I live in, Toledo, the municipal water supply was actually tainted by the toxic algae because our water purification system couldn’t keep up with it. There’s like signs posted all over this beach about toxic algae blooms and how you should be aware. I’m still surprised I didn’t end up with any kind of enteric disease or anything because I know I got a good couple of mouthfuls of that water.

Brian: Yeah, that’s — I’m glad nothing bad happened. Did anyone get sick?

Corey: Not that I’m aware of. I think some people refer to it as ear herpes at some point, but I don’t know of any confirmed illnesses at this time.

Brian: That’s good. I’m glad everyone lucked out. We’ve got a popular start point for some of our Tough events, which is called Green Lake out by us, and they have three or four sensors on the lake on North, South, East and West, and it measures the amount of fecal matter in there. So it’s updated over the summer I think daily. And so whenever we have a start point, they’re always be posting screenshots of that, like, “Hey guys. There’s a bunch of crap in the water, so hopefully we don’t go in there.”

Corey: Oh! Green Lake. Why would they call it that?

Brian: I know, right? So thankfully we never really go in there, but I’m glad that no one got sick at your event.

Corey: Yeah, that we know of.

Brian: That we know of. Yup. That we know of.

Corey: I was like really worried too, because the shore over there was like kind of rocky and they made us —The pathfinder way choose the harder thing. We can go down the nicely made path. Shredder has put the boats over like this deep ends to get him in the water, and I remember cutting the palm of my hand on a rock and like, “Oh! I can put my gloves away now. Stupid me. I didn’t put my gloves on when we did that part and I get a cut on my hand.” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m getting something for sure now.”

Brian: Yeah, right before you get in the water, just some nice blood flow.

Corey: The toxic algae water.

Brian: Yeah. No kidding. Yeah, it sounds like your beaches are kind of like ours. We don’t have those nice sandy beaches. We just have rocks and gravel and pebbles and all that “good stuff”. Yeah, good stuff in quotes.

Corey: Makes it hard.

Brian: Yeah. You definitely earn it.

Corey: Then we have the naval battle. The apex of the naval battle was like — Shredder is like, “All right. You guys did it. You had the battle. There’s only one thing left to do. I need each boat to pick one person and you need to get that person up on your raft and they got to run the gauntlet.”

The gauntlet was that all the other ships got across from each other, and you had to have the person who is on top of the raft had to stand on top of it, Capt. Morgan style, and you had to maneuver the boat through the gauntlet while everybody splash you.

Brian: Wow!

Corey: And it looks so awesome.

Brian: Who was chosen from your boat?

Corey: I honestly don’t remember. It had been whoever was one of the smaller people, because we wanted to get it done. Obviously the rafts were constructed hastily. We wanted to ensure success. So I think it was whoever the smallest person was at that time.

Brian: Yeah, it’s smart. You’re already what? Over 12 hours into the event?

Corey: I think at that point we’re pushing about 14. I did my math wrong when I was coming back on the ferry. I kept like telling everybody it was an 18-hour Tough.” I’m like, “No That doesn’t make any sense, because I’m not late for work yet.”

Brian: Still, that’s a long tough.

Corey: It was significant. Here’s the kicker. I know Captain Dean, who was a little sore on this. This is going on around the same time as I think the hurricanes were hitting Florida. So our patches didn’t get out of HQ in time. So we didn’t actually get patched on the island. We got all our patches in the mail like two weeks later after the Postal Service had resumed. It was so sweet.

I got a great picture on my Facebook. I was driving home from work and I could see that the envelope laying against my front porch with that big arrowhead sitting on it and I’m like, “It’s huge!” I pulled in my driveway and ran up the steps like a little kid on Christmas and tore that thing open.

Brian: That’s awesome. You have to send a picture of what the patches look like, because I’m sure they weren’t the traditional ones.

Corey: Oh, it’s cool. It’s got the — I think the Union Flat on it at the time with like — I think it’s got the arrowhead in the background with this gold lettering for GORUCK, and then a white letting for Battle of Lake Erie 1812, and then you got the silver Tough and it just looks so awesome. I loved it.

Brian: That is great. So do you think this events is going to come back again?

Corey: Oh, God. I hope so. I really, really hope so. This was so much fun.. I know Brian just announced that in January — I think it’s the 19th, they opened up a Battle of 1812 for New Orleans. He’s trying to turn this into a whole series with a special patch for completing all of them. So right now that’s the next one on the list, but I really, really hope they bring back the Lake Erie one so we can work the kinks out of it and make an even better event next year.

Brian: Absolutely. It sounds like it was incredible. There’s seriously unique stuff going on at this event.

Corey: One year of R&D and a lot of love. I got mad respect for Brian for putting this on, because every ounce of work shows.

Brian: Yeah. He is a very dedicated guy and really hard worker. So it’s awesome that it worked out, and I really hope it comes back too, because it sounds like it’s one of those events that people are going to hear about and they’re going to want to do, because there’s just such cool stuff happening there.

Corey: Yeah. Like I said at the beginning, I’m like, “What did I get myself into?” Because it just seemed it was more hassle, but after going through it, I’m so glad I did, because it was so much fun.

Brian: That’s great. What do you think the chances are that you’ll be down at the New Orleans event?

Corey: Like I said, my budget is maxed for this year. So a flight to New Orleans, plus whatever odds and ends we got to carry for that one. Not very likely at this time.

Brian: Yes. It’s the tough part about this traveling for events.

Corey: We just had a Halloween Heavy up here this past weekend. I don’t know we’re B. Yang is from, but he came for the event and I mean I don’t know how you just truck all your equipment across the country like that, because I have enough trouble just trying to get all my gear up to Detroit in one piece, let alone letting the TSA fiddle with my stuff.

Brian: Oh, yeah. I’ve got a hard enough time, give myself half an hour south to an event start. Yeah. I’ve travel a couple of times for events and it’s always, always stressful. Amazon Prime makes it a little bit easier, because if you forget stuff sometimes you can get it in real quick.

Corey: Yeah, I could see that.

Brian: it’s still tough.

Corey: My furthest event, if you don’t count the beach, was Winter Fad in Indie. That was my second distant event compared to beach, which was at 6-1/2 hour drive. Indi is like 3 1/2 hours from where I’m at, I think.

Brian: Very nice. You’ve got a great area it sounds like. A nice radius to get to some pretty awesome events. Corey: Like 2-1/2 hours from everything practically.

Brian: That’s perfect. Is there anything else you want to talk about for this custom Tough?

Corey: I know Shredder’s name is intimidating, but he is a standup fella. Before this event, I never — I didn’t know Cody. The only time I’d seen him was when he was doing the videos for the selection for the year previous to this one when he was talking about how the selection participants undercarriage was getting a little chafed, and that was the only experience I had with Cody up in those point, but when he came onto this event, he was kind of smooth operator and a cool dude and I can’t say enough nice things about either cadre.

Brian: That’s awesome. I’ve had the opportunity of doing an event with Shredder and hopefully sometime in the future I can do one with Cody, because it’s — You hear nothing but good things. Very nice.

Corey: Hoping Jeff can come back next year, and I can rid or some of these anxiety about being around him.

Brian: Yeah. Cory,thank you so much for taking over an hour running through this event. It sounds like it was truly something unique coming from Brian. It must have been really awesome, so I’m glad that we’re able to do this, because I’m excited. I would love to make it out to one of these events, because there’s just really cool stuff going on at it and it sounds like a really great group of people who showed up for it. So thank you again for just taking so much time out of your evening to talk about this. I truly appreciate it, Cory. Thank you.

Corey: No. Thank you my friend. You are my companion on these long days at work were I’m driving from place to place and I need my rucking fixed. So I’m happy to answer the narrative and support the GRT community, and I hope you can make it out here someday, because I know the Detoit squad would love to love to host and maybe we can even do a little show out here.

Brian: That’d be fun.

Corey: It’d be a good time.

Brian: I’ll check the Detroit calendar. Maybe you can send me over the list of events you’re doing for 2018 and maybe we can find something that will work out.

Corey: Right on. I could do it.

Brian: Awesome. Thank you so much again. I truly appreciate it, and this has been amazing. Thank you, Cory.

Corey: Thank you sir. You have yourself a good day now.

Brian: You too.

The post ADR 026: Corey Modrowski AAR (GORUCK Tough Battle of Lake Erie – War of 1812) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

The new kid on the block for 2018 was definitely the Constellation line of events. There were Constellation 12 events run across the country but only one Constellation 24 event which occurred on the east coast. To get into the Constellation 24 event one must have completed a Constellation 12 event in advance.

Steven Maske completed a Constellation 12 event, showed up for and completed the Constellation 24 event, then took the time to chat with us about his experience at that event. Just a warning: if you are planning on signing up for Constellation 24 and want to be completely surprised at what goes at during that event then maybe skip this episode. Although Steven keeps a lot of it secret there is still a good deal of information in this AAR.

From what we hear GORUCK is planning on updating their Constellation line of events so watch out for those in the future!

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 Lohr: I’m here talking with Stephen Mask about the Constellation 24 event that he completed on November 4th, 2017. Constellation 24 is the 24-hour advanced version of GORUCK’s brand new, for this year, Constellation 12 event, which focuses on survival during a disaster.

In order to participate in the Constellation 24 event, one must have already completed at least one Constellation 12. I wasn’t able to attend Constellation 24 unfortunately, so I am incredibly excited that Stephen’s here to chat with me today about Constellation 24.

Stephen, how is it going?

Steven Maske: I’m doing great. I’m glad to be here.

Brian Lohr: Awesome. I’m really excited to have you here. As you know, we’ve talked about Constellation a bit back and forth and I was super excited that they decided to do 24, and I’m very jealous that you were able to go.

Steven Maske: Yeah. I’m glad I was able to make it. I wasn’t sure if I was going to. It’s a bit of a haul for me up in New Hampshire and to being about a 10-hour drive, a little longer than I expected, but I’m glad I did it.

Brian Lohr: Yeah, that’s quite the trip there, but it sounds like it was worth it.

Steven Maske: Yes, absolutely.

Brian Lohr: Very cool. Before we get into Constellation 12 and 24, let’s start out with your involvement in the GORUCK community. How did you even stumble upon GORUCK as a company?

Steven Maske: It was about four years ago. I was actually just looking for a bag. I’m kind of active on Twitter. There are a lot of people — I work in information security and there’re a lot of info sec people there and I was just poking around seeing what other people were doing, and a handful of people mentioned this thing called GORUCK. Shortly thereafter, I ended up picking up a Radio Ruck and that led to a GR-0, which led to a sandbag, which led to a Bullet Ruck, which led to a kit bag, and then you know how that goes.

Brian Lohr: Absolutely. I know all too well how that GORUCK gear rabbit hole winds up.

Steven Maske: Of course, events come along with that. I had a friend about a year after I bought the Radio Ruck finally talk me into an event that worked on my schedule. We did a Light. About a year later, did a Tough. I have been trying to get another Tough in, but the schedule hasn’t really worked, but I did make it to War Stories and then the 12 and 24-hour Constellations.

Brian Lohr: Very cool. That’s awesome that you’re able to get both a Light and a Tough in before you went to Constellation 12 and 24, because I feel like GORUCK has been running those events for years, so they have them down pat on what they’re trying to do. So when you go to some of these newer events, it’s not always as smooth as one would expect. So that’s great that you had that reference there to fall back on.

When you heard about GORUCK Constellation, were you originally excited? You mentioned you were in information security, and so I know a number of people from that community and all seemed like they were pretty excited by GORUCK moving into this type of an event.

Steven Maske: Yeah. I had actually been holding my breath for Trek to come back, and when Constellation showed up, I figured this will probably be the closest thing that’d get to it.

Brian Lohr: Yeah. I think we’re all holding our breath for Trek to come back.

Steven Maske: It never happened, right?

Brian Lohr: The event that never happened. Yeah. Yeah, the event that never happened, the series of events that never happened.

Steven Maske: Yup.

Brian Lohr: For your first Constellation event, which city was that in and do you remember what class number that was?

Steven Maske: Yup. I was in Boston and it was class number 8.

Brian Lohr: Awesome. I know that the first few events they’re running were a little hit or miss on the Constellation series, but I think at least certainly by my class, they had really gotten to a solid grove and I know they’ve been improving it since. How did your Constellation 12 event go?

Steven Maske: The event was great. They changed the packing list on us a couple of times just by the week leading up to it. They kept tweaking it, but I think they’d learned a lot from the previous events. It was great overall. It was more or less — You’ve done them before. You sit down, you learn something and you get to practice it. I was really surprised, we had about 100 people. I would say about 40% of the people there had never done a GORUCK event before, which really kind of shocked me.

Brian Lohr: Is that amazing? I thought for sure that it would be like a GRT reunion type of event where everyone who shows up has already done at least one other GORUCK event. It was the same experience in Seattle. Just tons of people who had never done a GORUCK event before.

Steven Maske: Yup, and a lot of them were people who are dragged along with other people saying, “Here. Come see what this is like. If you do this, I’ll probably tuck you into a Light later,” seemed to be a lot of the people who are there.

Brian Lohr: Yeah. It seems like a great segue to that first Light or Tough event. For those who are listening and haven’t done a GORUCK Constellation 12 event or looked too much into it, do you want to briefly go through what happened at your event?

Steven Maske: Sure. Yeah. Ours, I don’t know how much they varied, but ours was in a gym in the next town over from Boston in Warehouse District. We’re just at a gym where the cadre would go over different skills and lessons and then they would kick us out. We’d go out into the city and we’d enact what we learned and they give us a time hack on getting back. Although nobody ever got in trouble for missing the time back. So it’s just a little different, I’ve got that Tough event.

Brian Lohr: Yeah. It’s definitely different than the standard GORUCK challenge type event because it was very low on PT. There wasn’t really much pressure to movement. You were instilling pressure on your own team. For those who are listening who haven’t taken part, everyone who shows up, it kinds of like a Scavenger event where you’re broken up into teams. Everyone’s got their individual pods and you learn the lesson, you go out, you work on the lesson and you’re trying to avoid other pods or sneak up on other groups. It’s definitely an interesting event and it’s run overnight, just like the Tough events are. So it’s fun to be out there stalking other groups in the wee hours of the morning.

Steven Maske: Yeah.

Brian Lohr: How soon after you completed Constellation 12 did you decided that you wanted to register for Constellation 24?

Steven Maske: I wanted to do it right away. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to make the timing work. So it took me about a month to square things away with my schedule so that I could actually make it down there. I ended up having to kind of close. I took the day off before. I drove down, did the event, and as soon as the event completed, I actually drove home. It was a little rough there, a little hairy with the lack of sleep, but it was something that I definitely — It was on my bucket list. As soon as I heard about, whether I was able to make it this year or if I wasn’t, I was going to definitely do it next year, but I was very happy to make it work.

Brian Lohr: That’s wild. The 24 in Constellation 24 stands for 24 hours, right? So this is a full start to finish event lasting an entire day. So 10-hour day.

Steven Maske: In true GORUCK style, it lasted more than 24 hours. It was about 26 and a half when we’re all set and done.

Brian Lohr: That’s wild. Definitely cutting down that time you have to drive back home. So the Constellation events, I mean they have an interesting packing list. You mentioned that your envent they modified it a couple of times, and by the time they got to our event, it was pretty set and they had cut a lot of gear off of the list. Was there anything unique to the Constellation 24 that either gave you pause or think, “What are going to be using this for?”

Steven Maske: No. the packing list was actually surprisingly very similar and very close to the 12-hour. So I was wondering if we were going to go over some of the same stuff. We ended up using some of the things in different ways. But they also had a large section of optional packing list items. We did for the 12-hour as well, but it was like additional medical gears. If you had lock picks, they encouraged you to bring them, “Let’s see. Was there anything else?” There was a handful of things, like extra duct tape and I think extra socks were on there, which is always good for a GORUCK event.

Brian Lohr: Yeah, specially a 24-hour event. It’s nice to get that fresh pair of socks in there.

Steven Maske: Yeah, especially since it rained the entire time.

Brian Lohr: Oh, lucky you.

Steven Maske: Oh yeah. We were drenched.

Brian Lohr: You mentioned that your GORUCK Constellation 12 event took place in a gym and then you would leave and explore the city. Ours did as well. It was in a cross-fit gym in Belleview. Where did the Constellation 24 event take place?

Steven Maske: I’m not surely sure what the park was. It was like a park pavilion that had a bunch of classrooms. This was actually a lot better for me. I like actually sit down in a chair and was like a real classroom style. A couple of them they took out the chairs, because we needed the space to move, but a lot of it was in like more traditional classroom. They actually had a projector with slides for some of it. We would learn and then we’d practice those.

Brian Lohr: That’s very cool. Yeah, our Constellation 12 event, everyone’s sitting on the floor and it gets rough when you’re getting in the five in the morning doing a half an hour learning session sitting on the floor. You can get tired.

I think I had a harder time possibly staying awake at a Constellation 12 event than at a typical GORUCK Tough event, because you’re putting out so much effort the entire time. It’s not too often that you’re sitting in and trying to listen for a set period of time. It’s definitely interesting.

Steven Maske: Yeah. I actually had less problems with that in the 24 event. The first 12 hours was very similar to the 12-hour event, the first 12 hours of the 24, because we had the same kind of format, but it was more compact. It was much more fire hose. We learned so much more in the first 12 hours of the 24 than we did in the 12 hours. But then the second half of the 24 is actually applying everything you learned in the first 12 in mission styles.

More or less what they did is they told us, “Effectively, you’re in Puerto Rico right now with everything that’s going on there.” You’re going to go through real-world scenarios using everything you learned in the first half of Constellation 24.”

Brian Lohr: That’s very cool. What time did this event start at?

Steven Maske: 8 a.m.

Brian Lohr: That’s a surprisingly nice start time. You have your first 12 hours are kind of the fire hose recap, I guess you could call it, of Constellation 12, because everyone who showed up at the 24 should have done a 12 in advance, and then you’re at 8 p.m., so it’s getting dark out and in time to go start applying everything you learned.

Steven Maske: Right. The first 12 hours of the 24 built up a lot of what we learned in the 12-hour. So the medical stuff, we took a step further. We did practiced like doing sutures on like banana peels and we upgraded our gasmasks. Actually, they told us to bring the gasmask that we made in the 12-hour to upgrade the, and if you didn’t have them, just bring the materials to remake it. We actually upgraded them to include a charcoal element and all sorts of different…

Brian Lohr: Really?

Steven Maske: Yeah.

Brian Lohr: That is awesome. Yes. I still have got my gasmask in the All Day Ruckoff office. It’s about 20 feet away from me, and building that was quite the experience.

Steven Maske: Yup. I still have mine, and I made sure before I packed it that it was clean with any leftover pepper spray, but this time it had to survive teargas.

Brian Lohr: Really?

Steven Maske: Yeah.

Brian Lohr: That’s quite the upgrade from getting pepper sprayed in the face.

Steven Maske: Yeah. Not everybody did so good of a job making theirs second time around.

Brian Lohr: Oh, boy! Whenever anyone asks for advice for Constellation 12, the one piece I always give first is any spare or downtime you have, work on your gas mask and work on making sure that seal is perfect.

Steven Maske: Yeah. Take your time.

Brian Lohr: Mm-hmm. That is not something you want skimp on.

So GORUCK kept their lips pretty tight about what was going to happen at this event. I had asked some cadre and I had even talked to Jason about it and no one was saying anything. How are you feeling leading up to the event?

Steven Maske: I really had no idea what was going to happen. I more or less figured it would be more of what the 12 was, just additional type of information. If figured it would be in the same vein. I figured maybe they’d be something — Some of the cadres had their certain pieces that they don’t want us to talk about, because there was some overlap at the Trek, but overall they just mentioned certain pieces that we couldn’t talk about.

Brian Lohr: Got you. Yeah, I don’t know how I would have felt. I’ve seen some of the pictures from Trek and that was quite the event they’ve put on, and Constellation 24 seems like the closest thing they have now. So I probably would have been a little nervous.

When I was at my Constellation 12 start point, it was pretty fun. Everyone was having a good time chatting. It was kind of like a GRT get together, because we had read about the previous events and we knew there wasn’t going to be too much PTU. It’s going to be a lot of fun stuff and a lot of learning. No one really had the pre-event jitters that you see at a Light, a Tough or a heavy. What was the feeling like at the start of Constellation 24?

Steven Maske: During 24, we had instructions that we had to have our teams established before we arrived. Everybody had to volunteer on Facebook, you needed nine teams. So we had the first nine people to speak up team names. Everybody had two team names. There’s a color and whatever you wanted to call it. We were team orange, also team hue. Then during some parts that they gave us numbers as well.

We had to have those established. So we actually met up. Our team met up in the lobby of the hotel where most people stayed, so we get to introduce ourselves and meet each other. Then we went to the start point.

Brian Lohr: That’s nice. When we started Constellation 12, there was probably about a half an hour or 45 minutes of admin at least at our event getting the teams established, getting everything handed out and making sure everyone knew what team they’re on and what was happening. Getting that stuff out of the way in advance seems like a pretty smart use of time.

Steven Maske: Yeah, that way the team leads went up and they checked everybody in. You didn’t have to wait for your name to be called. There’s very little admin required.

Brian Lohr: Awesome. You met your team in advance, which is probably a really smart thing to do at the hotel. Then you guys all head out to the place where you’ll be learning at the — Was it like a recreational center or like a classroom style area?

Steven Maske: Yeah. It almost felt like a YMCA, but without the gym part. It was just largely classrooms. It was just a big, like community center kind of deal.

Brian Lohr: Very cool. Did you spend the first 12 hours in that room or did you head out and explored the city a little bit?

Steven Maske: We didn’t do any city exploring. There was a couple of different rooms where we rotated. Each team was in a different room. Some of it was outside, and we learned what we’re going to learn. We’ve got to practice it most of the time. It was right then and there with the cadre. Then we rotated.

Brian Lohr: Awesome. What was the first module that you started with?

Steven Maske: I think the very first one we did was surveillance, where there was a library across the street and we had a task to find out information about someone we didn’t know. We had description of who they were and who they were meeting and we were supposed to get information from them, information about them to report back. We needed to get information about the building itself. Were there cameras? How many lights were there? Were there lights in the parking lot? Lights on the building?

The cadre intentionally spouted off — I don’t know, probably 20 or 30 different things that he wanted us to find, and he intentionally did it too fast for us to write it all down. It was try and get us to absorb as much information as possible. Go and bring that information back.

Brian Lohr: Very cool. Dis every group have to survey the same scene?

Steven Maske: Yup. Yeah. We all did it separately. We knew what the mission was, but then the next team didn’t know. The people who we ended up surveilling came in after, and one of them was a cadre. Who was the other person? I don’t recall who the other person was. They told us whether or not they could see us and what information that we could have gotten that we didn’t get. One of the people hid something in the magazine that they were reading. If we’d actually gone up and looked at the magazine, then we could have actually gotten something that would have helped us later, but I don’t think any of the teams thought that far ahead.

Brian Lohr: That’s wild, and that’s quite the attention to detail on just the first module that you all started with.

Steven Maske: Yeah.

Brian Lohr: Very cool. From surveillance, where did you go to next?

Steven Maske: I think the next one was additional medical, where we just learned some additional, first aid. We had actual filament and needles to stitch up and just practice basic surgical stitching in the field. We were told to cut a banana and then basically saw it back together.

Brian Lohr: Nice. That’s not something that I’ve ever done or would have thought to try in a banana. Very interesting.

Steven Maske: The next is the banana has like the different layers that they showed on the screen, like the different layers of the skin, and you more or less mimic that in the banana. It was much easier to look at it and see where you’re supposed to saw.

Brian Lohr: That makes sense. I eat a banana every day and I never really thought of it that way, but I’m guessing I’ll be thinking about that tomorrow. That’s wild.

Okay. We started with surveillance, and then we improved upon the medical skills we learned at Constellation 12. Did every group start with surveillance, or did everyone start in a different position and then you kind of round robin through these different modules?

Steven Maske: Exactly. Everybody started with a different cadre on a different module and then we just rotated through.

Brian Lohr: Very cool. There’s a chance that maybe some of the other groups who had been doing this longer when they got to surveillance, they might have thought about the magazine.

Steven Maske: Maybe, but you learned the thing in a smaller classroom and then you went and did it. Nobody had more time to think about it than anybody else.

Brian Lohr: Got you.

Steven Maske: We weren’t all together at the lessons.

Brian Lohr: From medical, where did you go next?

Steven Maske: I think we went to tying improvised repelling of harnesses.

Brian Lohr: That’s something I did not expect to hear really. Improved repelling harnesses?

Steven Maske: Yup. Basically, they gave us a 10-foot piece of rope and then showed us how to tie it so we could essentially use to repel. Later, in the mission part of it, we would use real equipment, but we actually got to repel off of a three-story garage.

Brian Lohr: That’s wild. Did you get to try out your improvised harnesses on like a four-foot wall or something like that?

Steven Maske: We didn’t. They kind of split that piece of the training into two pieces. They showed us the different types of knots you would tie and they tied it to these concrete pillars and basically we did it horizontally instead of vertically so you could kind of lean back and see where the tension would be, and then had us show how to tie the harnesses themselves and we never hooked them up or anything. I think that was more of a safety concern and insurance.

Brian Lohr: Yeah. I was going to say I’m not sure how you get insurance for that. Trying to explain that to the person you’re buying the event insurance from, that people will be making their own harnesses and repelling.

Steven Maske: Yup.

Brian Lohr: That’s wild that you actually got to repel off a building. I’m excited to get to that part, because that is really cool. From this improvised repelling devices, what did you go to next?

Steven Maske: The next thing, they had a beater of a van that they bought off of Craigslist where we did a bunch of practice on. We practiced picking the lock, the door lock. A couple of different ways of doing that. We effectively hot-wired the vehicle and then we also siphoned gas out of it.

Brian Lohr: That’s awesome, and those are both very useful tasks to have in a situation that you’re kind of prepping for at one of these events.

Steven Maske: Yeah.

Brian Lohr: Very cool. I’m guessing that’s probably smart that they bought it off Craigslist instead of using a rental.

Steven Maske: Yeah. I imagine that it’s pretty destructive getting the car to run. That’s not something that I’m sure your rental insurance would cover.

Brian Lohr: Yeah, probably not. Hot-wiring your car, siphoning gas. Did you say that you’ve learned how to break into a car or was that not taught?

Steven Maske: Yeah. We worked on a couple of different ways to bypass the door locks with your traditional movie Slim Jim that you see. We used a couple of shims for other ways to pop it enough to hook the door.

Brian Lohr: Very cool.

Steven Maske: I think there was a third one. I don’t recall what it was. It was a very big fire hose kind of day.

Brian Lohr: Oh, yeah. I mean that already seems like a ton of information and we’ve only made it through four modules, which isn’t even half of the event. Going from there, what they have you do next?

Steven Maske: I think our next one was lock picking.

Brian Lohr: That’s cool. Did you practice on — Was it padlocks? Door locks?

Steven Maske: They mostly had padlocks, but somebody had made a contraption that had a whole bunch of different locks in it, and fortunately lock picking is something that I have some experience with just being in security, but whatever reason every single security conference has a lock pick village for just practicing. So I brought my own set of lock picks and I didn’t have to wait to share.

Brian Lohr: Isn’t that interesting? That even in computer security, there’s still a lock pick village or something along those lines that are at conferences.

Steven Maske: Sure. You get into the red teaming portion of it. There’s a logical piece to a lot of your offense of security too. So you might need to break into a server room to be able to perform your function.

Brian Lohr: Absolutely. Moving from lock picking, what did you guys get into next?

Steven Maske: The next one we can’t talk about. That was the one that they said was a no go. Anybody who’s done Trek might be able to guess what it was, but —

Brian Lohr: There you have it. If you want to know what this module is, you have to sign up for Constellation 24 when it comes back probably in 2018. So going from the module we can’t talk about, what was after that?

Steven Maske: I think the last one was more like disaster recovery prep. What would you do in a — This one was more just educational. There wasn’t anything to practice with this one. It was what you do. Actually, maybe this is earlier on than — I might be getting the order out of line, but there was a lot of what would you do in a hurricane situation. What do you pack? What do you have on hand? What do you do if you stay? What do you need to do if you go, if you decide to evacuate?

Brian Lohr: That’s awesome. That is very cool. It’s fine if you get them out of order, because the only people who own that were people who were there. So don’t worry about it.

Steven Maske: Great.

Brian Lohr: Moving form that, was there another module after that one?

Steven Maske: There had to have been. I want to say there were two more, but I’m kind of blanking. We had a training on different type of formations on movement, and those were more — Didn’t really apply to the class, but if we were in a situation where we had people that we were protecting and we have the team more armed, what types of formations we have best to protect the ace in our person and what type of movement would be best to protect the group as a whole.

Brian Lohr: That’s interesting. Those would be super interesting lessons. Have we made it through all of the modules?

Steven Maske: I think so. I may have missed one or two here or there, but I think that was the majority of them.

Brian Lohr: Awesome. That was the first half of Constellation 24, was just a ton of training it sounds like. What did they do after that? Did they group you altogether to start the second half?

Steven Maske: The second half, they had us go to another location and then they had all of us. It was around 8:00. We were told at that point we would not have access to our vehicles for any reason. Some people would ran out for snacks and that sort of thing, and drop off things as we were done using them.

Once we went to the second location, we were all piled in the back of a white panel van. I think there were 96 of us. They just drove us somewhere. They just dropped us off somewhere in Virginia.

Brian Lohr: That’s wild. I guess two factors. I didn’t realize there were 96 people who signed up for Constellation 24.

Steven Maske: Yup.

Brian Lohr: That seems like a solid turnout for a capstone style event like that.

Steven Maske: Yeah. I was surprised with that too, especially how many people flew.

Brian Lohr: Yeah. I was just about to ask. Did a lot of people fly in for it?

Steven Maske: Yeah. It seemed that about — My team didn’t have so many people, but I would guess at least a third of people flew in for this.

Brian Lohr: Very cool. That is awesome. They shove you on to a giant fan, drive you out — Was it the middle of nowhere or was it a small town? What did you see when they dropped you off?

Steven Maske: We were next to a field off of just some road and all the team leads had maps and we each had a different mission, each team, and then we were told to accomplish our mission and effectively we were told that imagine that you’re in Puerto Rico that’s everything that’s going on there with lack of energy, lack of necessary medical supplies in some cases. Just before we got in the van, they also took all of our nutrition. So any CLIF bar and gels and jerkies. They took all those from us saying that we’d have to earn them back later.

Brian Lohr: It sounds like a Heavy.

Steven Maske: I haven’t had the pleasure yet.

Brian Lohr: That’s wild. So hopefully everyone eat something before they got in that van, because all the food was taken when you were dropped off. The mission you’re given, everyone had a different mission it sounded like. Did they all playoff of a skill you had learned in the previous 12 hours?

Steven Maske: Yeah. We had to use all those skills in different ways throughout the night.

Brian Lohr: Very cool. Your first mission, I don’t know if you can get in detail on it, but how long did it last at least?

Steven Maske: All the missions lasted anywhere from — We were told that my team did very, very well on all the time hacks. We got to a lot of places a lot faster. We actually surprised a couple of cadre because they weren’t expecting us, because we got there, the movements were faster than expected. Once you got there — Between rucking and the mission itself, they lasted anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour.

Brian Lohr: Nice. A decent chunk of time then.

Steven Maske: Yeah.

Brian Lohr: Were there any teams that were unreasonably late?

Steven Maske: I heard there was one that struggled with getting places and the cadre weren’t aware of their location at one point.

Brian Lohr: That can always be tricky in an event like that. At least with Constellation 12, you have the home-base and everyone who went out and then came back to that, but it sounds like here you’re just dropped off and you’re probably making your way back to where you started or back to a certain location instead of just heading back to your drop off point.

Steven Maske: Yeah. We had a map and we ended up in the original location before they picked us up.

Brian Lohr: Very nice. Which are the missions would you say resonated with you the most or was one of your favorite things?

Steven Maske: Most memorable one was where we’re told that we were supposed to meet some people in a cemetery and that there had been an event where they were casualties or injuries and they played it up rather well. They have people there who were essentially acting roles. Once we arrived, there were two people who were on the ground. They had very convincing looking fake wounds that we had to treat and address. One of the cadre kept spraying fake blood everywhere, and I didn’t realize it at first, because it was really dark at that point and there’s no lighting in the cemetery, so we’ve got our red lids and I didn’t realize until after we got the street lights. From the knees down, I was covered in fake blood. I was curious if we were going to blow up any law enforcement or just people out in the street and wondering what was going on.

Brian Lohr: Yeah, that might attack a little bit of attention.

Steven Maske: Yeah.

Brian Lohr: That is awesome though. Very cool. Were all the groups together in the cemetery for that or was it similar to the first 12 where the groups kind of rolled through one after the other?

Steven Maske: Yeah. We rotated different missions. Just as we were leaving that particular one, one of the few times that we saw another team was just as were leaving that when we saw them coming up behind us to do the same thing. I think that one took a little bit longer than most of the others, at least for us for some reason. Because the two people we had to treat, and then they also had just some more or less quartered there for us to actually stitch up as well, and we had to improvise a gurney.

Brian Lohr: That’s wild. One of the things that was interesting with the Constellation 12 events, I think they started to add into later numbers, teams were hunting teams. So it sounds like there wasn’t too much of that in the Constellation 24 event. It was more about survival.

Steven Maske: Yup. Yeah, at no point did we hunt any other teams. We did have to survey some additional cadre later on. At one point we were set up to do a mission that ended up being something without giving too much away. We were told to go something, and the situation was not what we were told it was where it had been with every other mission, and we ended up getting captured by a cadre and handcuffed.

Brian Lohr: That’s wild.

Steven Maske: Yeah.

Brian Lohr: At our Constellation 12 event, it was one of the last missions, but the cadre were rolling around in their car capturing anyone they can find. That’s interesting that they kind of expanded on that with 24.

Steven Maske: Yeah.

Brian Lohr: Very cool. At what point did the repelling come in?

Steven Maske: That was about three-quarters away through the night, maybe closer towards the end. I don’t remember what the particular scenario was. You know what? There was a mob coming to clash with police, I think, and we were stuck in a building and we had to go through the third floor of this garage and the only way out was to repel down the building.

Brian Lohr: That’s awesome.

Steven Maske: They had a cadre there to hook us up and do everything right. They’d literally just — They anchored us to a vehicle and we just went over the side one at a time.

Brian Lohr: That’s wild. This is, you said about, two-third, three-quarters of the way through the event portion, so that’s probably nearing the end of it. Everyone’s probably pretty tired. How did you feel during that?

Steven Maske: I think we’re all amped up, because we were constantly moving. Everything we were doing required a degree of attention. We had earned our food back at that point, but halfway through we had the mission, we had to go pick up some supplies and we went to pick up the supplies, they turned out to be in a locked box that we had to pick, and when you pick the lock and open it up, the supplies was actually our food.

Brian Lohr: That is really cool. A great way to get you to use those learned lock picking skills.

Steven Maske: Yeah. It was a lot of fun.

Brian Lohr: Were there any other — Without giving too much away on Constellation 24, were there any other memorable events or missions that you took part in?

Steven Maske: Oh, let’s see. There was one point where we had to use what we learned about the car. They moved the same car and actually put it on the street. This was one of the places where there was one possible physical piece of it. We had to pick the lock on the car, start the car and siphon gas out of it without being seen by any other vehicle on the street. We had a station lookout and they had red lights that they would flash at us, and if they flash the lights, we had to cover and not be seen by the vehicle. If we were seen the vehicle, we’d have to hold the rucks above our head for a minute and every time we were seen, it was an additional minute. First time is one minute. Second time is two minutes. Third time is three minutes.

Brian Lohr: Ouch! Maintaining an overhead press for minutes is a — That’s not fun.

Steven Maske: We didn’t have a problem with that, because we had looked outs and you just pay attention to your lookouts while you’re working. We were able to do that without any issues.

Brian Lohr: Do you know if there are any other teams that got caught in that?

Steven Maske: I don’t know. I didn’t hear if anybody did or not.

Brian Lohr: You probably would have heard if there was some team that was doing five minutes of overhead presses after doing four and three and two and one.

Steven Maske: Probably.

Brian Lohr: That’s one of the stories that usually makes it out.

Steven Maske: Yup.

Brian Lohr: That’s wild. Everyone their different missions and they all go and do them, and so you kind of rotate missions like you’re rotating learning experiences at the beginning in the classroom. When everyone finished their missions, was there kind of a culminating exercise at the end that everyone did together or did it just kind of turned into the patch ceremony?

Steven Maske: At the very end, we had a meet up, which is outside that initial library that we talked about. We met there once. Everybody was there. We thought we’re pretty much done. They told us we were going to hop back in the van and we thought at that point they were taking us back to our vehicles and we’re going to do the patch ceremony there. Instead, they took us to a paintball field.

Brian Lohr: That’s a surprise, I’m guessing.

Steven Maske: Yeah. I was not expecting that, because at that point were like half an hour — We’re about 24-1/2 hours, so we figured we’re pretty much done, but we get to this paintball field which I think it felt like a long drive. I didn’t have my watch on, so I felt like it was at least half an hour in the back of that vehicle, 24 people who had been doing things for 24 hours.

Brian Lohr: Yeah. It’s probably not the best smelling environment.

Steven Maske: Yeah. Honestly, that was the hardest part of the night for me. It was more the motion sickness of moving and bumping, because nobody is sitting. Everybody was standing too. Of course, the cadre being cadre would occasionally break hard or make a hard right or hard left and bounce us around a little bit just for fun. I think that was honestly the hardest piece of the entire night was being a little woozy getting out of that.

Brian Lohr: Oh, wow!

Steven Maske: At the field itself, we practiced a little bit of what everybody else had learned. We had somebody actually in the paintball field who was injured and it was the responsibility of the team to get in there, get the person and get them out while cadre are hunting you.

Brian Lohr: Yeah, I was going to say. So you’re at a paintball field, so I’m guessing the cadre have paintball guns.

Steven Maske: Yes. Everybody had, I think, 200, 250 rounds both cadre and participants.

Brian Lohr: At least you guys had something too. If I were Rooney, I probably would have just given you guys the pistols and give the cadre the actual guns.

Steven Maske: Yeah, and that’s where the formation piece of the training came in.

Brian Lohr: Very cool. What a fun way to practice that final piece there with the formation and the moving as a group. So from the paintball field, did all the teams have to individually go in one at a time and rescue the person?

Steven Maske: They more or less all went in roughly the same time and got different people out.

Brian Lohr: Okay. There are a number of people in there and then?

Steven Maske: Yeah. That whole mission piece beginning to end was about an hour. There was a little bit of the admin there, because everybody had to sign a form. It’s just your basic paintball waiver that you release the paintball place of any liability. There was a little briefing on the equipment.

Brian Lohr: Yeah. You probably signed a worse waiver getting into this event.

Steven Maske: Yeah, right. At one point the cadre were talking about us using our masks that we had made in there, but that didn’t fly with the owner.

Brian Lohr: Yeah. He’s probably a little if-y on the situation already. So homemade masks probably wouldn’t made him very happy.

Steven Maske: He seems like a good guy, I have to understand, he’s got insurance too.

Brian Lohr: Yup. He’ll have to explain that to someone why he let people with homemade masks play on his field. That’s quite the way to end the event. It’s probably a shock with the false finish kind of like when you’re 12 hours into a GORUCK Tough event or something and you run past the start point and you’re like, “But isn’t that it right there?”

Steven Maske: Yup.

Brian Lohr: But that sounds like a really fun time.

Steven Maske: Yeah. I really enjoyed it. I had enjoyed 24 more than I enjoyed 12.

Brian Lohr: It’s good to know, because it sounds like you enjoyed 12 quite a bit.

Steven Maske: Yeah.

Brian Lohr: Would you sign up for another Constellation 24 event or is it one of those events where you do it once and then you’re pretty good?

Steven Maske: I guess it depends on how much they plan on changing it from year-to-year. It’s not like a Tough where you get different cadre who do different welcome parties, you take different routes in different cities. If they plan on teaching the same thing every year, then I don’t know. The missions I imagine could change, but a lot of the skills wouldn’t, so I don’t know if I would need the first 12 hours of the 24. I did overhear that there might be a — There might be something else to follow at 24 later on. I don’t think I was supposed to hear that, but I overheard a couple of cadre talking about another event that might be along the same veins of this. We’ll see if that materializes or not.

Brian Lohr: Maybe bring Trek back.

Steven Maske: It could be a Constellation 48.

Brian Lohr: Yeah. I mean that that second half might turn into what part of Trek was like. That could be really interesting.

Steven Maske: Yeah, or they could just bring back Trek. I’d be happy with that.

Brian Lohr: Yup. I think a lot of people would be. It was one of those events that fizzled out pretty quickly. There are less than 10 of them as far as I know. It’d be nice to bring that back. Is there anything else about Constellation 24 that you want to talk or mention that anything that we might have skipped over?

Steven Maske: You know what? I think that’s about it. There a couple of more missions in there we got to practice, but it more or less mirrored the lessons we learned along the way.

Brian Lohr: Very nice. Was everyone pretty excited at the patch ceremony at the end? It sounded like it was quite the event in terms of length.

Steven Maske: Yeah. It was a lot of fun. I think having a paintball shot at you wakes you up even if you are a little tired.

Brian Lohr: Yeah. It probably helped for your drive home, right?

Steven Maske: Five-hour energy was plenty to get me going.

Brian Lohr: Very nice. Was that a 10-hour drive back as well?

Steven Maske: Yeah. Both times Google said it was going to be eight, so that’s why I did it and be, “Hey, no problem at eight hours. I can do that.” Yeah, each time, it ended up being 10 instead. Yeah, what are you going to do?

Brian Lohr: Yeah. That’s traffic. Overall, was it all worth it?

Steven Maske: Yeah. I would definitely do it again. Well, I’m definitely glad I’m signed up. If they do change it from year to year, I’ll definitely signup for another one.

Brian Lohr: Awesome. You could definitely make the same decision to go for the first time.

Steven Maske: Yeah, definitely.

Brian Lohr: Very cool. Man! It sounds like such an awesome event. That’s how I felt when Constellation 12 ended. I was like, “Oh! This was really cool, but I want to keep doing the real-world scenario. It sounds like they really step the game up with Constellation 24. That’s also nice to hear them talk about possibly expanding it with a Constellation, who knows, 36 or 48, because if they’re thinking forward, that means at the very least, they’re probably be keeping Constellation 24 around for people like myself who weren’t able to make it out.

Steven Maske: Yeah. It’s a good point.

Brian Lohr: I know they haven’t added it to the calendar for 2018 yet, but here’s to hoping there’s another Constellation 24 or 2.

Steven Maske: There was not a lot of the special events. I don’t see any beached or accent or navigator is really on there either.

Brian Lohr: Yeah. I think they’re still getting around to them. They just added an accent on August 23rd, I think. They’re coming out with them, but I think they’re still trying to finalize cadre schedules.

Steven Maske: Sure. That make sense.

Brian Lohr: Or at least it’s what I’m telling myself, because I want there to more of those events.

Steven Maske: Yeah. Definitely. If they do a navigator, like the Adirondack Mountains, I’ll definitely be doing that next year.

Brian Lohr: That would be great. I would love to get out to a navigator. That’s the thing with these capstone GORUCK events now, is that there’s so many different styles of them. It would make sense that you’d want to explore one of those instead of doing Constellation 24 again.

Steven Maske: Yeah.

Brian Lohr: Very cool. Before we get going, are there any shout outs you want to give or is there anything else you want to talk about?

Steven Maske: I had a great team. Team Orange, Team Hue was just amazing. Everybody on my team was awesome. We all worked really well together. We got props from the cadres along the way on how well we were doing specifically, which was really nice to hear, because we had no idea how everybody else was doing. Awesome team all around. The cadre were great. They had just amazing information to impart to us. It wasn’t a beat down like a regular Light or a Tough, but they had just a lot of great information to give us and it was really, really cool.

Special thanks to my wife for putting up with me with this weird strange hobby and just for being awesome all around in general.

Brian Lohr: That’s great. That’s awesome. I guess just to finalize, for someone who completed Constellation 12 and is worried that Constellation 24 might have like too bit of a beat down or too much more endurance required of them, would you say that in terms of physical exertion and activity, was it along the same lines as Constellation 12?

Steven Maske: Yeah. If you can stay up for 24 hours and, in that time, walk 10 to 15 miles, I think — We had a couple with GPS running and it was somewhere around 12 miles total for the entire 24 hours. It’s not hard at all. The ruck is lighter than — Your hydration bladder is your heaviest thing. If you can walk, you can do this.

Brian Lohr: There you have it. You don’t even need to carry your own food, right? Because they take it from you.

Steven Maske: Well, yeah. We didn’t have our food for half of it.

Brian Lohr: So the ruck is even lighter. So if you’re worried about the weight of your ruck, don’t worry, you won’t have to carry your own food, because you won’t get it.

Awesome, Stephen. Thank you so much for taking an hour out of your day to talk to me about this. I was really excited to hear that you’re able to make it out to Constellation 24 and I’m just so glad we’re able to touch base and talk about it because it seemed it was truly an amazing event. I was definitely jealous on November — I think it was 5th when all the Instagram and Twitter pictures started coming through showing the Red Constellation patch, because I knew the event was over. So very cool. Thank you so much. I truly appreciate this.

Steven Maske: It was my pleasure.

The post ADR 025: Steven Maske AAR (GORUCK Constellation 24) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

Margaret Blankenbaker is the founder of Sew Strong, a GRT run sewing company which produces some very unique products. In this podcast we interview her and learn how she found GORUCK, what her first event was like, and where Sew Strong came from.

Margaret is one of the nicest people we’ve ever met and we were so excited to get this scheduled. We can’t think of a better company to round out the month of November than Sew Strong.

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 Margaret, who is the founder of Sew Strong. Margaret is a fellow GRT and makes the incredibly popular patch tags and stash tags they’ve probably seen in the Tough group. How are you doing today, Margaret?

Margaret: I’m doing great, fine. Thank you so much for having me on. I love listening to your podcast, and so it’s a great honor to get beyond here and talk to you in person.

Brian: I’m so excited to have you on here. As you know as well, we have a lot of friends in common and everyone just has amazing things to say about you, so I’m incredibly excited that we’re able to talk and finally connect. Thank you for being on.

Margaret: Thank you for having me.

Brian: Before we get into Sew Strong, I want to talk a little bit about your involvement in GORUCK and the GORUCK Community. How did you stumble upon GORUCK?

Margaret: It’s kind of a funny story. In 2015, I had done my first 5k. My mother-in-law actually gave me a challenge, she was going to do the 5k and she said, “Do you want to go with me?” I said, “Sure.” I did. I trained for it and I did the 5k and I loved it and it was such an incredible experience to train for something and then do something physically hard.

Right around that time, I’ve always had a love for backpack. I love sewing them, I love buying them, and I was Googling slick black backpacks, and of course the GR1 came up because it’s very slick and very black and I thought, “This is the coolest backpack I had ever seen.” The pocket design and structure, I had never seen a backpack dealt like that before and it was so practical with really great materials and I fell in love with the backpack first.

Then after doing the 5k I had been looking for another event to do, and then after I found the backpack I found GORUCK have events as well, and so I kind of fell in love all at once with the whole world of the excellent peer that they have, but then also these really neat events that they did.

Brian: That’s awesome. That is really cool. You’ve found GORUCK through the backpacks and then you found the events. Did you sign up for an event right away?

Margaret: I did. When I was at the 5k, I was really blown away by how these different people from difference backgrounds would come together and do this hard physical — To me, was a hard physical thing, and the end they give you free bananas and free granola bars and get a t-shirt. It was like the coolest event. I couldn’t believe this even existed.

I have always loved watching Special Forces documentaries and special Operations documentaries. When I found the backpack and then I found these events and I thought, “Oh my goodness! This is going to be people coming together that have never met and they’re going to do this hard physical thing and you get to spend several hours with an American hero. This is awesome. I was so pumped about this event.

My first event I signed up for was a Light and they said, “If you can do the 5k, you can do a Light.” I signed up and I joined a gym for the first time and I started rucking and I just took like a $15 backpack from Walmart and filled it up with my husband’s barbell weight and started rucking everywhere Louisville I could go and started training for the event. It took about six months of training that I did. Yeah, the first event was the Light in October of 2015 with Cadre David.

Brian: That’s awesome. That is really, really cool. You trained for months up to the event. Your first event was a Light. Leading into that first event, did you get nervous at all or you’re just super pumped because it sounds like you’re amazingly excited about it?

Margaret: I was really, really excited. I get like uber-duber excited, like almost to an annoying degree before an event. I come in just like so excited, but I was nervous. I tried to read every book I could find on Amazon or on Reddit or wherever people were recommending on mental toughness. I may not be physically strongest at the event, but I know I need to learn how to not quit. That’s the beauty of training for a GORUCK event, that there’s the physical training, but then there’s the mental toughness training. I just did a lot of visualization, and while I was rucking I would be thinking about how do you not quit and how do you something harder physically than what you did yesterday and you do that today to push yourself even further.

The more I read and researched, the more I kind of started to realize that these amazing, not only Special Forces soldiers or Special Operations soldiers or elite soldiers or Navy SEALs, one of the things that was a common thread in these books on mental toughness that I red was visualizing the end game or the end goal. I would visualize the end of the Light and I knew if I had a gift to give the cadre at the end, I would be able to finish the event. Found a sewer, so I quilted a gun clinging mat. It’s like a regular quilt of honor, but it was like a mini one, and I wanted to thank him for his service. This was I had something to give at the end of the event. I know I had to finish so I could give him this gift and thank him for serving our country. That training really helped me lead up to the event and give me courage to — It’s not only to show up, but to do it and join the team and be a part of the team.

Brian: That’s awesome. That’s both a really nice thing to do and it’s just such a smart idea to have some — Because you spent so much time making it and if you had quit you wouldn’t have been able to present it. It’s a good way to buy-in.

Margaret: Yes, exactly.

Brian: You completed the Light, I take it, and presented the quilt to the cadre. Did you have a good time at the Light?

Margaret: Oh my goodness! It was so amazing. It was such a blast. It was all the fun I had had at a 5k but on the steroids. The first — I’m so glad I have done this mental toughness training and thinking through and just deciding, “I’m not going to quit,” because within the first 10 minutes my body was physically ready. It was so much harder than what I had thought of and what I had expected.

Cadre David is such an excellent human, but as a cadre, he is so intense and kind of scary. His theme was to do zoo animals, and so we were doing, as you can imagine, bear crawls and crab walks and we had to pretend to be snakes and put our rucks on our backs and slither through the grass. The first 10 minutes was just so intense and it felt like an hour, but it was amazing. Even in the middle of the physical difficulty of doing it and feeling like, “I don’t think I can breathe anymore. I don’t know if I can take another step.”

Our team came together, and there are several GRTs that had done many events that were there that just kind of showed us what to do and how to come together, and that’s what I love about GORUCK events, is you can take a group of people that have never met or that comes from very different beliefs or walks of life and backgrounds; military or civilian, and through adversity and carrying really heavy things and doing really hard things while you’re chaffing, you bond with these other people and you form a team and there’s something really special about that that I think GORUCK is kind of dialed into. That’s what the cadre did so well at each of the events. Yes, it was a total blast and I loved it so much.

Brian: That’s awesome, and it’s so true. It’s one of the reasons why I keep coming back time and time again to events is it’s just amazing to me all the new people there who are willing to sign up for something like this. It’s an amazing community.

Margaret: Yes.

[0:10:15.5] Brian: You completed the GORUCK Light. Did you want to sign up for another event right away or were you pretty burnt out from all the physical aspects of that?

[0:10:25.7] Margaret: You know what? If there has been another event that night, I rather would have been at that night. I was so excited and fell in love with this whole new community and the concept of pushing yourself beyond what you could do physically. Even within that 10 minutes when I felt like I couldn’t physically go on, I was like, “I’m going to do this the rest of my life. These are the coolest events I’ve ever been a part of.” I was ready to sign up for another one.

Brian: Oh my gosh! I love it. I love it. You have signed up for another event after that one?

Margaret: I did. Yes. I did my Christmas present. I got so excited about the event. I told everybody about the events. My husband laughed because he said — I told people about GORUCK, about as much as I told them about Visa. He said I was like evangelizing for GORUCK, “Oh! You guys need to try this event, and this is so cool.”

For Christmas, he gave me the gift of a Tough the next April, which was so special to get to do with my husband and for us to train together and to ruck together and do the event, complete the event together. Cadre Aaron was our cadre, and he was amazing, incredibly learned so many lessons. I love that each event that you go to, even if you do multiple events with the same cadre, but each event and each cadre give you such a different set of lessons and perspectives and you come away growing in a whole new area you didn’t even know existed. Like with Cadre David, his big lessons were perception, action and will. With Cadre Aaron, John and I were at a whole new other set of lessons of appreciating the sacrifice of soldiers that lay down their lives and learning how to truly honor them and how to push past what you literally think you can’t go on, you can go two more lies carrying someone on your back. That was our next event.

Then the other event that I had done was last October, the Buffalo Trace event here in Louisville, and I’ve suckered my best friend into signing up for the event and we did it and we had Cadre Jeffrey and Cadre Danny Stokes were the cadre there, and that one was really a fun event too.

Brian: That’s awesome. I love how you can sign up for the same event, another GORUCK Tough, but just based on the cadre that shows up, it can be an entirely different event. I think that’s one of the amazing things that keep people coming back again and again.

Margaret: Yeah, absolutely.

Brian: Your husband bought you a GORUCK Tough entry for Christmas. That’s correct?

Margaret: Yes.

Brian: That’s amazing. He did that event with you.

Margaret: Yes, he did.

Brian: Was that his first event?

Margaret: It was, and we both always spent time watching Special Operations documentaries together and reading biographies together of American heroes. He saw how much fun I had for the event and how much fun I had rucking and I said, “Hey, listen, you’ve got a backpack, let’s just get out and ruck together.”

It really does something for your marriage where you get out and take a walk with yourself and things kind of that maybe are intense at home can kind of dissipate when you’re out and you’ve got weight in your backpack and you’re walking all over our nation and pushing the limits of what you think you can do together.

I think GORUCK is great for marriages. If you have spouse that is willing, go for it, find an event. To me, it was the most romantic gift, because it was something we could do together and that was really precious. On top of that, he got me a GR1, which I mean that was amazing, because I got to have the actual ruck in the event too. It was really special.

Brian: That is awesome. What a wonderful gift. This episode will be airing in November, so people will be looking for gifts for their spouses. As Margaret has said, a GORUCK Tough event is a good gift.

Margaret: Yes, agreed. Agreed.

Brian: That’s amazing. Let’s move in to Sew Strong a little bit if you’re ready. When did you decide to start Sew Strong?

Margaret: We officially started with the name of our company, Sew Strong, in the fall of 2016, a little over a year ago. Yeah, fall of 2016 is when we officially started.

Brian: That’s awesome, and it sounds like you’ve been sewing for a decent amount of time before that.

Margaret: Yes, I’ve been sewing for about six years now. I think it’s six or six and a half years now. I love sewing. It was a hobby I’ve had into kind of later in life. The sweet lady at our church who’s been a mentor for me for many years taught a sewing class and I said, “I’ve never done that before.” My mom was a beautiful seamstress, and her mother was a seamstress, and so I thought, “This would be a great opportunity to try this out,” and I did. I got behind the sewing machine and just — Oh my goodness! It was like two friends meeting for the first time. I loved it. I love taking a pile of fabric, cutting it up into pieces and then making something, especially a gift for someone else that will touch their heart that you took the time to make it. I just thought that was really special, and so I’ve loved sewing now for about six years.

Brian: That’s amazing. What was the first thing that you sewed that you were proud of?

Margaret: The very first thing I made was a Christmas stockings, and I made one for my mom and one for my girls and one for my dog. That was really special to make, because our dog didn’t have a Christmas stocking, and this way he was able to have his own. That was the very first thing that I made.

Brian: That is wonderful. Then I guess following up on that, what is the most interesting or possibly different thing that you’ve sewn?

Margaret: Well, the most different thing, I can’t tell you yet, because it’s one of our new products that’s going to come out in 2018 that is super-duper cool. You’ll have to stay tuned for that. Could I tell you one of my favorite things that I’ve sewn?

Brian: Yes.

Margaret: Okay. One of my favorites was the quilt of honor that I made for one of the cadre last year, and it was so special to make. It was a large American flag and I was able to get the members of — It was for Cadre Aaron. I was able to contact him and get the names of the men on his ODA team in Special Forces and embroider their names along the outside of a flag. One of the members on his team had passed way, been killed in the line of duty. He’d been in Special Forces and then he became a law enforcement officer. It was such an honor to literally lift my machine, sew their names into the fabric and pray for them and pray for their families. You can do research on their names and find out who they were and the lives that they — The one soldier that passed away, the life that he lived and the legacy he left behind and literally stitching every 50 star on there. It was just an incredible experience and such an honor to spend that much time with Old Glory and red, white and blue fabric everywhere. I just have the national anthem on repeat and every version you kind of ever imagine while I was sewing it and it was such a patriotic experience. Then it’s really neat, the Cleveland area rucking crew. Do you know Brian Singland out in Cleveland?

Brian: He and Molon Labe CrossFit out there, they were amazing, and I was able to mail the quilt to them and they were able to present it to Cadre Aaron for me, and that was last year that we did that. That was my most favorite thing that I got to sew.

Margaret: That’s incredible. What a story. That’s amazing. I can definitely see why that’s the favorite thing you’ve made. Moving into Sew Strong, what was the first product that you made?

Brian: The first product we made was kind of even before Sew Strong was even formed. After the first Light I did, I was so pumped about this patch. The patch, even though it was just a piece of fabric with some Velcro on it, it represented so much to me. The memory of the event, the training that went into the event and the cadre, Cadre David, and all the lessons that he taught and all these new friends that I got to meet and several of them I’m still friends of today.

This patch I loved so much, and I didn’t have a GORUCK bag at the time, and so I wanted a way to carry this patch around with me and just show it to everybody I could show it too. I went to Home Depot and got some Velcro and I was like, “I’m going to make myself a key fob out of Velcro so I can carry this thing around. I did and I got a grommet set and put a grommet in it and that’s what the original patch tag was, where it came from.

We started with the patch tags and if I used it, I thought, “Oh! This would be a great gift for someone.” When I do events, especially if it’s a smaller event, I like to buy gifts for all the participants or make gifts. So the first event, I made bookmarks for everyone. For the Tough, I wanted to make these what they didn’t know would be a patch tag, but would eventually become a patch tag. I made a whole bunch of them and gave them out at the events. I told three GRT, Tina Streeter. She is an amazing human, one of the strongest one that I know. I had sent her a picture of these and she said, “Oh! Margaret, you need to sell those on Ruck Mall.” I thought, “Oh, no. I just make them for gifts for people.” She really encouraged me to start selling them. I’ve put them on Ruck Mall and I thought, “Oh, probably just of couple of people will buy them.”

They started flying like hot cakes, and I found myself all of a sudden sewing every free minute I got and we were able to get — I’d set up vise a in my garage so I grind the grommets in and not hammer them all in by hand, but to grind them in with a vise.

That’s where our first product came from, was the patch tag, and we have the patch tag before we even had Sew Strong.

Margaret: That’s awesome. Did the first patch tag, that kind of give you the idea then to start Sew Strong? It did. Once we started selling them a lot on Ruck Mall, I kind of started thinking, “You know what? This could be really neat to have a small business.” I’ve been looking for something to do kind of on the side to just have a well-supplemental income, just something on the side, a hobby that I love, and it kind of fell into place with the patch tag selling them and so many people wanting them all over the country and I thought, “Well, maybe we can start a business. I’ve never done that before.”

So I went to the library and got books on how to start a business and watched a lot of YouTube videos and that’s where we started the actual business. The name comes from — Sew Strong comes from a bible verse in Proverbs where it talks about, describing a woman and what a strong woman looks like. It’s Proverbs chapter 31, and it says, “She makes her arms strong for her tasks.” I really think that that’s a picture of womanhood, and especially motherhood as well, that often times we aren’t naturally strong enough for what we need to do, but we have to make ourselves strong. For me, a lot of my strength comes from God and from my faith, but also from doing really hard, physical things and having wonderful people around me that push me to do strong things. Since I love to sew, Sew Strong was born, and that’s where the name came from.

Brian: I love it. That’s just such a wonderful history behind the name. That is really cool.

Margaret: Thank you.

Brian: It sounds like the reception to your initial product was pretty awesome from the community.

Margaret: Oh, yes. If you were to pick a customer-base, I’m so thankful to Jason McCarthy for starting GORUCK for so many reasons, but also because he has kind of made this catalyst of a way that all these amazing people, GRTs, can come together and interact with each other. They’re the best customers ever. They’re very straight-shooting. They’ll tell you what they like, what they don’t like and they’re, for the most part that I’ve met, almost all of them have been very honest and very encouraging and very supportive. Not only do they buy your products, but then they go tell three other people, “Hey, you need to go buy this.” It’s a great community of people that love to work hard and do hard things and just will literally give you the shirt off their back to help you. I couldn’t be more thrilled to have the best customers in the world, is the majority of the people who buy them. They were very supportive in the beginning.

Brian: That is awesome. I’d have to agree. The GRT community is the best community. It might be because I’m part of it and you’re part of it, but —

Margaret: I’ll take it.

Brian: Yeah, it’s just been so wonderful talking with all these different GRT on the podcast and just interacting on Facebook, Twitter, just everywhere. It’s really hard to find a GRT that’s a bad person. It’s been great.

Margaret: I agree. Brian, I will say that you have been a huge part of making this community really special just with not only with All Day Ruckoff. The neat thing is you have the aspect of the AARs, after action reviews, and so many people that are new to this community are new to special events or specific events. They can go on and read, “Okay. Here’s what it was like. Here’s what happened and here is how someone train for it.” You have training programs and right gear that go with your ruck. Now that you have this amazing ruck, you can get cool gear to go with it. I think you’ve really started something special that not only brings the community together, but the cool thing is now with the podcast, and that’s why I’m such a geek about your podcast. I love listening whenever they come out. It’s so neat to get to go inside the organization, inside of headquarters, who’s there, what they like, and then they get to hear the description of different events that I have never done before that I would never think to do, but after the podcast I think, “Oh! I did sign up. That’s awesome.”

Brian: Thank you. I’m smiling so much right now. Thank you so much for that. It’s been just an absolute blast starting the podcast and talking to all these people that generally wouldn’t have a reason to call them and talk to them. it’s been really fun. I’m so glad that you’re enjoying it. That makes me really happy.

You started out with the patch tag and that did awesome. Your next product was the stash tag.

Margaret: Yes. This one has a really cool story too. After we did the patch tags and they were selling well, Cadre Aaron had actually contacted me and said, “Hey, I would love for a way to carry my patches but also have a conceal pocket, put cash or a key or just a small compartment. Could you design one for me?” I was like, “Absolutely. Anything for you.”

We worked together to kind of design a little prototype of a pocket inside of a stash tag that’s closed with a hook and lid closure and it’s just the right size for cash or a key or bobby pins. I personally keep my store cards, like your gas cars and your grocery cards. I keep mine in there.

Anyway, when he first came with this idea, I was like, “Oh, great. Sure. I’m make you a couple.” I made him some, mail them off. Didn’t really think much more about it. A couple of months later, Logan from Rogue Dynamics contacted me and said, “Hey, these would be really great with a pocket.” I said, “Well, funny you mentioned that. We’ve got — Check out this design.”

We started contacted back and forth and he wanted to get his logo, which is so cool. Rogue Dynamics has an awesome logo with the socks. He said, “Well, I’ll order some from you if you can embroider my logo on them. I was like, “Okay.”

He doesn’t know this, so I guess after he listens to the podcast, he will. I have never embroidered anything in my life and I thought, ‘Well, I really want him to buy these tags.” I just went around every shop in Louisville I could find that had embroider machines and said, “Will this machine sew on Velcro? Will this machine sew on Velcro?” Finally, I found a shop that had a machine that would work and I got on YouTue and learned real quick on how to embroider and started embroidering stash tags, what would become the stash tags. We got the Rogue Dynamics logo on them.

Then another company that Logan connected me with, a guy named Mike and he has grayman industry and he’s got a really cool thing going on. His goal is to really push — Kind of there’s a stigma and a stereotype around the term gray man and what people think that means. He has a passion to really help people understand to be aware of their surroundings and be open to helping other people and being hyper aware of what’s around you so you can help people and prevent bad things from happening but also protecting your family.

Anyway, I got connected with him and got his — He has a really cool logo. You got his logo on some stash tags, and through Logan, that really was a catalyst to really take Sew Strong in a different way. It’s like I really want this to become a full-time business for us where we grow and we make custom Velcro products for people. That’s where the stash tag came from and now we have them. We just put them up in our shop for sale, the plain one, last week.

Brian: That’s awesome. Logan is an amazing guy. I have talked to him for years and finally was able to connect with him the beginning of this year down in Vegas at Shot Show and it was great to meet him in person. He is so awesome. If he’s listening, thank you Logan for all that you do for everything with Rogue Dynamics and for helping out Sew Strong.

Margaret: Absolutely. Yes a big shout out and thank you to Logan. What he did? He just kind of — This is what I found with a lot of GRTs and this is why I love having a small business and working with other GRT small businesses, is that they will just take you under their wing and say, “Here’s what I’ve learned. Here’s what I recommend.”

A lot of the business world is cutthroat and very — You kind of have to watch your back. I think you should always be aware, but Logan just absolutely was such a help in every way in every step of this process, and that he said, “Anything I can do to help you, just let me know.” He’s very humble. Yes. He and his wife are great. They’re a great couple and do a great job with Rogue Dynamics.

Brian: That’s awesome. That’s definitely something I really like about this community is I feel like you can be really open what you’re planning on doing and people aren’t going to try and steal your stuff. That’s great.

Margaret: Yes.

Brian: I noticed that you’re now selling, in addition to the patch tag and the stash tag, you’re selling Honor Guard patches on your website. Is Honor Guard an important program to you?

Margaret: Yes, so very much. I get so excited talking about this. I’ve realized last year when we first launched, so many people came to me and said, “Hey, do you sell patches, or can you connect me with someone that sells patches?”

I knew that when we were going to re-launch our website, I wanted to have some kind of patch tag for sale that people could buy a patch tag or a stash tag and have some patches to go with it. I didn’t want just any old patch. I really wanted something that would be meaningful to people and that would help promote gratitude. I have been looking for a patch that said thank you for long time. I would see a couple come up on Ruck Small. I said, “Oh, that’s great,” and I’d buy some and I’d give them out to people.

Then Kevin Maestri from Knotted Cord, he actually connected me with Chris from Honor Guard and said, “Hey, there’s this guy doing these really cool thank you patches. You need to check them out.” I checked out the patch, I ordered one, and they were so well-made. The embroidery is beautiful. It’s really quality work, teal tight embroidery. I love it. It was good quality. It came with a thank you card and it just came really well-packaged, and Chris has done a very good job of just making it to be really special that you’re proud of to get out to people.

The minute I found these patches, I thought, “This is what I’ve been looking for.” I got in touch with Chris and said, “Hey, do you think we could sell this on our website? I love to help promote gratitude.” I think our communities, we have so much freedom in this country. I know there’s a lot of heat a lot of terrible things going on, but at the end of the day, if you compare America to so many other countries in the world, we have it so amazingly good here. That’s thanks to our soldiers and our first responders and our law enforcement officers and firemen, so many people that put their lives on the line everyday so that we can do these great things, like pursuing Sew Strong, and living with freedom.

I really want to thank them as much as we can in every opportunity. Sometimes I always found when I would say thank you for your service to someone, I really wanted to give them something to take with them so that they could be reminded later on not just that someone said thank you, but that someone really cared and that they are appreciated. When they have dark and hard days, they can pull that patch out and say, “Oh, yeah. Someone does care.”

This was such a great fit. Great partnership to team with Honor Guard and really help them promote what they’re doing of thanking law enforcement officers and fire fighters and military personnel. There’s so many other people in the community, and Chris — Actually, Honor Guard, they have many other patches and the three that we have on our website. You’ll have to go to Honor Guard’s Facebook page and check out what they have going on. Yes, I was so excited to be able to be able to offer those on our website.

Brian: That’s amazing. For those who are listening and don’t know about Honor Guard, do you want to explain what the patches look like and what you’re supposed to do with them?

Margaret: Yes. The thank you patches, they’re all the thin like. If you think of the thin blue line for law enforcement officers, it’s a black patch with a thin blue line on it and it’s just simply says in white embroidery thank you on it. When you order one, it comes with a thank you card that says, “Thank you for your service, your sacrifice and your strength.”

It’s just a really neat way of giving a thank you gift to someone that also it can go on a patch tag or a stash tag that you can give to them and they can then carry it on their keys. Yes. Honor Guard first started by Chris who was a corrections officer in California. He has started — People don’t realize, he had been a firefighter, he had been a first responder, EMS. He’s done the full gamut, and now he’s a correction’s officer. He just found that there’s so many people that just never appreciated. He felt like he wanted to be appreciate in his job, but there’s not a lot of people out there thanking someone. He saw other people in his job that were not being appreciated and he said, “I’m going to change that. I’m going to start thanking people.”

He started designing patches and he actually ended up going across the country, kind of like Jason McCarthy did when he first started GORUCK. Chris went across the country just giving out these thank you patches as many as he could. Now, Honor Guard is an organization that tries to encourage and care for and thank the families of the first responders, the military and law enforcement officers and also thank the actual people as well.

Brian: That’s amazing. It’s such a cool program and it’s such a cool idea. I know at least at some of the events that I’ve been at, some of the GORUCK events, I’ve seen people with the thank you patches handing them out throughout the event. It’s a really awesome idea. If you’re listening and you like the sound of that, you should definitely check out Honor Guard.

Margaret: Absolutely. Two, especially GORUCK events, a lot of times, especially in Tough, the overnight, you’ll run into law enforcement officers or a cadre will connect with local fire departments. It’s a great idea to get a bunch of patches and have them ready. Two, people are always asking, “What are you guys doing? What is GORUCK?” Put a little GORUCK card in there and you can pass out thank you and tell them about GORUCK and just really be out there doing the good work.

Brian: That’s perfect. That is awesome, and that is such a good idea. What’s next in store for Sew Strong?

Margaret: Next, we’re going to be focusing on our products. We have two or three different products that we’re hoping to release and that we’re going to be releasing in 2018. This year, I used to make all of the tags by hand and then doing the grommets myself and hand-sewing everything. Then because of Logan and his awesome support, I ended up sewing so much or sewing about 60 hours a week in addition to — We also homeschool our three girls, and so I’m a homeschool home. Then we’ve got caring for the home and being a wife and everything else and I found that my time was really strapped.

Through some amazing travel squad GRTs, I was able to get connected with a small GRT manufacturer in Seattle of all places. I love Washington. Now, we manufacture all of our tags. Because of that, I’m able to have the time to develop new products on work on the research and development side of things and run the business side of things, and that has freed me up to be able to plan several new products that we have coming out. I’m excited. I think people are going to really like them.

Brian: I’m very excited to see what they are. That is so awesome that you’re able to — You kind of hand that portion of, because 60 hours a week of sewing on top on everything else that you’ve going on; homeschooling and being a mom, there’s no way that you’d be able to continue to innovate Sew Strong and come up with new products. You would have no time to think about it. You’d be spending all of your waking hours sewing.

Margaret: Yes. Yes. I did it for a while. That was hard. Have you heard the phrase when people say I’ll sleep when I’m dead?

Brian: Yes.

Margaret: It was kind of like that for a while, but it’s funny because running a small business, I was talking to someone about this the other day. When you’re an entrepreneur or you have a small business, you work ridiculous hours, but at the same time you’ll love it. You’ll love every minute of it. It was really nice to be able to hand off that big portion of it and I was able to go back to making quilts of honor again and the ton that I do so is sewing new things and new ideas. That’s exciting to get to do.

Brian: That is exciting. That’s awesome. I’m sure you didn’t have nearly as much time for the fun projects, because after spending 60 hours a week sewing the patch tags, you probably didn’t want to spend another 10 hours sewing something else. You’d rather get a few hours of sleep.

Margaret: Yeah. I think my family was kind of glad to have mama back too. We really love homeschooling. It’s been a great fit for our family, and so I think I was a nicer teacher when I didn’t have to sew 60 hours a week anymore too.

Brian: I’m sure. We’ve been spending a lot of time talking the patch tags and the stash tags and those Honor Guard patches. Where can people find all of your products?

Margaret: On our website, our website is wwe.sewstrong.net, and sew is spelled like sewing, S-E-W S-T-R-O-N-G.net, and you can find all the patches there. You can find links to Honor Guard’s website, if you want to go check out what they have going on. Then we have all of our patch tags and stash tags and we even have bundles where you can get all three patches and patch tags to go with them. You can find all that on our website.

Brian: Perfect. For those listening, if you can’t remember sewstrong.net, just check the show notes and I’ll definitely have links in there to everything.

Margaret: Awesome. Thank you.

Brian: Before we go, are there any shout outs you want to give?

Margaret: Yes. I have two. The first one is for the whole GRT community. I wanted to share a tailor to that quote with everyone, because we’re such a great community and we’re a mass of people that like doing hard things. Would you mind if I shared a quick quote?

Brian: Please do.

Margaret: Okay. This is so perfect for GRTs. Petty Roosevelt said, “A soft, easy life is not worth living, if it impairs the fibre of brain and heard and muscle. We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness if the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage. For us, it’s the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.”

Brian: That’s perfect.

Margaret: It’s a great GRT quote.

Brian: Yes.

Margaret: I love it. That’s really helped me in some harder times. I go back to that.

Brian: That is awesome. That is a perfect quote.

Margaret: The second shout out, it’s actually for my husband, John. This summer, my husband joined the Army and he, as of next Wednesday, by the time this airs, he will probably already have graduated. He is graduating from basic training in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. I just want say, babe, I’m so proud of you. I miss you and I can’t wait to see you again, and we love you and we support you and we can’t wait. We can’t wait to reconnect. I know that the GRT community is praying for you and backing you and you have an army behind you and we love you.

Brian: That’s awesome. I’m so excited for you.

Margaret: Thank you so much.

Brian: Of course. Margaret, thank you so much for taking all these time out of your day. I know you’re very busy. You have a lot going on, but it’s just been so fun to finally connect and talk, because I’ve heard just so much about you and I’m glad that we’re finally able to do this. Thank you.

Margaret: Thank you, Brian. Thanks for all you do for the community. You bring people together and you really bring forth the GORUCK — Kind of bring together the headquarters and then the GRTs. I remember when I first find GORUCK just scouring the web and Reddit and every website and reading every article Jason wrote on the GORUCK page. What I love is that the new GRTs coming in can find your podcast and learn so much more than the information that’s readily available because of what you’re doing. Thank you for having me and thank you so much for all you do for the community.

Brian: Thank you. That really means a lot. That means a lot. Take care, Margaret. Thank you again and have just a wonderful rest of your day, and I’m super excited that this coming Wednesday you’ll get to see your husband.

Margaret: Thank you so much.

The post ADR 024: Margaret Blankenbaker Interview (Sew Strong) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

Happy Thanksgiving! In our 23rd episode of the All Day Ruckoff Podcast we have two AARs with Corey Modrowski. He recently took part in a GORUCK Tough Beached and GORUCK Light Beached events over in Traverse City and recounts his experiences with those here. We hope you enjoy this episode and have a wonderful time with your friends and families!

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 talking with Corey Modrowski who is a fellow GRT who was able to take part in two very unique and interesting events. The first was the Traverse City Beached BETA Tough, and the second was the Traverse City Beached BETA Light. I’m really excited to be talking to him today, because these events were definitely unique for multiple reasons and I’m excited to hear what he has to say about them.

So Corey, how are you doing today?

Corey: I’m doing fantastic. Thank you for having me on, Brian.

Brian: Absolutely. It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for reaching out, and I can’t wait to get into these events. Before we get started with them though, I would love to hear how you got involved in the GORUCK community. How did you stumble upon GORUCK as a company and what was your first event?

Corey: My first event was Detroit Light in 2015, I believe. I had heard about GORUCK — I was doing cross-fit. I was going to Glass City Crossfit here in Toledo, Ohio, and there was another GRT who is a strength and conditioning coach; Michael Yuschak. He told me, he was like, “You need to go check out this event. This is GORUCK, it’s pretty awesome.” I went online, saw the videos, saw what it’s about and I was like, “All right.”

Then the Christmas sale rolled around, I think, because this was about 2014 when he told me about it. Christmas roll is around. I looked up there and events are half off, so I signed up for the Light in Detroit. Was it July? I had signed up for the Mogadishu Mile in October, and that was a Light as well.

I think Larry and Brad were the cadre for Light, and it was interesting. I had never really been up to Detroit before, even though I live less than an hour away from it. I over-trained for it. At least I feel that way, because by the time I got done, I’m like, “Okay. I could do this. This isn’t bad.”

Really, what sold it for me was when I went to Cleveland for the Mogadishu Mile. We had Cadre Jeff Mocha Mike, and I hate to admit it, I can’t remember who the other cadre was that was along for the ride. But I think that was also the event where they made the Mogadishu Mile commercial with Jeff wearing that like skull mask, if you’ve seen it. That was an arduous event. It was blowing, raining, like 46 degrees blowing sideways at us all day long and it just totally sucked.

I remember getting down with that, and I felt like I had been doing something. My brother used to sail boats on like Lake Erie here, and he used to love to go out in October and sail his boats and he’d always yell to his friends, “10-foot waves are splashing up on deck!” He’d go, “Hey! We’re doing something.” That’s kind of how I felt after that event. Ever since then I had been sold on GORUCK. I think the first year I did two events. The second year was something like five events, and this year it’s looking like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 events now, and I just keep growing exponentially. Next year I have — I think it’s going upwards at 21 events scheduled now.

Brian: That’s incredible.

Corey: Are critically dumb on my part, maybe.

Brian: Or incredibly exciting. Yeah, time will tell. Time will tell on that decision.

Corey: Yeah. Hopefully my wife doesn’t divorce me.

Brian: That’s always the goal. That’s my goal too.

Corey: Excellent.

Brian: The holiday sale that year was really nice, the 50% off events, and I know I was able to talk some friends into signing up, because the prices were definitely nice. It’s exciting you got in then, because it sounds like that second event really hooked you.

Corey: Yeah, it really did. Every event since then has just been one more nail in my bank account coffin.

Brian: I feel the pain. I feel the pain too.

Corey: Ever penny I spend on one of these events though is actually worth it, because I learn a little bit more about myself and I meet such great people. I can’t say enough nice things about my Michigan GRT friends.

Brian: That’s got to be one of the best parts, is meeting people who are just also crazy enough for the same thing you did.

Corey: Absolutely. Pretty much all the Beach BETA crew was Michigan GRT, and there was already people I’ve done multiple events with. Really, the Beach BETA event was almost like a family reunion.

Brian: That’s awesome. Before we get into Beach BETA, I’ve got one more question about that Mogadishu Mile Light. When you finished it, did you need a couple of days to calm down from the sideway rain and all of the wind before you sign up for your next event, or were you pretty much good to go? You were hooked and ready to sign up?

Corey: I think I had to really digest a little bit. I remember I had a friend who — She’s a physical therapist at Cleveland Clinic and she let me crash at her place the night before the event. So I was able to go out there and do the event and I come like trudging in I think it was like five or six in the afternoon when we got done and it just looked like death warmed over. I got a warm shower and we got some B-dubs and just kind of told her about it and she just kind of looked at me like, “Why did you pay to do this?” I said, “I don’t know. Seem like something to do.” I don’t think I signed up for another event until — It’s probably closer to the next Christmas sale actually.

Brian: Yeah, but that was only a couple of months later, right?

Corey: That’s right, yeah.

Brian: That’s not too bad. Yeah, after my first event, it was one of those, “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever done. I’m never doing another one again.” Then three days later I was thinking, “When is GORUCK coming back to Seattle?” You need that cool downtime.

Corey: Yeah. I’ve done like a Warrior Dash, and afterwards I just feel kind of empty, because there’s a big buildup and the thing you get out of it the most after that’s over is you’re washing mud out of places for like three days. GORUCK, I mean, after I got done with a GORUCK I’m like, “Well, I learned something about myself.”

Brian: Absolutely. Let’s move into the Traverse City Beached BETA events. Where did the idea of these come from? GORUCK was very quiet about them. They promoted the beached, the actual beached event down in Florida quite heavily, but it wasn’t until almost the week of the Traverse City beached events that they started posting about them. Was that something custom you guys did, or was that put on my GORUCK?

Corey: As I understand it, we knew it was going to be a unique event ahead of time, at least the Michigan GRTs did. I remember, I believe it was Robert Bash was working with Big Daddy on that one. Big Daddy had promised us a pretty awesome event, and this definitely fit the bill. I remember signing up for the event. It was before — I think it was during the Christmas sale. We always keep coming back to this Christmas sale. I remember seeing Traverse City and I’m like, “Yeah, it’s like an 8-hour drive. Whatever. I’ll do it.”

Then it wasn’t until like maybe a month or two, maybe in the spring. I can’t remember exactly. I remember seeing a post on Michigan GRT page saying how the Traverse City events weren’t going to be like regular events, because I was just like, “Oh, the Tough and Light. Whatever. I’ll sign up.” Because I was like kind of bummed this year, because it seemed like Michigan wasn’t getting a lot of GORUCK events. Then, of course, for next year, Jason came through and like gave us 18 events, so I couldn’t be more happy now.

I remember seeing a post in the Michigan GRT page saying they’re being real secretive about it. They weren’t giving us all the details, but they said it was going to be something kind of like water survival. It wasn’t going to be a normal Tough ruck and a Light ruck and we kept getting little snippets of intel here and there, because it was like — I would go check that page every now and then, see if there’s any new information and then people will be like, “Hey, anything new coming up?” Then we get a little note from Big Daddy, and then nothing for a while, and then a little note here, and then a packing list here and then it just kept changing.

Brian: That’s wild. If I ever recall, correct me on the website, it was build as a zombie event? Do you remember if that was the case? I remember it didn’t say beach BETA on it.

Corey: No. It just said regular Tough and Light for the longest time. I think it was listed as a Tough and Light as the Facebook event, but definitely it wasn’t your average event.

Brian: That’s wild. What did the final packing list look like?

Corey: It was chopped down a little bit, because the people from the Florida Beach BETA, they talked about how there was a lot of gear that they didn’t end up using. Originally, we’re supposed to bring a tarp that got cut from the list. There was a couple of other things that got cut from the list and it got chopped down to being real basic. I think we had left was bungee cords, a life vest, 550 paracords, so much 550 paracords, and just little odds and ends, like a knife to cut the paracord and that kind of stuff. It was very chopped down for whatever reason it was. There was like waterproof pens and notebooks that he wanted us to bring and we’ve never ended up needing that at the end of it all.

Brian: Interesting. Yeah, I know that a lot of people were saying from the event down in Florida that they had to bring a lot of stuff that they didn’t end up using, and I know that happened with Constellation too, the first couple of Constellation events. There was just a huge packing list, and then they finally scaled it down when they started bringing it to other cities. It seems like that’s almost par for the course, but I’m glad you guys had a scaled down version.

Starting with that beached BETA Tough event, what time of day did that event start at? Was that a typical night start time on Friday?

Corey: Yeah, it was Friday night at 9:00. They wanted us to show up at some boat launch in Traverse City. I took the day off of work, because Toledo is like right up there at the state line between Ohio and Michigan. I think there was six and a half, seven hour drive, because I left at just the right time. I’ve just been dreading it the entire day, because if you talk to my Pathfinder group, they’ll tell you I do not like the cold. We had Rooney, also famous from this podcast, for Veteran’s Day in Ann Arbor, and it was like 19 degrees up there. I remember coming away from that event where we would — Heat us up and then the wind would blow and cool us down, and I ended up with like some gnarly, like skin condition afterwards from my sweat freezing in my pores. I dreaded being cold at this event and I really shouldn’t have, it turns out, because I feared all right.

Brian: That’s good to hear that you know if the start point is a boat launch, that you’re probably in for a treat.

Corey: I think Cadre Dustin said it best if he would make fun of us during the event. He did this like high shrill voice, and they started off the event. They’re like, “All right. Who came here expecting not to get wet? Okay. Good. Nobody.” Dustin was just joking around, “Oh! I signed up for this event. I don’t want to get wet.” He was hilarious. I can’t say enough nice things about him. He was cool as heck.

Brian: That’s awesome. Yeah, whenever we get start points inside a beach or a lake, you kind of know you’re going to go in, but a boat launch with a special packing list event, it’s going to be something different. That’s kind of been something.

How long was it before you started to when you got in the water?

Corey: Things moved pretty quickly. We got there at the boat launch at 9:00, and it’s the usual kind of just nailing around. The Detroit people were kind of grouping together. The Highland Hopeless people were grouping together, and then there were just some kind of Brando people.

I think Bomber and Dustin and BD come rolling in and they kind of did a little safety brief right there in the boat launch parking lot and then they’re like, “Line up. Follow us.” They ended up walking us from the boat launch about two or three driveways down the road to an actual private residence.

What happened was like BD had rolled in to town, I think, in a Wednesday or Thursday, and they were just scouting out locations. The problem was they were trying to find a place where they’d access to water, but they could also build a fire so that people could warm up after being in the water.

I don’t know if the Traverse City municipal people were kind of like looking sideways at that or what, but BD had kind of reached out to the GRT community and was asking if anybody knew anybody with a house or they’re on a lake, and there’s one girl that would house it for some folks, and so she got BD in touch with them, and BD went out there and talked to him, and it was a really interesting story, because apparently the wife of the owner, her brother actually had drowned in a lake at some point. When BD was like, “Yeah, we’re going to teach a bunch of people water survival in your backyard,” and they were like, “Heck, yeah! Go ahead.”

Brian: That’s wild.

Corey: It is.

Brian: It’s always interesting to see how the GRT community can come together like that and it seems like everyone knows someone and is able to help out in some ways, so it’s great you guys found a house, and that’s a terrible tragedy for their family. That must have made them feel slightly okay that BD was teaching water survival and maybe prevent some drownings in the future.

Corey: Absolutely. We’re kind of honoring that fellow by making sure it doesn’t happen to somebody else again.

Brian: Absolutely. Let’s get into the event. How did it all start? You’re saying everyone is milling around. You guys headed over to the house. What happened from there?

Corey: They had this awesome beachfront property, big, long dock. I’m bad at judging distances, but it was pretty long. They had us lined up on the beach and they’re telling us, “All right. We’re going to do a swim assessment. You guys are going to get your swim buddy. You need to pick up a random buddy. You’re going to swim out to where BD is.” BD is like marching out into the water. If everyone’s just like, “Well, BD is in there. I guess it’s not too cold.”

He’s like standing out there far away. He’s got a flashlight he’s shining at us and like, “All right. You and your buddy got to swim out to BD, go around and come back, then you’re going to come back on the beach and then you’re going to do it again.” That was just Dustin and BD’s way of kind of seeing who’s a strong swimmer. Who’s kind of not so strong? Who they need to keep an eye on kind of thing.

Brian: Yeah. I don’t know if you can trust BD to judge the coldness of water. He just does not operate like a normal person.

Corey: A little bit better insulated than most of our GRT community, and that makes him just a monster in cold water, let alone with any water, because that dude was in it with us most of the time. If we are in the water, you bet he wasn’t too far behind.

Brian: Yeah, I’ve got a picture and I’ll post it in the show notes. The first ever HCL was in Seattle, or was kind of Seattle. It was in the mountains, and I want to say December, November or December. All the water, all the streams, it’s all glazier melt, and there’s a picture of him just face down in one of the streams to prove to everyone that it’s not as cold as they think it is, but it’s freezing water.

Corey: He’d been posting pics on Facebook all afternoon. He’d gotten like little shark thermometer when they were sticking it in the water and were just trying to get us all freaked out before the event I think.

Brian: I bet. So who from HQ was up there? Bomber Bash was up there, if I recall it correctly.

Corey: Yeah, Bomber was up there. He’s kind of doing pics and he was just kind of another set of hands. Then it was just BD and Cadre Dustin.

Brian: Very nice. You’ve done your swim assessment. How did everyone do? Was there anyone who was struggling or did everyone do a good job?

Corey: There were a few people that were not as confident in the water as other people. Me, I spent two and a half years as an aquatics physical therapist assistant, so being in the water doesn’t bother me too much. There were some people that weren’t as comfortable. We just knew. Stay close to them, help them out when we can. There’s another story about that, but we’ll wait till later in the program. I’ll tell you about one of my friends, Eric Flores.

Brian: Sounds good. What’s next with the event?

Corey: It’s probably like 10, 11:00 at night. We had done a couple of laps in the water and then it was up to us to take some tarps that they had and kind of build a wall around the fire pit they had going, because obviously when you have cold air temperature, cold water, there’s always a chance of hypothermia, so we kind of constructed a little shelter around the fire so that when BD and Dustin were teaching, we were keeping everybody warm.

Brian: That’s great. You got to say warm especially when you’re doing such a water heavy event like that. Do you recall what the water temperatures and the air temperatures were like? Was it pretty chilly or was it not so bad?

Corey: I’m not going to trust my memory a whole lot, because I’m not the best with the numbers, but I want to say the water temperature started out like at 70, and the air temperature I think at the time was closer, something like 50s. That’s when they kind of took downward dive, because BD was teaching around the fire with Dustin. They actually had a guy from the Traverse City Coast Guard come in who was also a Force Recon guy that I think Dustin and BD knew. He kind of talked to us about the dangers of the great lakes up there.

We ended up going back in the water for another little swim and when we came out, people were really starting to feel it at that point. Then we had a lot of people who being fit, don’t have a lot of body fat. Me, I don’t have that problem so much. I’m very well-insulated at that time. One of my friends actually, Scott Man, became a very good teaching point for BD on hypothermia. He told us about the different symptoms, trouble with memory, trouble with spine motor movement, shivering, cold blue lips, that sort of thing, and Scott, he has very low body fat and he was staring to hype a little bit. We got him stripped down, no shirt, still had pants on, got him close to the fire. We’re trying to keep him warm as best as we could.

As I understand it, there were about four other people that we’re having the same problem at the same time. I remember Scott getting thrown into a car with Bomber and getting the heat turned up full blast. That’s when we kind of reached a tipping point with the event where BD is sitting there with Dustin and they’re kind of like, “We got all these people, and I don’t know if we got enough eyes to keep an eye on everybody to make sure we can assure their safety.”

Right around — I think it was about midnight when BD kind of comes out and he’s like, “Hey, listen up. Your safety is the primary concern of ours right now, and right now I don’t think we can ensure it with all the people here. Here’s what we’re going to do. If you want to come back at 7 a.m., you can. If you don’t think you can swing that, if you’d rather take off, no problem. Just get with me. I’ll take down your name and we’ll make this right.”

There’s a few people that kind of split off and went to talk to BD. The rest of us were kind of like, “All right, I guess we’ll just take off.” Some of my friends, like Rob Wheeler, Bryan, they had planned on going to their camp site the next day after the Tough was don, so they couldn’t just kind of leave and go to their campsite because it wasn’t ready yet. They ended up staying at the house with BD and Dustin and Bomber and spending the night right by the fire out there on the beach.

Brian: That worked out pretty well for them. Just to recap a little bit, the event starts Friday night and just a few hours in four people are already almost going or going hypothermic. You get them warmed up and then BD kind of puts the brakes on it and says, “We’re going to take a post and we’re going to resume around 7 a.m.”

Corey: Exactly.

Brian: That’s wild. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an event pausing like that and restarting later.

Corey: It’s a unique event.

Brian: Sure sounds like it. I’m guessing you went back to your spot, got some sleep before coming back at 7 a.m.

Corey: We rolled out to our — We had a rental house and we went back and some of our friends were already there who were going to do the Light the next day and they’re like, “What are you guys doing back?” We’re like, “BD called it. People were hyping out. We got to take a break, so we’re just going to chill and get some sleep.”

Brian: Oh, man! That’s got to put a little bit of fear into the Light people who hadn’t been out there. They had to put a pause in the event that you’re about to go to, because people were hyping out. Good luck.

Corey: It was serious. This was a really reality shock for them.

Brian: Yeah. You get a little bit of rest and then you come back at 7 a.m. What happens from there?

Corey: It kind of really felt like nothing really changed. It was just like, “All right. Let’s get you wet and let’s keep moving on.” From there we got back in the water, started going over different medical stuff. If anybody remembers the acronym from Constellation this March, safety, massive hemorrhaging, airways, respiratory, circulatory, and then if you’re in combat, it’s head injury. If you’re not in combat, it’s hypothermia. We kind of went over, doing body checks, looking for holes and just kind of different medical assessments to do.

The whole kind of premise of this event was like if you’re on a plane and it goes down in the lake, what are you going to do to survive? You got to start triaging people and tying stuff together and finding a way to survive. The first thing to do is you got to make sure your people stay alive so that you can survive and build the team. That’s kind of where we went from there.

After the medical stuff, we went on to kind of waterproofing the rucks and also making sure they could float. We used a lot of contractor bags on this event. For your absolute stuff that you don’t want to get wet, put it in a dry bag. They showed us how you can make kind of a waterproof ruck with just a contractor bag and some duct tape and 550 paracord.

Brian: Very cool. That sounds like just a ton of useful information. Before we get too far, I meant to ask but forgot, when you showed back up at 7, what would you say the percentage was for people who had been there the night before that came back again?

Corey: Probably 80% came back I’d say.

Brian: Did the people who were hyping out a little bit, did they show up again?

Corey: My buddy Scott ended up sitting the rest of that. I can’t honestly remember on that one. I knew we’re down a few people and I think it most of the people who were really having a hard time keeping warm.

That, and then there was probably a couple of other people who just didn’t know quite what they were getting into. That’s all right. It wasn’t their night and hopefully we’ll see them again in a different event at a later date.

Brian: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I’m sure there were a number of people who didn’t quite fully grasp what they were getting into with this event, because if you Google GORUCK Tough or GORUCK Light events, you won’t find anything like this in the AARs or the videos or the pictures. It’s probably a wakeup call to some of them.

Corey: Absolutely, because I think there was a couple of people who said this might have been their first event, which I’m like, “Oh, you guys really picked the duty on that one.”

Brian: Right. Right. That’s like when people say their first events, Bragg Heavy or something crazy like that. How did you even find out about this to sign up for it, because this is one of the hardest events.

Corey: Right.

Brian: You showed back up at 7. You learned some awesome skills. How long did the event go from there, did the Tough go?

Corey: It just kept going. It seemed like we went until roughly about two in the afternoon, 2:30, somewhere in there, before BD ended up patching us. Then he kind of — He’s like, “Who else is coming back for the light?” A lot of us raised our hands and he’s like, “Listen. You guys have been in the water for like 10 hours now. You need to go out of here. You need to go get some food, get some calories in you. Take an hour break. Come back. By that time we get done with all the admin stuff with the Light people and that kind of thing, you should be ready to rock and roll.”

Brian: That’s awesome. BD is one of my favorite cadre and that’s such a good call on his part, because I’m guessing 2 p.m. you’re finishing up the Tough. That’s about the time that the Light is supposed to be starting. You’ve just spent 10 hours in the water, and you guys have been pretty wrecked and worn over.

Corey: A lot of people were, and I’m definitely was feeling it, but I felt like I could have kept going, but that could have been bad because I could have started cramping up. It was probably a good idea to fuel up before we go back into the fire.

Brian: Yeah. Not everyone there had a previous job where they spent two and a half years doing stuff in the water.

Corey: Let me Terantino it back. Talking about my friend, Eric. I remember at one point during the Tough, that big long dock that the people had there, we were kind of doing dives off of it. Not like traditional dives, but Dustin would kind of have us do this little maneuver; look to the right, look to the left, look down, look out, cross your arms. Step off the dock.

I think him and BD had us tread water for — It’d have been a solid half hour or 45 minutes. I think it was without our rucks. I remember my one buddy, Eric, he’s a shorter dude and I could tell he was getting real tired and he was having a hard time holding his head up from the water. I remember just like grabbing his waistband of his pants and just trying to hold him up so he wasn’t getting as tired during the whole thing. There was a couple of times where maybe he got a little bit more lake water in his mouth than he needed to, but he was definitely grateful by the end of it.

Brian: Wow! 30 to 45 minutes treading water. Did they teach you how to tread water in advance of this?

Corey: Oh, yeah. We’ve done a lot of treading up to that point and he showing us how to pull a running shoes off and use those as a floatation. We had pulled our pants off and tie them a knot and fill those with air to use them for floatation. I think at that point they were trying to smoke us so that we’d not perform as optimally, because you start doing dumb things when you’re tired. That was kind of to increase the stress level and make a more memorable experience. That’s what was going on there.

Brian: Yeah. You get a special kind of tired from water work I feel like.

Corey: Oh, yeah.

Brian: I’ve done a lot of lap swimming and a decent amount of open water swimming and it’s definitely a different feeling on your body afterwards than rucking miles or running or weights or sandbag workouts or anything like that. It’s its own beast.

Corey: Absolutely. I think a lot of it comes down to breathing. If you’re not in tune with your breathing, every time you exhale, you’re going to go down on that water, and every time you inhale, you’re going to go up. You got to start taking shallow breaths and just get — I hate to de-cliche, but you got to get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Brian: Absolutely. That’s a great way to describe it, because it’s pretty uncomfortable treading water for half an hour.

Corey: It is.

Brian: Before we get into the Light event, is there anything else you want to talk about from the Tough event?

Corey: That was the thing that stuck in my mind the most. There were just so much going on and it seemed like it just went by so fast since that. We just kept going from one thing to the other to the other once that 7 a.m. rolled around.

Brian: Yeah. Sure sounds like it, because you only had 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. That’s what? 7 hours.

Corey: Absolutely.

Brian: That’s not that much time, and you guys really got a lot in on there. You must have just been going, going, going.

Corey: Absolutely. We’re building rafts out of inner tubes and tying it together with a paracord. BD went over water purification, water gathering, using signal mirror. I’m sure that’s not even everything. I’m sure there’s something I’m forgetting or missing.

Brian: That’s wild. That’s awesome. Did you read any of the AARs or any of the stuff that GORUCK posted about the beached event down in Florida?

Corey: I didn’t want to read them, just because I knew it wouldn’t be the same beast. A lot of the people were worrying about sharks during that event and the Great Lakes know that there’s nothing nefarious swimming in that water unless you’re probably in Lake Eerie, and that’s just toxicology.

Brian: That’s not that funny, but that’s funny.

Corey: It is funny. Wait until I tell you about 1812 and the toxicology.

Brian: Oh boy! I’m sure that was something special.

Corey: I remember Dustin telling us about how he was — They had quite a few females on the Florida beach and he said that they were thinking about throwing like Cool-Aid in the water around them when they were doing one of the swims just to mess with them. Like red Cool-Aid.

Brian: Yup. That would have been something.

Corey: Freak some people out.

Brian: Absolutely. Especially the ones that are just far enough away that they see the red and think someone might have gotten bit, but not close enough to see what’s really going on.

Corey: Right. There was a lot of apprehension from concerns about sharks in that group. When he told us that, I think I was this close to a hernia from laughing so hard.

Brian: Yeah. The water doesn’t seem that bad anymore considering you guys have sharks.

Let’s move into the Light a little bit. It’s 2:00. You guys complete Tough. You got patched. You go and grab something to eat. The Light class shows up and they start doing the introduction stuff. You guys come back, would you say around 3:00? About an hour later?

Corey: Oh! 3:00, 3:30. Roughly somewhere in there. They were going through the admin safety stuff. They did the swim assessment that we did. Just now, they don’t have the dark. It was 2:00 in the afternoon, so they can see everything, whereas as had the uncertainty of the darkness.

Brian: Oh, yeah. That’s got to add a whole different element there. Light starts in the day, tough starts in the dark on the water. That’s something, especially for those who aren’t as accustomed so swimming.

Corey: Absolutely.

Brian: How many people showed up for the Light would you say that hadn’t participated at all in the Tough?

Corey: Roughly I’d have to say maybe 20, 23. Somewhere in there.

Brian: That’s a decent number.

Corey: Yeah. We had a good turnout for the Light.

Brian: That sounds like it. Then how many would you say came back from the Tough to get the TL in for the weekend?

Corey: I’m trying to remember. We had a picture of them. I want to say it was — It’d have been close to 12, maybe 9. Somewhere in there.

Brian: Okay. It’s a decent size class in the 30s. that’s pretty exciting. All the introduction stuff is done and out of the way. All the people from the Tough class are back. How did the Light go compared to the Tough?

Corey: It was pretty much a spring version. I think we went back over the medical stuff again, the body checks. It was nice to review, because that happened all the way that morning. I was able to recall it and revisit it. Now, it’s kind of in there for, locked away forever. I think we went over waterproof in the rucks again, which was kind of a breeze for us, because we learned to access our rucks while in the water and tried to keep as much water out of them as possible. We’re in the water trying to keep them dry and keep the stuff out of them. When we’re on dry land and repack and re-waterproofing it, we excelled, because we just don’t have so many times and adverse conditions.

Brian: Yeah. That’s kind of nice so guys got a refresher on the safety stuff, because you’ve been up for a while and you’ve been pretty well-smoked and some of that stuff can be forgotten. That’s good you guys got that, and then it must have been pretty fun to excel at the stuff you had been practicing all morning before. It’s pretty cool.

Corey: It’s kind of nice because we kind of, in the Green Beret sense, even though we pretty much had nothing but rain at this event, we did a force multiplier. In a way, the people from the Tough got to come in and help teach the people from the Light. Whenever you teach something to somebody who’s never seen it before, it helps you reinforcement what you learned, because now you’re having an access to that knowledge and give it back to some new people that never seen it before. You start remembering stuff that didn’t realize stuff there.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. That’s one of my favorite things about doing the Constellation events and then a couple — Or the F3 event I did as well. It was a lot of learn something and then make sure you teach it to at least one person, because it’s one thing to learn something, but it’s completely different to teach it and it definitely helps it stick in a lot better. That worked out pretty well for you guys.

Corey: Now, it’s in my top 3 events.

Brian: Awesome! It’s definitely something that was a net positive for you. Good experience.

Corey: Very more so. It let me revisit some knowledge I had from the Boy Scouts, but then I was able to build on that knowledge. Anytime I can get a refresher and I can get new knowledge, I’m all for it.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. The Light class, how long did that last?

Corey: I want to say we went until about six in the afternoon. It was good four hours, four and a half, somewhere in there. I think we ended up being done at 6:30.

Brian: Did people who signed up for only the Light, did it seem like they had a pretty good time there?

Corey: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. BD said when he started this whole thing, he wanted us to be one tightknit team and that he definitely accomplished that.

Brian: Awesome. Are there any additional stories from the Light that you want to share? Anything else that stood out?

Corey: There’s a really good — It depends on your description of good. There is a picture of me — The people who owned that beach and that house that we’re at, they have these two huge Great Danes. My friend, Eric, who was holding up by his belt, he sat out the Light and he was just snapping pictures and shadowing and there was one point where Dustin had us kind of sprint across the beach just to get us warmed up. I remember, Lucius, a big Great Dane, he was like standing near me when I started sprinting, and he took off right next to me. Eric has got this awesome-ish picture of me getting kind of chased down by this Great Dane. It’s horrible, because like I didn’t wear a hat for this event and I hadn’t had a haircut, so like my hair is like flapping up in the wind. I got like this whole like smile on my face, but my chin is stuck, so I looked like Tommy Boy a little bit. It’s just a horrible picture of me, but it’s a horribly cool picture, because this Great Dane is with me. I’ve got my GORUCK swim trunks on and I got my Under Armor shirt and I’m just like sprinting. You see Brian signaling that the guy who is the master of Cleveland area rucking crew has big old beard and he’s like smiling staring at me getting chased down by this dog. It was a cool point, and Bomber loves to like post that anytime he sees me comment on something.

Brian: That’s awesome. If you feel comfortable with it, you should send it over, or else I’ll hit up Bomber or just go to the Tough group and find it. That’d be great to put in the show notes.

Corey: Awesome.

Brian: Great. Brian is an awesome guy. Huge shout out to CARC.

Corey: I can’t say enough nice things.

Brian: Hoping to meet him in person sometimes soon.

Corey: You should go down to New Orleans at 1812 Tough. That’d be a good time.

Brian: There we go. Are you going to be heading down for that?

Corey: I would love to, but I think the budget is already maxed out with the other events.

Brian: Yeah. Budget over here is probably double max at this point, but we’re almost at 2018, so I think it resets. That’s what I tell myself. It resets.

Corey: Yeah. I’ll try that one. We’ll see how it works out for me.

Brian: Sounds good. Man! These events on wild. It sounds like have really interesting twist on the GORUCK Tough and the GORUCK Light events. When you sign up for a traditional event, there’s usually some rucking involved. Was there any rucking in these events?

Corey: Most rucking we did was probably from the boat launch to the event site, which was probably no more than a quarter of a mile.

Brian: Interesting. That’s cool, that they’re able to spend so much time. It sounded like 10 hours in the water for the Tough and a number of hours in the water for the Light. I’m glad that they’re able to maximize their time use and really bring some interesting skills out.

Corey: The way I look at it is this was basically the Constellation for the water. That’s kind of how I looked at it. I know the name of it is going to be probably changing from beach to Poseidon was the last thing I heard, but to me it was just water Constellation.

Brian: That’s a great way to look at it. That’s awesome. If the beach Tough and/or the beach Light events came back to an area near you, is it something you’d sign up for again?

Corey: BD said he wanted to make it a yearly event up there. I tell you what, I would trade any of my other events, except for maybe Snowdrop, to go to that again.

Brian: Yeah. When I was Bomber Bash on, he said that Traverse City was the most beautiful town he had ever been too and it was his favorite spot.

Corey: I believe his exact words were, “It looks like a postcard y’all.”

Brian: I think that’s what he said. I’m sure that he’ll be trying to get back there too.

Corey: He wasn’t lying. It is beautiful up there. I don’t know why it took me so long to go up there and check it out.

Brian: Yeah, maybe I’ll have to make it out there next time. I do want to hit Snowdrop for next year. I’ve done some events with Rooney and I shadowed part of the Mogadishu Mile Tough out here in Seattle with him this year and he’s got something really cool going on. It’d be nice to make it out there next year.

Corey: I almost have to do it now just because Rooney was in my Pathfinder group and he was talking about it and a lot of the Detroit guys went to it and they had nothing but awesome things to say. I got to make it this year or next year I guess.

Brian: Ronney really is an awesome guy. It’s great that he spends time in the Pathfinder groups. He said that he signs up for at least one GORUCK event a year so he can always remember what it’s like to be on the other side of it. I follow him on Strava and I see the events that he does. He does live his words. It’s pretty awesome.

Before we go, is there anything else that you want to talk about with the Traverse City Beached BETA Tough or Light events?

Brian: Yeah. You definitely have to plan for it differently. I guess if there’s anyone listening who is signing up for one of these in the future, I don’t know if there are on the calendar right now, but it sounds like BD wants to bring them back. You’re going to have to train for this a little bit different than you are for a traditional Tough or Light event.

Corey: Absolutely. There’s no way you can train for the cold. Just listen to the cadre, be smart about what you’re doing and keep an eye on your buddies. If no one was keeping eye on my buddy Scott, this might not ended it so well. Just be a good teammate and things will turn out alright.

Brian: That’s great advice. Before we go, I’ve got a quick question. It’s a little off topic, but I was just wondering why are Michigan GRTs so much better than the Ohio GRTs?

Corey: Yeah, that’s a tough one right there. We’ve got a selection finisher in Detroit. Right there, Cleveland can’t boast that as far as I know. Columbus can’t boast that, Cincinnati can’t boast that. We always see each other at the same events. If there’s one Michigan event, you know everybody is going to be there. We’re a heck of a tightknit group.

Technically, I live in Ohio, but I have a super scientific map that says Toledo is just little Detroit. I consider myself a Michigan GRT. Bryan Singlyn is actually from Detroit, you can’t group him as an Ohio GRT. He’s Detroit down to his core. I don’t know about all the other ones. I would like to get down to Columbus this March and check it out, but I might have just alienated myself from the team.

Brian: Yeah, we’ll see. That’s awesome that you guys have so many groups in such a close area. We’ve got Travel Squad over in Seattle, but the closest City that GORUCK goes, brings events to from Seattle to Portland, which is about three and a half hours away, and then that’s about it. You don’t get too many different groups coming together at events. It sounds like it’s pretty interesting out there.

Corey: Yeah, we got really blessed for 2018. I cannot think whoever at HQ gave us so many events, because we’ve got Extortion 17 coming. We’ve got a 9/11 HTL. There is a Zombie Apocalypse event for Ann Arbor. We got a double Light for Cinco de Mayo. I looked at it and there’s like legit 18 different events going on in Michigan. I got one weekend every month. It’s like I’m in the National Guard almost.

From March until November, I’ve got one weekend where I’m doing either a Tough or a Light or in September I’m doing an HTL.

Brian: Is there a specific event you’re most excited for next year?

Corey: I think the 9/11 HTL, because it will be my first Heavy and it will be my first HTL. As far as I know, just about every single Michigan GRT I know is going to be showing up to this. It’s going to be a killer event.

Brian: That’s awesome. It’s been really fun to watch GORUCK’s events scheduled because they are definitely bringing a ton of new special events out. It should make for a very interesting 2018.

Corey: I definitely agree there, and I can’t wait for it, because I’m going to love every sucky moment of it.

Brian: Absolutely. Before we go, Corey, are there any shout outs you want to give or anything you want to promote?

Corey: One thing I forgot to mention is I’m the rucking coordinator for Toledo’s chapter of Team RWB. If there’s any GRTs in Northwest, Ohio that are listening, I really would like for you to reach out and find me on Facebook and come out to our weekly rucks on Saturday. That would be awesome to have some people.

Then I got a shout out to the Dirty Dozen Pathfinder group run by Hank Stamm, which is just a great group of supportive people. Another shout out to Rob Wheeler who is a new CA within Pathfinder. He’s going to be having his own group for 14 and just the Detroit GRTs, the Murder Squad. Just a great group of guys; Tom Zuck, Dean Aikens.

Brian: One of the best, best club names out there.

Corey: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Then Bryan Singlyn, man. That dude inspires me. I hope I can be half a good as GRT as him.

Brian: That’s awesome. It’s been great having you. Corey, thank you so much, man, for taking so much time out of your night to chat with me. This has been awesome, and I was really curious about the Traverse City beached BETA events and just thanks for running through them and talking about everything that happened, because it definitely sounds like they’re interesting and maybe if there are people listening who are excited about something like this, they can harass GORUCK and GORUCK would bring a couple of more of them to different locations.

Corey: It’s my pleasure, man. I’m happy to talk about it. I don’t know if we can call this a sport or not, but I love rucking and I love the GORUCK community and I can’t imagine my life without it now.

Brian: That’s awesome. I don’t know what we can call it, but I love it. I know that. Thank you so much.

Corey: Thank you.

The post ADR 023: Corey Modrowski Interview (GORUCK Beached Tough & Light AAR) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

Throughout November we’ll be featuring some amazing GRT companies that service the GRT community. This week we have an interview with Scott Southworth who runs Ruck Customs.

Ruck Customs makes mods for GORUCK rucks including Kydex frame sheets and shooter conversion kits. We recently purchased and reviewed one of their shooter conversion kits and must say it’s an incredible piece of gear.

If you enjoyed this episode let us know and we’ll try and get Scott back on to talk about the GORUCK Jedburgh event he took part in!

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 Scott Southworth who runs Ruck Customs. You may know Ruck Customs from the Kydex sheets that they produce and the shooter inserts that they just recently came out with. Scott, how are you doing today?

Scott: I’m doing all right. Beautiful day here in Houston.

Brian: Awesome. That’s better than up here in Seattle. It’s nice and rainy. Scott, let’s start out with your involvement in the GORUCK community. How did you stumble upon GORUCK as a company?

Scott: That was probably back in, I want say, 2012. I was actually looking for a backpack. I was pretty involved in buy it for life forum online, and GORUCK was name that has kept coming up, and so I figured I gave them a look, whatever, the website, and saw all these crazy event things they did and then I saw the backpack I was looking for. I just kind of skipped over the events and bought the pack, but wearing it around town in Houston, I kept getting called out asking who I was, had I done an event yet? I started feeling a little embarrassed that I hadn’t done one. First event was I want to say Halloween 2012, because I just kind of shamed into doing it.

Brian: That’s awesome. That’s usually the case when you run into someone with a GORUCK pack. First question is, “What event did you do?”

Scott: Yeah. When was your flaneur? How many have you done? All the above.

Brian: Yup. I can see how that’d be tough if you hadn’t done an event and had the ruck. Your first events in 2012, it’s the — You say it was a Halloween event.

Scott: Yeah.

Brian: You signed up for it, kind of out of guilt. Leading up to the event, what were your thoughts like?

Scott: I have no idea what I was getting into. I have always been a fairly involved athletic person and I thought I wouldn’t be a big a deal leading up to it. 20 miles was pretty reasonable; 40 pounds, pretty reasonable. We’re communicating in our little Facebook group leading it up to it and bought our team costume and we decided on going as Hooters girls, so we’re all wearing orange silkies and light cutoffs. Halloween in Houston, we still get cold water down here, so I was complexly unprepared for 50 degrees in the water, but I had no idea what I was getting into.

Brian: That’s wild, but you figured whatever you got into how to be better than getting continually asked what event have you done.

Scott: Yeah, just point of pride. Just to brag about a little bit. Also, the people that were always just reaching out to me, I figured there’s a community kind of lurking below the surface there, and I was right.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. Did you end up having a good time at that event?

Scott: Oh, no. It was awful. It was one of the worst experience in my life. Just being completely unprepared, just suffering through it. I was sore, beyond sore for over a week, but once I started to recover, I was pretty proud of myself. I was pretty excited that I did something so far outside my comfort zone.

My first interaction with GORUCK was it was someone’s birthday, that Halloween event, and we had to do pushbacks and eat birthday cake off the ground. We had to drink a gallon of milk as a team and then eat an entire panache cake before we did burpees. That was welcome to GORUCK.

Brian: Were you in the fitness community back when you started your first event in 2013?

Scott: That was when I was just starting my career as a personal trainer. I’ve been doing stuff for about six months, I think.

Brian: What was going through your mind when you’re eating that birthday cake, the sheet cake, doing pushups off the ground? Personally, I would be thinking what is this going to do to my body over the next 12 hours?

Scott: I was more like, “What is it going to do with my stomach in the next 10 minute?” I saw what was happening. I knew exactly what they’re trying to do. Thankfully, I managed to keep it down, but I’d say that two-thirds of our group were puking within minutes. Yeah.

Brian: That’s wild. What a way to start an event.

Scott: Yeah. That was the first time that I’d asked myself what I’ve gotten into.

Brian: Did you have anyone quit that event?

Scott: One, from cold.

Brian: Okay.

Scott: Yeah, they put us in a fountain. Temperature was dropped into the 40s and the guy shivered out.

Brian: No cake related quits?

Scott: Yeah, no. None of those.

Brian: Yeah. That’s just a rough time. You still came back.

Scott: Yeah, because 24 hours later it doesn’t seem that bad. Thinking about pain, thinking about suffering, it goes away eventually. You got to push through.

Brian: Yup, and all that’s left are the good memories, until you get out there again.

Scott: Exactly.

Brian: And then it’s pain and suffering.

Scott: Yeah, and then you realize, “Oh, I’ve done this before, and what am I doing it for?”

Brian: When you finish that event, did you want to sign up for another one or did you figured you’d be one and done?

Scott: I went in with the plan of it just being one and done. To just kind of earning the right to wear that GR1, so when people ask me the question, I’d have answer. After about a month, I got this itch, I wanted to do more. There’s definitely a high that comes off of an event like that and there’s no other way to really replicate it.

Brian: It’s so true. After my first event, I said I was never doing another one, and then two or three days later, maybe four days, I was looking online trying to figure out when GORUCK was coming back.

Scott: You’re a bit more eager than I was.

Brian: You’ve done a 2012 event. About a month later you decided to sign up for some other events, or maybe look into it again. What other events that come to mind when you think of your GORUCK experiences have you done?

Scott: I’ve done, I want to say, like seven total. A couple of Toughs, one Light in there. Jedburgh comes to mind for sure. That was one of the best events. Nothing else comes close. It’s a shame that they’re moving on from that model. That was something special. I think it was my third event that really stood out for me in terms of the GORUCK community. It was a scavenger here in Houston and I just remember rolling out of bed just being out and we started drinking at 9:30 and just running around the city doing stupid shit and having a lot of fun. Signed up with a team of six people I didn’t know. By the end of the day, we were pretty good friends and we still keep in touch.

Brian: That’s awesome. That’s the traditional Scavenger formula, at least for me, I found. Maybe sometime we’ll have to do a Jedburgh podcast. I didn’t get some people on who did that, and maybe trying to force GORUCK sand and bring it back, because I’ve not done a Jedburgh, but I hear nothing but amazing things about those events.

Scott: Yeah. It’s something special. There’s something really cool about taking a lot of the components and doing them out in the woods, kind of off-beaten path out of the city, and they’ve been doing it up in the Pack Northwest with some of the — I can’t remember the name of the event, but they did one forest event up there, didn’t they?

Brian: Yeah, we had the Forest Ruck up here.

Scott: Yeah. I think that have a lot of similar elements. Yeah, Jedburgh was totally special.

Brian: Awesome. I’d like to talk about that sometime. When did you decide to start Ruck Customs?

Scott: It just kind of happened, honestly. After a couple of events, I started rucking with sand and I hated how the bag just collapse with sand in the middle. I remember walking away with back pain after pushups and I was struggling to manage overhead presses and stuff. I switched to bricks, and that helped a bit, but I just wanted something that made my bag easier to move around to manage for PT and stuff, and so I started looking to see what was out there and stumbled across — I think it was SH Plates. They were doing kydex at the time. They were charging like 70 bucks a piece and there was no way I was going to pay that. I figured out how to make it myself, and then when my buddies thought it was pretty cool and then offered to pay me to make him one. One of his buddies offered to pay and then all of a sudden I’ve got lists of people signing up for one and just kind of spiraled from there.

Brian: That’s awesome.

Scott: Yeah. I never expected it to grow into a business. I never expected to do it part-time. I thought it was going to be just one or two for some friends of mine, but made somewhere around probably 500 total orders over the past couple of years.

Brian: That’s incredible. Congratulations.

Scott: Thank you.

Brian: I was going to ask how was the GORUCK community reception been, but it sounds like it’s been pretty well if you’re been able to push out 500 orders.

Scott: Yeah. People like it. I have yet to have a complaint as far as the product goes. It’s a pretty simple product. It’s pretty effective and I think that’s part of it. Yeah, people enjoy it.

Brian: That’s great. Have you noticed, if any, how the community response has changed since when you first started, to now that you’re more established, you have more products and you’ve got a website up and running?

Scott: Yeah. Definitely early on, there’s this blowback. I was starting 40 bucks originally, and people were like, “40 bucks for a piece of plastic. That’s crazy. I can buy it on Amazon for like 15,” but they don’t take into account the shipping cost and the labor and then also all the equipment I have to buy to manufacture these. They’re also cut by hand just because the move from hand cut to machine is so expensive. It’s been limiting factor in that. 40 bucks is what I could manage when I was first starting out, because like I mentioned, this is a part-time gig for me. I do I have a full-time job, and so this just cuts into my free time on the weekend.

As I’ve built it, people have come to kind of accepted that’s how things are, except that that’s going to be the cost because of everything involved. As I’ve grown I’ve been able to negotiate better deals on my products, and so I’ve been able to lower that price. That was the biggest kind of pushback I received.

Brian: Yeah, price is always a tough one. I come from the school where if you don’t like the price, then you don’t have to buy it.

Scott: Right. Exactly.

Brian: This isn’t oxygen you’re selling. It’s something to make rucking better.

Scott: Yeah. Beyond that, I went out in my way to help the people that decided to go for themselves. I showed them my how-to videos, give them some tips, told them the tools I used and showed my methods. If you want to go and buy a piece of Amazon and you have the tools yourself, I’m more than willing to help you. What I have here is not something exclusive. Anyone can do it. They’re just paying me for the convenience of having me do it.

Brian: It’s a great convenience, because — I mean the plastic and itself is 15 bucks and I’d probably screw it up at least one or two times, which is, why I decided to buy from you instead.

Scott: Yeah.

Brian: Was your first product the kydex sheet?

Scott: Yeah, just for the GR1, because that’s what I had. That’s something I could model after, really. Then I bought myself a GR2 and so I started making GR2 frame sheets and then started getting requests for other stuff. I went out to my Houston GORUCK community and said, “Hey, I need to find myself an echo, a radio, and then a couple of others, so I can make some frame sheets for them.” I’ve paid people on plastic and I borrowed their bags and got some templates and expanded my lineup from there.

Brian: It’s a great idea. GORUCK community is strong in most cities, so you utilize that instead of buying a ton of bags.

Scott: For sure.

Brian: Let’s talk about the recent shooter insert. Is that the newest product you’ve come out with?

Scott: The newest I’d say is the Shooter Mini, the half size shooter. Yeah, the shooter lineup is what I’ve been kind of refining over the past year.

Brian: Where did that idea come from?

Scott: GORUCK put out the shooter inserts, or the shooter ones. I want to say, was it like early last year, maybe late 2015? I thought it was a cool idea, but there’s no way I was spending $300 on another GR1 when I have one sitting my closet right now. Also, my GR2 is my everyday carry, and I wanted some of that functionality for the bag I had. I don’t want it downsized.

I started experimenting with attaching Velcro just inside the GR1, and that didn’t work too well. Just putting some felt strips inside. I just wasn’t a fan of how it moved toward bunched up, and so I looked at my garage, saw the stack of plastic and put two and two together, instead why don’t I attach these and see what happens there? That was the first prototype there. I took just a sheet of felt and glued it to a sheet of kydex with some adhesive I picked up at Home Depot and started just messing around with that.

My first attachment, I just took a couple of extra scrap pieces of plastic, cut them to about MOLLE size and threaded them through the loops, and I had proof of concept. It wasn’t pretty, but it did a much better job of doing what I wanted to than just putting a sheet of felt inside of a GR1. From there, I made improvements on each of the different pieces till we got the product we have today.

Brian: Nice. That’s awesome.

Scott: Yeah. Some of the first pieces were pretty ugly though. We had lots of problems in the process.

Brian: One of the things that I like the most about the shooter insert is that you can use them in your everyday carry GR1 or echo or whatever pack that you’re rolling with, because a lot of GRTs almost find it like a point of pride how many events their bag has been through and it’s still kicking, and this is just a great way to give it even more use to the same bag instead of forcing people to buy a second bag to take advantage of the shooter pouches or Velcro inserts.

Scott: Yeah. That’s been my mentality behind this entire venture. Remember, I got into this because I wanted to buy one bag and never have to buy another for the rest of my life. All of my kind of invention and all my focus has been on taking one bag and making it better rather than getting an entirely new product.

Brian: That’s awesome. Yeah, the buy it for life communities, it’s pretty interesting, and that’s one of the ways that I found GORUCK too. It’s always interesting to hear from other people who are involved in that.

Where did the idea for the mini shooter insert come from? Because that’s a really cool idea how it gives you access to both the document compartment as well as provides that Velcro area on top?

Scott: It actually came from just a resource management standpoint. I have this stack of left over plastics from all the frame sheets, so I’m trying to figure out how to use it. I just hate wasting. I hate just taking resources and throwing them in the trash. I experimented with some random ideas. Some of them were pretty off the wall, like Kydex shoulder pads for log carries just to give you a little extra protection or flash pocket inserts to keep that a little more rigid. A lot of them were awful. Just thoughts I had to get out of my head and try and prove that they were terrible.

Then I was looking at my shooter insert and I was a little frustrated by how big it was. I didn’t need all the space all the time, and I saw it’d be great if I could just replace that MOLLE with Velcro, the MOLLE at the top of the bag. That’s what I did. I cut a shooter sheet short. I had a full piece. I just cut in half and put it in the bag and I was like, “This actually works pretty well if I’ve got just my knife and a set of lockpicks or if I just want to put my gun right near the top there. That’s all I need, is just six inches of Velcro. I don’t need a whole sheet.” I put the two problems — Or the two ideas together and came out with the mini shooter.

Brian: Very nice. Yeah, it definitely looks like a great piece, especially for those use cases. For your everyday carry GR1, do you carry it with a kydex sheet in it?

Scott: GR2, and yes, I do.

Brian: Do you see a GR2 now?

Scott: Yeah, just because I’ve got so much stuff I’m going around with.

Brian: Got you. Do you normally carry a shooter insert in there or do you just use that when necessary?

Scott: The mini. I’ll keep a mini in there and just for the convenience, but not a full shooter sheet. When I’m doing a photoshoot, maybe, I’ll pull the full in, but most of the time I just don’t need that much Velcro.

Brian: Absolutely. What’s the most popular item been that you’ve sold on Ruck Customs?

Scott: The GR1 sheet, for sure, the regular standard kydex sheet. It’s what we built the business on. It’s been our bread and butter since day one.

Brian: Awesome. What, if anything, do you have plan next?

Scott: That’s something I’m sitting back and thinking about. One thing I really enjoyed about this venture is that it allows me some creativity, a place to create and to think and to innovate. I found that my style, that comes from a lot of just passive kind of consideration. Just walking around day by day and whatever thoughts pop into my head, and then I’ll sketch it on paper when I get home and I’ll ask myself, “Is this a good idea or a bad one?” Most of the time it’s a bad one and I’ll go on with my life, and then one day an inspiration will just kind of strike. What happened with the shooter sheet, it took a year to refine, but just one day it popped in my head. I don’t have anything under the schedule at the moment for new products, but it doesn’t mean I’m not working on something.

Brian: Right. You’ve always got to be working on something, getting those ideas out. At least trying to figure to stuff out. That’s awesome. It’s motivating to hear. For you, personally, do you have events that you’re signed up for? Anything that you’re excited for about rucking or the community coming up?

Scott: When is that Nasty happening?

Brian: I know, right? I know you listen to the podcast GORUCK. When is that Nasty happening?

Scott: Yeah. Aside from that, I more moved on to some of the more speciality GORUCK events nowadays. There’s a night FAD happening in Houston next month that I’m on the fence for just because I don’t know if my schedule will allow it. I might be traveling that weekend, but if I can make it, that’d be phenomenal.

Now, I’m keeping my eye on some of the weekend expeditions. When finances are right, I definitely want to pull a trigger on one of those. I’m professionally in the fitness industry right now, and so the wear and tear I realized after doing six Toughs, it’s been a little too much for my body and so I’m trying to stay away from those and more towards the community and the skill-oriented events.

Brian: Yeah, it makes total sense. GORUCK is going to be doing some — You could already see it on the website. They’ve got a ton of new FAD events coming out. They’re definitely pushing in that direction, so there will be plenty of opportunity. It’s going to be a pretty exciting year 2018, I think.

Scott: Yeah. I’m excited to see what kind of new experiences they put out there. That’s what’s all, going out and having fun.

Brian: If people want to learn more about Ruck Customs, buy Kydex sheets or one of the awesome shooter inserts, where should they go?

Scott: The easiest place is ruckcustoms.com, all one word. I do have a Facebook page, but I’m terrible about updating that. If there’s something particularly important, I’ll put it on there. Most of the times, that page kind of sits. The website is the place to go.

Brian: There you have. Ruckcustoms.com. You do have a brand new website too, am I right?

Scott: Yeah. I’ve actually gone through several phases, but this is a new one and I’m a lot happier with it. The last one was just basically pieced together. It looks like Microsoft Paint, but this is a big blow website now.

Brian: Yeah, the new one looks really slick. Congratulations on putting that together, because it looks amazing.

Scott: Thank you.

Brian: Everyone can see your products on ruckcustoms.com. Like I said, great website, easy to view everything. If people have questions or any comments, how should they get in contact with you?

Scott: There’s definitely a form on that website, but I’m also pretty active on Facebook, so reach out. Just shoot me a message off on my Facebook posts or you can message me through the Ruck Customs Facebook page. I’m much more likely to reply really quickly to those things.

Brian: There you have it. Ruck Custom’s Facebook page. Hit him up on Messenger there, or you can always go to Ruck Mall, search for Scott or shooter insert of kydex and he pops up for all of them, then shoot him a message right from there.

Awesome, Scott. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day and talking to me about your first event, Ruck Customs and everything you’ve got going on. I’ve always been curious about Ruck Customs since you guys first came on the scene, and I bought a kydex sheet a couple of years ago, bought the shooter insert earlier this year and I just loved it, everything I’ve gotten from you guys. Top quality and I don’t regret a thing. It’s been great to talk to you and learn where all these came from.

Scott: Yeah, it’s been a pleasure. It’s always great to hear that feedback. This is a small business, and so we thrive off of community input.

Brian: Awesome. Thank you so much again, man. Take care.

Scott: Of course. You too.

The post ADR 022: Scott Southworth Interview (Ruck Customs) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

Throughout November we’ll be featuring some amazing GRT companies that service the GRT community. This week we have an interview with Kevin Maestri who runs Knotted Cords.

Knotted Cords creates custom items from paracord meant to enhance and expand on some of the gear you already own. Their best seller is a paracord handle for GORUCK packs which has numerous uses that we get into during the interview.

We had a great time chatting with Kevin and hope you enjoy learning more about the GRT run company Knotted Cords!

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 Kevin Maestri from Knotted Cords. For those of you who don’t know Kevin, he is a GRT and started Knotted Cords a few years ago within the community. Knotted Cords specializes in a lot of gear made out of paracord but the hottest seller at least on All Day Ruckoff is the ruck handles, which Kevin handmakes. In addition to running Knotted Cords, you might have seen him around the Tough group as he volunteers a lot of his time with Cadre Danny Capital Ruck Tour, which is an incredible operation he’s got going there.

I’m very excited that Kevin’s here to chat about Knotted Cords, so let’s get the interview started. Kevin, how’s it going?

Kevin: Very well, thanks for having me on.

Brian: Absolutely man, I’m glad to have you here, it was great meeting you in Seattle when you came just to hang out with Danny, but it was great meeting you in person. I’m glad we’re doing this.

Kevin: Yeah, it was just a nice visit up there, hanging out with Danny for a couple of days.

Brian: Awesome. Before we get into Knotted Cords, I want to talk a little bit about your involvement in the GORUCK Community. How Did you stumble upon GORUCK as a company?

Kevin: I actually first saw their bags online years ago. I have a feeling it was close to when they first came out. But never really had an opportunity to grab one, but my first involvement with GORUCK was actually my first event in May 2014. I had met some of the locals of the local GORUCK community here in Arizona in the fall before that so 2013 during a hiking event we have here in Phoenix and started rucking with them and decided to sign up for Light. That was happening in May. A couple of weeks out from that, they canceled it so I got talked into doing the Challenge, which at the time of the Challenge the night before the Light.

I had never rucked more than four bricks but yeah, that was my first experience with the GORUCK community.

Brian: That’s wild. Sold you on the Light and then pulled the rug out from under you and got you into the Challenge, which is now called the Tough. How’d you feel about that?

Kevin: Correct, yeah. Really apprehensive. Like I said, I had never trained with more than basically packed up for the Light and ended up having to borrow a ruck because the bag I was using was not a GORUCK bag and wouldn’t fit six bricks and water, so it was either six bricks or four bricks and water. So I had to borrow a ruck for the event and that was all four weeks out. First time, about four weeks before the event was the first time I did an overnight ruck. The first time I rucked more than about 15 to 20 pounds. So it was an interesting experience to move up to the Challenge. I’d like to say it nearly killed me but, as most people say, the team is what got me through.

Brian: That’s wild, I mean, we both know water’s important so I’m glad you got a pack so you could bring water with you.

Kevin: Yeah, exactly.

Brian: When you completed the event, what were your thoughts? Did you want to do another one or were you thinking, “Man, this was a little crazy.”

Kevin: I wanted to do another one. The biggest thing for me though was, throughout 2013 and even a little bit of 2012, I was kind of on a path that I was like, kind of losing weight and trying to get back into shape. I’d kind of really let myself go and I wanted to get back in shape and so this was kind of like an evolution. I started doing some other events.

When I did the vent for the Tough, I really didn’t feel like I performed very well, but it really just – I wasn’t happy with my own performance. So I knew I wanted to do another event but I wanted to be in much better shape for it before doing another Tough event. But yeah, I knew I was going to do another one, I just didn’t know when.

Brian: Got it. Did you ever get the Light in?

Kevin: I did get a Light in actually finally this year, 2017 was the first time I got a Light. So it’s been about three years later, I finally got around to doing the Light, and I did Saint Patty’s Day Light this year.

Brian: Oh Saint Patty’s day lights are always a blast, that’s great.

Kevin: Yeah, that was a lot of fun.

Brian: I’m glad you’re able to finally get off out for one of those since that’s what kind of drew you in and then just pulled away.

Kevin: Exactly.

Brian: Moving on to Knotted Cord, what made you decide to start the company and when did you first start it?

Kevin: I don’t know that I had a like, “Hey, I’m going to start a paracord company or hey, I’m going to start doing this.” It was really – I always had like an interest in knots and learning knots and I like learning little skills like that and I’ve always had this interest in learning things like that.

So I always had fun with knots. When I got my GORUCK bag, I wanted to get a handle for it so I decided to make one out of paracord for myself. I had a couple of people compliment it, like it so I made a few for some friends in the area that were doing an event up in Flagstaff and kind of started rolling there.

Brian: That’s awesome.

Kevin: I think that was early 2015. So in the springtime of 2015 is when I made, I finally got around to getting my own GORUCK bag and making my own handle, making some handles for some locals doing the Flagstaff event in 2015.

Brian: Awesome. So how were they received by the people for the Flagstaff event?

Kevin: I wanted to have other people test them out. I had some local a friends that do events on a regular basis, so I gave a couple of handles out to have them test them out. I wanted to try it out before I really started mass marketing them anywhere.

They really enjoyed it, they have different uses and different thoughts on them. Some of them really like just having the handholds for overhead work. Some people actually liked having it to have a buddy grab on to help pull them as they’re going on a route to make sure the spacing, things like that. There were a couple of different uses came out of it because of that event, because there were about four people that had them during that event and they kind of all sound different things that they really liked about it.

Brian: That’s awesome. It’s really interesting to see the different use cases once people actually started using the product and figuring out what they like about it, so very cool.

Kevin: Yeah.

Brian: Before we move on, would you like to describe for those who haven’t seen one of your handles, what we’re talking about here?

Kevin: The best way to describe them, I do two primary of like my standard paracord handles. They’re designed to be attached to the front MOLLE of the GORUCK bags but I can make them custom to any size with the different brand pack but it’s designed to be attached via carabiners and so I either usually do fish tail, which is one type of knot or a cobra knot and both of those can have some variation on one color, two color with some decorative stuff added to them. Things like that. But they’re just kind of meant to be strapped to the front MOLLE so that you can have a good handhold on the bottom end of the ruck since the top handle usually is sturdy enough on its own.

Brian: Awesome. I’ll link some pictures in too but like Kevin said, it goes on the three rows of webbing, and you should use a carabiner to put it in. I’ve seen some people use the Velcro it’s attached with when you originally get it, but you should use carabiners and you can attach it on there and like you mentioned, it gives you a grab handle at the base of your pack and then you also have that grab handle at the top of your pack.

So you can basically turn your ruck into another piece of workout gear. You can do overhead presses a lot easier with it and like you mentioned, with one of these handles you can use it for spacing at events because, you know, the cadre, they love to catch you when you’re a little too far away and turn you into a casualty. So they’re very awesome.

When you first started out, were there any challenges that you faced with Knotted Cord?

Kevin: No challenge, specifically. I didn’t have any specific goal in mind. The main purpose of Knotted Cords really has been to do – create a way for me to give back some of the donations to charities but also to kind of fund my own GORUCK addiction, my GORUCK bag addiction. That’s been the primary purpose.

I haven’t had a lot of like, challenges but I have to give All Day Ruckoff a huge credit to that because really early in the process, I reached you to you to try to get some paracord items on All Day Ruckoff and that really is where things kind of took off and the biggest challenge is actually just keeping stock available on your website.

Brian: Well, I’m glad I was able to help out, you know, in some way there. They’re definitely a hot seller and there was always people on the waiting list. So, you make a good product.

Kevin: Thank you.

Brian: Is there anything you wish you had done differently or sooner when you started out?

Kevin: Not really. Like I said, really early in the process, I kind of reached out to you. I knew All Day Ruckoff was kind of the primary website out there for rucking and the GORUCK community. So I knew if I could get hooked in there, that would really help me as well. So I wanted to provide a product that you didn’t have but also give me a means to get my handles and the other items I make and send it up your way out to a larger community that I would myself because I was so new to the community still as well.

Brian: Got it, that makes sense and thank you for that.

Kevin: No problem.

Brian: How was the GRT community reception when you first start out? I know you said that you kind of tested them with your local ruckers, but when you started bringing it out, I saw the post up in Ruck Mall.

Kevin: Yeah, it’s actually been really good. There’s always people that don’t like the idea of having a handle on the bottom end of their ruck and that’s fine and, you know, everybody has a different way of how they want their ruck setup.

But people that like having a handle, it’s been very receptive, really well receipted actually. Being able to customize colors, that is one of the things I offer as well instead, in addition to you, like the primary colors and the standard colors that are on your website, people can contact me directly if they want handles in their favorite sports team colors or whatever the color scheme that they want.

I am able to kind of customize them and make the ruck more unique for them and that’s why I think a lot of people use it for as well, to kind of just change their ruck up a little bit to make it theirs.

Brian: That has some added benefits as well, right? Because not only, you know, do you add some of your own personality to the ruck but there are times at an event where a cadre will throw all the rucks in a pile or, you know, something will happen and you’ll be tasked with finding your ruck within 40 seconds or a minute and if you have something on there that’s unique like a handle that has special colors in it or colors that you know then it’s that much easier for you to get your pack and help the team out.

Kevin: Yeah, that actually helps me personally a lot as well. Like I said, I have a GORUCK bag addiction and collect all black rucks. I don’t have any colored rucks at all. I had a black with green MOLLE rucker when they’d first come out and for some reason, I just couldn’t bring myself to carry it.

So I ended up selling it so all my rucks are all black and I put different colors on them and it helped me separate them as well but that case works in an events as well when you have a sea of black rucks in pile, yours can stick out with just a handle unique colors in it as well.

Brian: Yeah, and I know that all too well. The ruck addiction. I actually just had a black and red GR1 show up this morning, so I was pretty excited about that. It took a long time to track it down but it’s here now.

Kevin: That’s kind of a unicorn.

Brian: It is, they did not make many of them but I was fairly persistent and I guess it paid off.

Kevin: I finally saw an orange with black MOLLE ruck last night and I was really surprised at how much I like it. It is super bright, though.

Brian: That’s wild.

Kevin: I’m wondering if I would actually carry one of those, which is really weird considering I like all black rucks.

Brian: Only one way to find out, right?

Kevin: Exactly. I’ll probably get one eventually.

Brian: That’s power for the course right there. I would guess that your most popular item would be the ruck handle, has it always been that way?

Kevin: It has always been that way.

Brian: But I also know and I’ve seen posted recently that you’re coming out with new designs outside of the ruck handle. What are some of the newer things that you’re making?

Kevin: Yeah, ruck handles are by far the most popular and what I sell the most of but I like to create other items and customers that have come to me and said, you know, like, “Hey, I have this really cool idea but I don’t know if it’s even possible.” I kind of take that on as a challenge and so I’ve had a couple of customers come to me like, “Can you make this out of paracord or something that does this out of paracord?” That has inspired a few other products as well.

The most recent one was a pace lid leash. So it’s a handle attachment for your pace lid to attach it to a Nalgene bottle around the neck, kind of gives you a handle like the original Nalgene bottles do. Now the original Nalgene lids do. That’s one item. I do key chains, I’ve done bracelets, I’ve had requests for watch bands, dog leashes, dog collars.

Brian: Very cool.

Kevin: Yeah, recently I just had a request for a gun sling so that’s going to be the next thing I’ve got to figure out.

Brian: Well, that should be interesting. I saw that pace lid lease that you made, they looked really nice and, you know, I’ve got a couple of pace lids here, I really like them but the one thing I wish they had was some way to attach them to the bottle because you set the lid down and then you have to make sure to remember to grab it again. So I’m going to have to grab one of those off you.

Kevin: That was exactly my problem as well and I had always kind of thought about doing one of those but had a customer reach out to me and they were like, “Hey, do you have something like this?” It really pushed me, it kind of gave me the motivation to actually get out and make it. So about a month ago, I made a few and gave them out to some locals to try out and test them out and give me some feedback and that prompted a revision and that’s what actually was kind of publicized just recently.

Brian: Very cool. Like I said, I might have to hit you up and buy one of those, because it would definitely come in handy. So it sounds like a number of customers a have reached out for custom products. What’s the most interesting or memorable product that you’ve had to make?

Kevin: Like I said, I like finding and doing products that are kind of a challenge or something unique. They have a specific thing in mind that they cannot figure out a way to do. So those are kind of fun. I had a customer that does runs like an ultra-marathons and running marathons and the event series that they do was going green, which mean that they were not going to provide cups. You had to bring your own cup. So she had a clean canteen pint glass, which has a nice rim along the top.

But she couldn’t find a way to stash it in her running bag, which is basically barely enough for her bladder as it was. So I found a way to create a small attachment to attach it to the outside of the ruck. It did swing around in gypsy camp a little bit but it gave her access to the cup anytime she was on the course. So that was kind of unique and kind of fun to do. The other probably most fun item I made was I did made a koozie out of paracord but that is not probably something I will be doing on a regular basis. They take quite a long time to make.

Brian: I was going to say –

Kevin: But it was kind of fun to figure out how to do.

Brian: That must have taken a lot of work and a ton of paracord.

Kevin: Yeah, it took about a hundred feet of paracord and about two and a half to three hours to get the way I liked it, which is extremely long for any kind of paracord item that I usually make but it was fun.

Brian: It’s always fun to try out something new there so very cool. So what’s the process for reaching out to you and trying to get something custom made or a handle in custom colors. So if someone is listening and they think they wanted one of these, what should they do to get in contact with you?

Kevin: I have a couple of different ways people could reach me. On my website I have a contact me form and that we will work on the Facebook page. They can message in directly to the Facebook page as well and I’ve had many people especially people that I know through Ruck Mall that know me, they will actually just message me directly. Any and all of those methods work but they can email me off my website, contact me via my page or my personal Facebook page.

Brian: There you have it and I’ll include links to all of those in the show notes so people can get info quick, for sure. So is there anything that you have made for a specific use but then you found out it was used for something completely different than you intended?

Kevin: Yes, a couple of years ago I had made pacifier leashes out of paracord. So a clip on one end a loop on the other that you can attach to your pacifiers too when we had our first kid. My grandmother has recently asked me to remake it a little bit with clips on both ends because her and all of her friends when they’re out eating wanted something to help hold the napkin up like a bib. So they actually have about 10 of them that they all wear, kind of like that clips on like you’d see at the dentist office to hold up their napkin as they are eating and I have never thought about using a pacifier leash to tie it like that for that purpose. But it was kind of fun to see and that was kind of fun to talk to my grandmother about.

Brian: That’s amazing. Yeah, I bet you would have never guessed about that use.

Kevin: No, not at all.

Brian: So kind of on the same vein, speaking of customizing products for your own use, what are some of your favorite customizations that you’ve made to your GORUCK bags?

Kevin: The interesting part of customizations for my own bags is that I tend to come up with a product for somebody and ship them out and ends up not having a version for myself for quite a while. So I actually have quite a few products out there that I don’t even have one for myself yet. So I really like shoulder holds. I’ve got a couple of handles that attach to the shoulder MOLLE, they have MOLLE on the shoulder straps. Kind of a nice way to hold your hands up so they don’t get all puffy from long rucks and hanging out when you are out and about with friends and stuff.

So shoulder holders is something that is one of my favorite items I’ve made. It was something that was a request from a customer and we came up with the idea together and that’s one of my favorite items I’ve made. The other thing I really liked is top handle wraps. I like wrapping the top handle of my ruck with paracord. But I tend to do it in a quick release fashion. So it’s something that can get me 10 or 12 feet of paracord in about a second and a half kind of thing, if I ever need it.

Brian: Very cool. Yeah I have seen those in a number of packs wrapping the top carry handle. Haven’t done it on any of mine because I can’t really figure it out yet, but maybe I will spend half an hour someday and do it.

Kevin: I’ve had a couple of customers ask for extra cord in the custom colors of their ruck handle and I’ve shown them through either like a YouTube video that’s out there that somebody else has made on how to wrap that top handle. So that their top handle matches their ruck handle. There’s also a couple of different methods for quick release cord wraps as well. That’s one of the items that I plan on doing also in 2018 is revamping my website and adding more of a how to section as well.

Brian: Well that would be fun, because I know a lot of people get the products and they are curious how they are made. So that would be pretty cool.

Kevin: Yeah, it will be – I mean there is a big want for how to even just attach ruck handles to your ruck.

Brian: I was going to say.

Kevin: Yeah that is one that has been requested a couple of times and a lot of times, I’ve even FaceTimed, Facebook video chatted with people as they’re trying to get it all installed on their ruck handle. I will help out anybody that has questions on that as well. But yeah, I want to do a “how to” section with some picture or video tutorials on a couple of things like top handle wraps, things that I can’t do for you because I would have to have the ruck with me.

So those kinds of things are kind of nice things to have for tutorial for how you can do it and if you want me to ship you a couple of extra feet of cord that’s when you order a handle to max so you can do your top handle wrappings like that, yeah I can do that.

Brian: Very nice, that’s a great idea and it’s definitely more cost efficient than having them ship the ruck to you and then you shipping the ruck back.

Kevin: Yeah, I don’t typically have that happen. I’ve had local, I’ll meet up and then they’ll pay me — they’ll buy me a beer and I will wrap the top handle but that’s about it. Anybody else I’ll just send them the video tutorial.

Brian: Good call. So what’s next for Knotted Cords?

Kevin: My primary task right now is working on an All Day Ruckoff restock. I know you’ve been out of stock of handles for quite a while. I have about 60 ready to go, I’ve got about 30 or 40 that I wanted to get done, but I might just ship you this 60 here right here soon. That’s probably my number one task. It’s been on my list to do for quite a while. I have a lot of small things that I wanted to get done, some key chains I want to get made just kind of like gifts and thank you’s and stuff like that.

But really what drives where I’m going is a lot of more customer requests. So if I have customers that request something new I’ll make a new product otherwise I’ll try to get some stock built up of a few items and continue working on my restock for you.

Brian: That’s awesome and that’s really cool that you have so many people that like Knotted Cords that you can be customer driven like that, so congratulations. That’s very cool.

Kevin: Thank you. It also helps like I said, this is what I do on the side. It’s what I do for fun. It’s what I use to fund my own things and also drive some charity giving and so I don’t have a certain set of products that I need to get made each week, which is kind of nice. What drives me is customer orders and with the case that released recently that’s pushing my work queue up a little bit again right now. So busy with some of those and getting your stuff done right now and then any other custom orders that come in.

Brian: Very nice. Well we are getting to the holidays, so I’m guessing that there will be a few more of those.

Kevin: Perfect.

Brian: So your event calendar this year has been pretty busy. You’ve been doing a ton with Cadre Danny’s Capital Ruck Tour. I saw that Knotted Cords was a sponsor of Capital Ruck Tour, which is awesome and it’s amazing what you guys have gotten done.

Kevin: Yeah, it’s definitely been a fun year this year. It’s been very busy. I am a sponsor of the Capital Ruck Tour as well as there’s eight or nine other sponsors including All Day Ruckoff. That has been my primary events all year long. I actually just finished my sixth Capital Tour stop this week.

Brian: Congratulations.

Kevin: Thank you, thank you.

Brian: I mean those are no small feat. It’s a lot of miles to get in in a night and that’s awesome. Would you like to talk about Capital Ruck Tour at all?

Kevin: Sure. The Capital Ruck Tour is all about Cadre Daniel’s, his motivation and project and what he wanted to do this year and I knew Cadre Daniel from, he was the Cadre for my GORUCK event. So at the beginning of the year he said, “Hey I wanted to do this project.” He reached out to me and I got involved because of Cadre Daniel. I really didn’t know much about Operation Enduring Warrior at the beginning of this whole process but I met a lot of them.

I met a lot of members of that organization and it’s been nothing but even more inspiring than Cadre Daniel can be on his own. So he wanted to reach out and visit all 50 states and have a two-fold mission which was one, social fitness which is getting out, doing fitness and rucking with other people is good for your mental health especially for those fighting PTSD, things like that. So that was one half of the mission. The other half of the mission was raising awareness and funds for Operation Enduring Warrior, which is a charity organization he has recently become involved with as well.

So we ended up 53 stops on the tour this year. So all 50 state capitals. We added Washington DC, New York City and Phoenix ended up with two visits due to the calendar. He ended up having to drive through a second time so we did a second GORUCK stop here.

Brian: Might as well get a second stop in if possible right?

Kevin: That was my thought as well. Since I live here, we made him stop by and said, “Let’s ruck again.”

Brian: That’s awesome that Capital Ruck Tour came through against, you got another chance to ruck your town. What’s next for Capital Ruck Tour?

Kevin: The Capital Tour only has two more stops this year. Ln November 3rd there’s the Carson City, Nevada and November 4th is Sacramento, California and then we’re done. We are having a big end of tour party, Saturday night, November 4th after the ruck. At that point, the tour is done and we’re kind of mission complete and then it’s just wrap up, clean up, get stuff taken care of as far as getting all the thank you’s out and all the information about the tour and especially about OEW.

Brian: Yeah, that is very cool and that’s such a huge project, rucking to the capital of all 50 states and even went back and did what, a couple of them twice so.

Kevin: Only Phoenix twice.

Brian: Only Phoenix twice.

Kevin: Yeah. Danny does have somewhat of a connection here to Phoenix and his mom lives here. So he comes and visits.

Brian: Very nice, well can you let us in on any sneak peek of what’s happening for Capital Ruck Tour or for Knotted Cords in 2018?

Kevin: Sure, 2018 for Capital Ruck Tour we’re still kind of in discussion. We’ve got a lot of ideas. There’s been a lot of ideas bounced around including something as big as a Capital Tour of all the countries in Central and South America. There’s also been talks of trying to figure out a way to repeat the tour or some variation of the tour in 2018. We’re not sure exactly how to do it.

There were a lot of things that worked really well and there is a lot of cities that we had that were really tough. So we want to ease that process and maybe make it more of a team effort so it’s not Danny leading the rucks in every city. Maybe make it OEW athletes that can pick up their area and say, “Hey I want to lead a ruck march in the city for the ruck tour.”

So there is a whole lot of discussions. We need to also talk to OEW and see what their thoughts on it. Danny is going to be more involved with OEW next year as well so this might fall under his bucket there. I’m not exactly sure what the Ruck Tour is going to be. We’ll probably figure it out December timeframe and try to start planning.

As far as Knotted Cords, my goal for 2018 is really to be more consistent with the stock I have for items I have especially with All Day Ruckoff with some items I have. So that way I can have a few items pre-made ready to go all the time that people can just purchase on the fly. That’s my goal for 2018 is just to get better at consistent inventory.

Brian: Awesome. I’m very excited to see what Capital Ruck Tour has for 2018 and it seems like you have great goals for Knotted Cords as well. What is your event calendar look like for 2018? Have you thought about any GORUCK events or anything else?

Kevin: I had some lofty goals but family always trumps that and I have a second kid arriving in January. So my fall calendar and early half of 2018 is kind of completely on hold until things are settled with the kid. So I do have a personal goal to become a little more involved with some of the OEW events. So they’re big on running Spartan races and Baton Death March, the Ruck to Remember in DC. So I’d like to participate more in those including ready to do Spartan races where I can actually help out the team instead of just to run it on my own.

So that’s kind of like a personal goal I have for 2018. I don’t really have GORUCK events on my calendar. I do have a couple of credits I need to burn, which I will probably try to find an event that looks cool and sign up for that. I’ll try to maybe jump in to some of the local especially lights or scavengers because we have a couple of scavengers scheduled here for 2018 as well. So nothing definite until more things are settled out with the kid.

Brian: Yeah, I completely understand that. My youngest is, well when this airs it will be five months or so and events are definitely up in the air with that age. So I’ve got a lot on my list too. I mean GORUCK has just been pulling out a ton of special events, which looks really fun to do, but family first.

Kevin: Yeah, they all look really, really cool. But exactly, family is first and I’ll get out and do events and hang out and ruck with friends locally and that kind of stuff as much as I can until I am ready to go do some more events.

Brian: That sounds good. So before we go, are there any shout outs you want to give?

Kevin: My biggest thing is if you can find something that inspires you and makes you want to move forward, for me this year has been OEW but everybody has that. I just really want people to get involved and find something that really pushes them to better themselves. So I’m just glad that I am able to be a part of that for a lot of people this year that have participated in the ruck tour and so Cadre Daniel is a very inspirational person for me this year.

It’s been really, really nice too. I have known him for a couple of years but I really got to know him this year and really call him a close friend. So thank you to Cadre Daniel for everything he’s done this year, that’s my biggest shout out.

Brian: That’s awesome. Cadre Daniel is an amazing guy and that’s just really good advice all around. Thank you for giving that.

Kevin: No problem.

Brian: Well there you have it. If you want to get something from Knotted Cords, you can check out their website, hit them up on Facebook, on messenger, check Ruck Mall, lots of ways to contact them. Sounds like we’ll be getting a restock soon, which is really exciting. I know the wait lists are getting deep on those products. So everyone wants some and there’s only one guy making them so awesome job, Kevin.

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat today. It’s been great having you on and it’s always a pleasure talking.

Kevin: Thank you so much, Brian. I appreciate it especially all the support you’ve had and I’ll touch base with you more on what your wait list looks like and make sure that I get some of those taken care of as well.

Brian: Absolutely man, have a great rest of your week. Thank you so much again.

Kevin: Thank you.

The post ADR 021: Kevin Maestri Interview (Knotted Cords) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

Blayne Smith became the president of GORUCK back in August of 2017. The announcement came as a surprise to some but having met Blayne in the past and seeing his interactions with Jason it really seemed to fit.

Blayne was nice enough to take time out of his day to chat with me about his new role at GORUCK, what he’s been doing, and what it’s like competing with Monster who is the president of GORUCK Nation.

Hopefully you enjoy this episode and if you had any questions about what Blayne is doing at GORUCK it clears them up. In addition, it will be interesting to see what Jason is able to tackle now that Blayne is involved and handling some of the tasks he used to do.

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: Blayne, thank you so much for taking time out of your day. I know you’re an incredibly busy person being the president of GORUCK. Thank you. Thank you again for chatting with me. How are you doing?

Blayne: I’m good, man. Thanks for having me.

Brian: Absolutely. It’s my pleasure. Before we get into your current position as the president of GORUCK, let’s start out with your involvement in GORUCK and the GORUCK community. How did you stumble upon GORUCK as a company?

Blayne: I’m not 100% sure, but I think my first sort of real exposure to it was I had a friend named Mike Pick, who’s a cadre, Cadre Chase. If any of you guys have had him out there. We went to the same CrossFit gym in Tampa and he was one of the early members actually of the Tampa Team RWB chapter there as well, and we just kind of got to know each other a little bit. He kept mentioning over the weekend, he’s like, “Hey, I can’t do anything this weekend. I’m leaving town to do a GORUCK event.” I was like, “What are you talking about? You’re making people — What? Like do flutter kicks or carry logs or burpees?” I didn’t fully understand what he was doing.

He started to explain it to me and then I started to look a little bit more into it and I kind of got an understanding of what it was, and this must have been back in 2012 probably. That was my first kind of exposure to it, and then the first time I actually participated in anything GORUCK-wise I think was out in California. I was at an event out there. I think it was like the Clinton Global Health Summit or something, and there was like a custom GORUCK Light challenge that was going on at the end of the event for people that wanted to do it, and I had Aaron down in Cape Coral, Florida. He was out here, and that was the first time I did a Light and actually sort of understood how the whole thing worked, and that was really cool. Then from there it picked up steam pretty quickly once Team RWB and GORUCK started doing some work together.

Brian: That’s awesome. It sounds like you had a good time with that first event.

Blayne: Yeah, I really did. For me, I was — Just a complete transparency, I was very, very skeptical as people were telling me about GORUCK, and you guys are familiar with their community, so you know how it is. People get involved and a lot of them really get excited about them because it could be life-changing and it’s something that you’re not going to do in your everyday life. I would run into these people that were so pumped about GORUCK, and my initial disposition towards the whole thing was like, “I already served in the military. I already went to the real selection. I’m good. I’m certainly not going to pay somebody to make me do flutter kicks and low crawl and carry heavy stuff through the middle of the night. I’m all set with that. I understand that experience and I don’t really need more of it.”

When I did that first Light and I got a chance to do it alongside a really diverse group of people, some had served in the military, some not, some were like big GORUCK enthusiasts and some were new to it. To see the way that it affected the people and the way that they changed from the beginning of the challenge until 5 or 6 hours later at the end, the amount of confidence they had, the way the team formed together, the professionals and with the cadre, kind of quickly realized that this was actually not only a lot of fun, but it was providing a real service to people and that made me really start to love it.

Brian: Very nice. I know you’ve done a number of Light events especially with team RWB. Have you done a Tough?

Blayne: No. My first Tough was supposed to be NYC 9/11, and we had to evacuate because of the hurricane. I ended up driving up to Atlanta with my wife and daughter instead of going to that event. I think I’m going to do Zombie Apocalypse down in St. Augustine in two weeks, two weeks from today. That will be my first Tough as a participant, and then over the course of the next couple of months I’ll shadow probably several events and start to actually cadre some events probably the early part of next year.

Brian: Very cool. That was a question I was going to ask you later since you have the prerequisites to be a GORUCK cadre. I was going to ask if you’ve planned on doing that, and it sounds like you are. Very nice.

Blayne: Yeah, 100%. I think it would feel right to me. Frankly, I want to be involved with as many events as possible. You can count on seeing me out there both as a participant at times and as a cadre at other times. I really want to be as much a part of the community as I can and meet as many people and see as much. I haven’t done a Constellation yet. Big Daddy assures me that I’ve got to get out for a full weekend of firearms day events, so I’m excited about all of that.

Brian: Very cool. You’re going to have quite the busy schedule coming up.

Blayne: Yeah.

Brian: When did you start working for GORUCK?

Blayne: My first official day I guess was August 1st of this year. It would have been about 2-1/2 months ago, but it was probably — God! I guess it was about a year ago that Jason asked me to join the board of advisors at GORUCK, and so I’ve been involved in, I guess, some of my official capacity now for about a year, maybe a little over a year just kind of in that role, not doing much active, but being involved in the organization and having a better understanding of the business and everything that goes on kind of under the hood at GORUCK.

I’ve been doing that for a while. Then before that, in my previous job as executive director of Team RWB, Jason and I had grown pretty close and GORUCK and Team RWB had worked really closer together. I’ve worked with GORUCK for probably over three years now and have been, I guess, kind of officially involved for maybe a little over a year, but my first day as president was August 1st.

Brian: Very nice. Yeah, I know GORUCK and Team RWB have a decent history together now. I figured you had experienced a bit of GORUCK before stepping in as president.

Blayne: It was obviously not a decision that any of us took lightly, but it was something that — The more time that I spent around GORUCK and the more I got to know GORUCK, and Jason, and Emily and the whole team, the more excited I became about the potential and the possibilities for the organization. I think that’s pretty rare, by the way.

There are a lot of companies out there and brands that they look really good on social media. They advertise well and maybe they look like big companies or whatever, but once you start looking at them a little bit more closely, you can kind of start to see their warts. When you talk to people that work there, they’re like, “It’s really not that great after all.” That’s really been the opposite with GORUCK. The more I got to know about the organization and the closer I looked at it and the deeper I dove into it, the more encouraged I felt. The more I liked it and the more I saw a real opportunity to do something important here.

Because that was the case, it sparked a lot of conversation between Jason and I about like, “What could we do with this? How great can this be? What if we could work together on some of this stuff?” Took the leap and I’ve been really excited ever since.

Brian: It’s so true, many companies look great. They have a pristine Instagram presence, and then as soon as you put them even remotely under the microscope or start seeing what’s going on, it’s not as good as it’s cracked up to be. I think that’s one of the reasons why GORUCK has such a strong following, is that the people who do get close to GORUCK like it that much more.

Blayne: Yeah, I think leading with transparency is the way that Jason would describe it, and I really like that phrase. We were doing a Facebook Live thing yesterday and somebody was asking why do we do the state of GORUCK? Why does Jason just offer this completely kind of transparent look at everything from things we’ve screwed up to things we’re excited about to our financials? That’s just what we’ve decided to do. I think in 2017 and beyond, people want to be a part of brands that they know and they trust and they feel like they’ve got some voice in.

It can be a double edge sword, because it’s a lot of work to be in the Tough group, answering people’s questions and to do a Facebook Live every week to tell people what we’re up to, to take criticism and shots from people that aren’t happy with not having the right color they want or having a bad experience in an event. It is no small task to keep up with the fact that we really are directly in touch with our members, our customers, our community. That’s just something that’s unique to GORUCK and we’re committed to it.

Brian: That’s awesome, and I did catch most of the video. I have to finish it up today, but it’s really cool that you guys are doing that. They’re super informational and it’s just great to get that view into GORUCK HQ.

Blayne: Yeah, we’ve had a lot of fun with it. I think that we look forward to it now. I think we’ve done three in a row, but on a Wednesday we’re already talking about, “What are we going to do tomorrow?” It’s really a highlight of the week for Jason and I, because we love feeling connected to our work and what we’re doing. We have a lot of fun at HQ and we certainly enjoy our jobs and the company that we do it with, but there’s still plenty of spreadsheets, plenty of marketing meetings, plenty of conference calls. There are a lot of the things that exist in any business that make it hard or strenuous. It’s not all just kind of like surfing and rucking every day, as much as that would be cool. Having a chance to do something like that is exactly what we want to be doing most of the time. That’s easy for us.

Brian: Nice. You’re the president of GORUCK, and Jason is currently the founder and CEO. I know when you stepped in people were wondering how your two roles differ.

Blayne: Yeah, it’s a good question. To be completely honest, we’re still figuring some of that out with me being 70 or so days into the job, but I think the intent from the beginning was a couple of things. One; for Jason to really have a partner and someone that we can share ideas together, we can bounce things off each other, we can strategize and do some kind of the topline thinking about the direction of the organization. That’s from new products, to new events, to sort of strategic financial decisions, whether we should take on some investment or whether we should borrow some money from small business administration’s so that we can try to grow and buy more inventory and all of those things.

GORUCK’s had a really solid team for a long time and a lot of the components of it work very well almost autonomously. Gear ops runs really well, event ops with BD which runs really well. I think having an additional set of hands to help with some of that stuff on the strategic side is really important. I think part of it was Jason and I just really liked and trusted each other and had a very common vision, a very closely aligned vision for what we thought GORUCK could be.

The biggest kind of impetus for it was let’s get our heads together. Let’s work on this together. It will be a blast and we’ll be able to get more stuff done. There is that, but for the first kind of — I don’t know. Let’s say few months, 90 days, 6 months, maybe something like that, I’ve really been focused on a couple of things. One is kind of internal coordination and synchronization within the organization. Jason is a brilliant mind when it comes to kind of strategy and product development and storytelling and really kind of growing GORUCK as a community. I’ve been spending a lot of my time working with making sure that finance is talking to gear ops so that we’re buying the appropriate levels of inventory and we can pay for it and coordinating that with marketing to make sure that we have the right plan in place so we have good visibility on what products we’re going to have available this year in like let’s say Christmas time so that we can promote those products and make sure that we’re selling them in an appropriate price, just doing a lot of kind of back office kind of business operation stuff.

I’ve spent a lot of time doing that, and then the other piece that I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking at is kind of business development and growth opportunities. We function primarily as a business that is business to consumer, B to C. We make products and have services, events that we sell directly via an online website to customers. I think that’s the intent for us to kind of always do that, but I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how are ways that we can do that better. Who our audience is that we can reach that would love GORUCK and would love to be a part of this community but they just maybe haven’t met us yet.

I think a lot about and spent a lot of time talking to people from other industries, whether it’s in the kind of like the training and fitness industry or kind of the military and paramilitary spaces to basically find people who are kind of GRTs, they just don’t know it yet, if that makes sense. So that we can continue to grow GORUCK through a base of customers and a base of a community that is consistent with who we are and what we want to be, because we know those people are out there. We just have to think hard about where they’re at and how we connect with them, rather than just taking some sort of like nuclear bomb marketing approach where we just want to sell GR1s to anybody, because that’s not really a sustainable way I don’t think to build our business and to grow and be something great in the future. We want to find the people that resonate with our brand and with our culture and get them into the GORUCK family. That takes a little bit more work and it’s a little bit slower process, but I’m spending a lot of time thinking about that.

Brian: Very cool. That’s awesome. You mentioned that you’re doing a lot of work in the B to C space, business to consumer. I know in the past GORUCK has done some stuff in the B to B space with GORUCK solutions. Are you looking into expanding that at all?

Blayne: We are looking at it for sure. At this point we haven’t really made a firm decision on what’s that going to look like, but it’s something that I’ve spent a fair amount of time on over the last month or so trying to study and understand what the opportunities really look like. If we can do them as kind of a best in class provider.

This falls into a category of something that I call opportunity management, and it’s a high quality problem. It’s something that we’re fortunate to be in the position, but anytime you take energy or resources; money, anything like that, any kind of resource; your time, energy, money, and you apply it to something, you have to understand that you’re taking it away from something else. We don’t just have cash sitting around such that we can hire 15 more people right now to go work on a new problem.

If Jason or I or anybody at GORUCK decides to spend some time, energy, money on exploring a new opportunity, let’s say it’s GORUCK Solutions type stuff where we want to do maybe leadership teambuilding and communication training for a corporation or whether we want to do some firearms instruction as a subcontractor for a government entity. We have the capabilities if we wanted to to do any of those things, which is awesome. What we need to understand fully is how much work is going to go into getting those types of accounts. How much work is going to go into servicing those types of accounts? How well does that pay? Is it worth it when we consider that that’s going to take some time away, at least initially from our ability to focus on things like gear, apparel, Lights, Toughs, Heavies, Constellation, Firearm’s Day?

We are looking at it. We may or may not get a little bit more into that. I think it would be exciting. I think it would be cool, frankly because I think we could do it really, really well. I don’t mind saying. I think we could do it better than a lot of people that are currently kind of providing those services just because we have this depth of knowledge and experience around things like teamwork, leadership, communication, firearms, tactics, etc. The question is; when do we do it and how much effort do we put into it, and is it worth it if it’s going to take away some effort from something else?

We’re first committed to improving our quality and our experience through gear and events and apparel, but if the opportunity is there to do some other stuff, we’ll definitely look at it.

Brian: Awesome. Very logical approach, and it’s always nice to hear that. GORUCK is a little unique and that there’s actually two presidents there. You’re the president of GORUCK, and I believe Monster is the president of GORUCK Nation. What do you two argue about the most and who usually wins?

Blayne: Monster always wins. That’s an SOP at GORUCK, that Monster is the boss. Ultimately we all work for him, and he’s ultimately going to get his way. What do we argue about the most? Two things. One I would say is that Monster shows up at my feet pretty regularly and just lays on his back as if I should drop whatever I’m doing and just rub his belly. I’m wresting with it on a daily basis as to whether I actually just cave and like scratch his belly. Maybe he’ll get up and go away, or whether I hold out and I just kind of say, “Hey, Monster. This is not my job to rub your belly, and I’ve got a lot of important stuff to do right now. You can just kind of lay there on your back.”

But he will hold out. He’ll lay there on his back and show you his belly for an extend period of time until you sort of cave. His will power is pretty good. Then he’ll kind of lay on my feet so I’m paying more attention to him. There’s that.

The other thing is we order a new couch. Anyone who’s been to GORUCK HQ and has seen the old brown couch knows that that is — It’s not a couch you probably want to sit on at this point. Maybe you do, but no lifeguard on duty. You’re assuming some risk.

We got a new couch in our new office space that it’s awesome. It’s leather. Emily ordered it form some place in Canada and people love to sit on it and have meetings and whatever, and Monster will not get off that damn couch. It’s not even worth — I used to try to shoo him off of it and it’s like, “Hey, man. This is the new couch. I don’t want you scratching up the leather or whatever.” He doesn’t not give one shit about that, and I’ve completely given up, and so now it’s Monster’s couch first.

Brian: Oh, man! That brown couch was something. That was one of those that you kind of sit on for the experience and then you quickly get up and make sure nothing came with you.

Blayne: Yeah. Before Selection, we knew we’re going to have a lot of people in town over Selection weekend. Jason and I carried that couch out on to the street in front of the building and we totally took it apart, all the cushions off of it. We pulled — There’s like a Hide A Bed in there. We didn’t take any photos of what that looked like, because it was appalling and it took us quite a long time to get all of the animal hair and crayons that Bomber had eaten and spilled on there and food. It was really bad. It’s a little better now, but there are some stains that just don’t wash it off.

Brian: No kidding. Speaking of GORUCK Selection, how much did you know about that event before class 019 started?

Blayne: I knew a fair amount about it. I paid pretty close attention to last year’s selection, and then obviously Jason and I talked a lot about Selection in the months kind of leading up to it. I’d never experienced it firsthand. I had never been there like to watch it around the clock, but I had a decent idea of mechanically how it ran.

I didn’t fully understand like how it would play out, because if you just look at it on paper it looks like, “Man, that’s just a ton of physical activity.” Just physically, it’s going to break a lot of people off. I remember asking Jason like, “Why are people leaving? Why are so few people completing it? Is it just physical?” He’s like, “No. Most of them quit.” I was like, “Oh, okay. Interesting. Let me see how this works.” I was really curious about it kind of going into it.

In terms of how we were going to cover it and do the Facebook Live and all of that, we were — I guess we had a little bit of an idea of what we kind of wanted to do, but we were sort of winging it, because — Also because we didn’t think that the community was going to come through and sign up for enough challenges in 2018 to sort of earn the live coverage.

Up until I left and I did the 12 miler with the candidates, and I was out walking on the 12 miler and I got a text on my phone from Jason saying they did it. They hit the 2018 points. I was like, “Oh! Crap!” Turned on Facebook Live and we just kind of started doing it.

Brian: Yeah, it was quite the experience this year with Facebook Live. Did you know going into it that you entire weekend might be consumed by following the candidates around filming?

Blayne: Yeah. We laid down — When we kind of laid down the gauntlet and said, “Look, guys. If you want Jason and I to live out of a truck and stay awake all weekend filming this thing, sign up for 2018 events. I’ve informed my wife and I said, “Hey, I might be completely out of the loop for the whole weekend.”

Then, like I said, it looked like it wasn’t going to happen. I had kind of started to assume that, “Well, it’s just going to be a normal weekend. I’ll go out there and I’ll watch it, but late at night I’ll go home and sleep in my own bed and all of that.” It wasn’t until late in the game that we realized it was for sure going to happen that way.

Brian: That was awesome. I was one of the people who figured out that you can actually cast a Facebook Live video to your TV, so I had a beer, some popcorn, some chips and had GORUCK Selection going on the big TV. It made for quite the weekend.

Blayne: Dude, it was crazy. I could not believe the number of people that were interested in watching it. I guess I just kind of have that mentality myself. I’m like, “Who wants to tune in to watch this thing that we’re doing?” But I was actually looking just this morning. I can probably pull it up for you. I was looking at the stats of the number of people that watched just that last video, so that the one from kind of Alex walking down the beach during the long walk until the completion, when he earned his patch, and the number of people that saw that video that tuned in and commented and stuff was absolutely mind-blowing. Let me see if I can — I’ve actually got those stats right here. Let me see if I can pull it up.

That video reached over 720,000 people. It got over 208,000 views and was commented on over 11,000 times. That is mind-blowing, that people tuned in to watch one guy walk down the beach for like an hour and a half and get thrashed during the shark attack. It was compelling to be there, so I guess I’m not saying it was a silly thing to do by any stretch, but I was blown away by the number of people that were interested in the story.

Brian: That’s incredible. I’m guessing if someone sat you and Jason down and said, “Hey, how many people do you think are going to view this?” You wouldn’t say 700,000.

Blayne: No. No, of course not. Jason told me before, he was like, “Selection, for whatever reason, is just electric. They’re interested in it. They get behind it. It’s always exciting.” I’m like, “I’ll take you at your word.” If he was really being honest, I don’t think he would have imagined that that many people would have gotten exposed it.

Brian: It’s awesome, and it’s quite the intro for some of them into GORUCK. It was really nice that you guys spent some time explaining during the live videos that this was GORUCK Selection and not every GORUCK event.

Blayne: Yeah, that was a little bit of a double edged sword, because thousands of people were exposed to GORUCK for the first time through this coverage of GORUCK Selection. That’s great that they’re interested and they know what GORUCK is now, but the danger in that is GORUCK Selection is not indicative at all of a GORUCK event. It’s the only event that’s like that. It’s actually really almost nothing like all of the other GORUCK events. The last thing we would want was for people to think that if you sign up to GORUCK, this is what you can expect.

Some of the events are tough. They’re definitely strenuous and the cadre are up in your business, but it’s not —

Brian: Never on that level.

Blayne: Not like that. Yeah. It definitely took some explaining, and I’m sure there are some people that just tuned in and are like, “What the hell am I watching? This is crazy. No thanks. Not for me.” But I hope at least some people were able to kind of separate the two. The truth is GORUCK isn’t for everybody. That’s okay too, right?

Brian: It’s true. You said before that you’re looking for people who are GRT and just don’t know it yet, haven’t done the event. I think anyone who falls in that category after seeing GORUCK Selection, which is give GORUCK a nice Google search and see that GORUCK Selection is one of over a thousand events I think you guys put on a year. It’s just .1% of the GORUCK Event calendar. It’s not the whole GORUCK Event calendar.

Blayne: Yeah, for sure. Look. There are lot of people that look at something like Selection, and if you don’t get a little bit fired up, if that doesn’t make you at least a little bit want to put your rucksack on or do some pushups or climb over a wall or do something, then you’re probably not a good fit for GORUCK. I’m not saying you need to like rush out and sign up for Selection, because that’s certainly not for everybody and I would not recommend that, but it’s just like when you were a kid. When you were a kid and you watched Rocky or you watched Rambo or Terminator or something, you’re hyper afterwards, right? You were like wrestling in the living room with your brother and you were like going out in the yard playing guns or playing commando, because it inspired you to want to do something.

If GORUCK Selection does anything for people, it should inspire them to want to train, to want to be active, to want to commit to something, to take up some challenge that is worth working for and is worth sacrificing for. It shouldn’t be GORUCK Selection for most people, but whatever it is, if you’re not at least a little bit inspired to get out of your house, get off your ass and go fight for something, go work for something, after watching Alex Stavdal put in that kind of performance, then you’re not kind of what we’re looking for, and that’s okay.

Brian: It’s a great way to put it. Speaking of getting motivated, getting fired up, a lot of people watched the live feed, have never done an event, are considering signing up for either a Light or a Tough, what advice do you have for those people who have never done a GORUCK event but are listening and considering either one of those, a Light or a Tough?

Blayne: Yeah, I would say two things. One is you’re almost certainly capable of more than you think you are. I talk to a lot of people that they’re like, “I’m not ready to do a GORUCK challenge. I’ve never done that before. I’ve never carried a log. I’m not in great shape right now.” That kind of thing.

I would say especially for the Lights, you are far more capable that you think you are. Once you get in the environment, once you get started, once you start doing that first kind of welcome party pushup or whatever, you’re going to be — Part of it, there’s going to be the people there, the energy there, and that’s going to allow you to achieve more than you think you can.

I think in most cases we believe more in people than they believe in themselves. Believe you can do it, especially, like I said, in a light, and just show up and give it a go and you’re more than likely going to surprise yourself. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is GORUCK events are team events. These are team challenges, and there are people there that want to see you succeed. I’m not recommending you show up to like the Joe Warner heavy as someone who’s like out of shape and where the team has to carry you. What I will say that if you show up and you work hard and you do your best, the rest of the team, the rest of the class is going to want to help you. That’s one of the beautiful things about GORUCK is that we want to see the people to our left and to our right be successful. We want to see them finish. Nobody wants you to quit. Nobody wants you to get hurt or be unsuccessful.

If it’s your first time, especially if you can get a friend or someone to go with you, show up and the class will help to pull you through the event far more than you might think. I’ve seen a lot of times where people, they want to quit, and someone else from the class is like, “No. Don’t quit.” I’ve even seen a cadre — Don’t tell him I said this, but I’ve even seen some cadre get in people’s ear and kind of say, “Hey, don’t fucking quit. Trust me. You’re going to be upset with yourself if you do. You can do this,” and people carry on.

You’re probably capable of more than you think, and there are people there that want to help you be successful. Just put in a little bit of training, show up with a good attitude. It’s more important probably to be mentally prepared than physically prepared, and you’ll be fine.

Brian: That’s great advice. That’s so true. People are much more capable of things than they think, especially when it comes to these events and just that smile in that face, because they’re good. It’s a good time and it will end eventually.

For people who watch the live feed and get pumped up about GORUCK Selection and possibly signed up for GORUCK Selection based on that, what advice do you have for them?

Blayne: Yeah. This advice would be a little different. I noticed a bunch of things during Selection, and one of them is it’s so hard and it’s so long that some things are just going to happen. You could roll an ankle really bad. You could get dehydrated really bad, things start to cramp up. You have to show up to Selection understanding that there’s a real possibility, maybe even a real likelihood that you’re going to fail. By fail I mean that you’re not going to finish Selection, failing by that definition only. That’s hard for a lot of people, and I commend everyone that shows up and wants to start Selection knowing that there’s a greater chance than not that they are not going to be successful in completing this task. That’s an important thing, because most people in this world just avoid things they’re not good at. They won’t sign up for something unless they’re 100% sure that they’re going to be successful at it. You see this all over the place in every kind of endeavor, whether it’s in business, whether it’s just like a new lieutenant that’s out with his unit and like doesn’t want to do the radio class with his troops because he doesn’t know how to do it and he doesn’t want to look foolish for not knowing how to use it.

One of the worst things you can do in life is avoid the things that you’re not good at, or just avoid signing up for or going after or committing the things where there’s less than 100% chance of success. If you want to be mediocre your entire life, live that way. That’s the first piece of advice I would say is have the stones to sign up and show up and put in your best effort knowing that your best might not be good enough. That’s a painful pill to swallow, but that is life and it’s going to make you better. You’re certainly not going to — You might fail at GORUCK Selection, but you’re definitely not going to be a failure if that’s the attitude you have. That’s number one; give it everything you have, knowing that everything you have might not be good enough and be okay with that. You got to be satisfied with the effort you put in.

Now, having said that, what’s going to make you successful or not is going to be what you do leading up to the beginning of Selection, what you do from the first — The gear layout until the final end, at the patch ceremony, that’s important, but you’re only going to be able to endure that if you’ve put in a ton of work on the frontend.

What I saw — And I commented a little bit of this on the live feed, I saw several people show up and they didn’t even have everything on the packing list. Unacceptable. If this is serious to you, if this is something you really want to be successful and you think you can finish GORUCK Selection, you need to show at least the level of detail to bring everything on the packing list.

There were almost half, I think, of the 30 or so — Not half. Over a third of the people didn’t pass the pushups or the sit ups. Look, that’s not a character assessment. Again, if you think you’re really going to be successful at this, then you should be able to pass the pushups and the sit ups by like double. You should be able to do that. You should be able to roll out at bed at 2 in the morning after being out drinking the night before and pass the pushups and sit ups, because you’re probably going to be nervous. You’re going to be graded to the standard. It might be hot. It might be cold in Ohio next year. If you can just barely do the requisite number of pushups and sit ups, if you can barely run 5 miles in 40 minutes, that’s not a recipe for success. You should have plenty of buffer space in there to account for the unknowns and to account for the conditions and the fatigue and some of that.

Control what you can control. Show up at a minimum knowing that you have every single thing on the gear list that you can crush the pushups, crush the sit ups, crush the run and crush the 12-mile ruck. If you’re “iffy” on any of those, you’ve already got doubt in your head. You’re already stressing yourself where you don’t need to. At a very minimum, make sure that you can absolutely destroy those basic physical requirements, and that way it’s no stress on your mentally, it’s going to be a limited stress on you physically. You can just sort of get that out of the way before the real fun begins at the welcome party.

Then, from there, you guys have seen a lot of this now, whether it’s through last year’s Selection coverage or this year’s, which was more live. You have an idea of the physical test you’re going to be put up against. Prepare yourself, show up ready, and you’ve got a real shot. We’re certainly not trying to prevent people from passing, but in my mind there were only a handful of people that showed up to Selection this year truly committed and truly prepared to the extent they could have made it. Unfortunately, only one of them made it through to the end, but you got to put in the work out a ton.

Brian: Absolutely. Specially a lot of people watching the live coverage don’t realize that or might not realize it if they aren’t used to GORUCK, but you have to put in 17 miles before the event even starts. Just part of the admin phase; the pushups, the sit ups, the 5-mile run, 12-mile ruck, that’s 17 miles you’re putting on your body before you even get to the welcome party into the real GORUCK Selection event. You’ve got to come in being able to crush.

Everyone who’s been on the podcast so far who’s completed Selection had said that you have to come in being able to just crush those standards at the beginning if you want to have any shot at completing the event.

Blayne: Yeah. I had a mentor when I was a cadet, because one thing that future lieutenants are always really worried about is Ranger School. There’s so much anxiety around Ranger School, like, “I’ve got to get my Ranger tab.” “How am I going to pass Ranger School?” “Oh my God! How hard is Ranger School? Tell me about Ranger School.” Anyone who’s been in the infantry or has an experience with this in the army, you know exactly what I’m talking about. There’s so much damn anxiety around Ranger School, that it’s like some crazy Holy Grail thing that — By the way, hundreds of people graduate from every month, so it’s clearly doable.

The advice that this — I think he was a major, gave to me, was, “You need to do two things. You need to be able to absolutely crush all the PT standards, because that does not need to be a concern for you. You need to go in knowing physically, “I got this,” because that will reduce your physical stress and it will also reduce your mental stress and anxiety, because you’re not worried about whether you’re going to fallout of the ruck or fail pull ups. That was his first piece of advice.

The second was, “Just pay attention and do what you’re told.” They’re going to tell you exactly what they want you to do and they’re going to lay it out in pretty fine detail. Don’t overthink it. Just follow their instruction and do what you’re told.

Ranger School is a good course. You certainly learn a lot there, but I would dare to break it down as simply as that and say show up completely physically prepared and just shut up and do what you’re told, be a good teammate, and you’re going to be successful. That goes along with a lot of things in life probably.

Brian: It’s so true. I think from watching the live coverage people can tell that — You told all the candidates what they had to do. You didn’t leave too much open for interpretation. It’d do what you’re told.

Circling back real quick to your new role as the GORUCK president, I mean you’ve done a lot in your first couple of months there. You’ve got just engulfed in GORUCK culture, you got to experience GORUCK Selection on the ground at the event doing the live stream, just tons of different opportunities. What surprised you the most about working for GORUCK?

Blayne: What has surprised me the most about working here? Not to cop out, but I would say I’ve not been terribly surprised about anything, because I was pretty familiar and spent a lot of time at GORUCK HQ before I started. I haven’t been terribly surprised by anything. I think I kind of had eyes wide open in getting into this.

One of the things that has been I guess sort of interesting for me is this kind of change for me and that I get to work in the office with everybody every day, and I really, really enjoyed that. In my last job we had a distributed workforce. We had about 30 employees, but they’re all spread out all over the country. I had a couple of people I ended up working with in the office in Tampa where I was, but for the most part it was Skype and Google Hangout and email and it was all very virtual. I spent the first few years working on that job basically running the organization out of Starbucks on Howard Avenue in Tampa, and that was okay. That has its perks, but I really missed being on a team and being kind of close to people every day. I’ve been — I don’t know if surprised is the right word, but I’ve really enjoyed being able to get on my bike and go into the office every day and be surrounded by people who are working their butts off out of this and to be able to like bullshit about the CrossFit workout that morning or just pull someone aside, just like, “Hey, what do you think about this?” Rather than having to make it a big thing, do emails.

I guess I’ve been surprised at how much more efficient and effective you can be when you’ve got a close knit group of people that are right there with each other. That’s been awesome.

Brian: Very nice. Definitely answers the question. Before we go, is there anything else that you want to talk about, shout outs you want to give or anything you want to say to the community?

Blayne: I would just say thanks to the community at large. I know that I’ve come into this somewhat recently, and although I have a background in Special Forces and Jason and I have been friends for a while, I’ve really only just kind of been involved in the GORUCK community and I’ve not been sort of a hardcore, diehard GRT that’s got like a hundred events under my belt.

I’m sure that there are people that were kind of wondering if things were going to change or who is this dude, but I’ve not seen much of that. People have been really accepting and supportive, and I’ve had a blast already just getting to know a lot of people across the GORUCK community, whether they stop in at HQ or whether I’ve seen them out on an event, or just interacting with them over email or over social media. I really, really appreciate it and I know that this is something that you guys take really seriously. Believe me, I understand that, and that’s incredibly important to me as well. I would just say thanks for kind of welcoming me into the family and being so supportive and putting some trust in Jason and I and kind of our vision for the future, because I can tell you, I sit next to him every day at work. We don’t take it lightly. We take very seriously the community that has been around GORUCK. We definitely don’t want to let you guys down. Yeah, I’m looking forward to years more of it.

Brian: Awesome. Glad to have you. Been great so far, Blayne. Thank you so much for everything, man. Thanks for taking the time to chat with me. Thanks for being so great with that live coverage on Selection. It’s been fun.

Blayne: Yeah, that’s been a blast, man. Thank you for having me.

Brian: Absolutely. Thanks so much for taking just so much time out of your day to chat. You’ve answered a lot of questions I have and I know some questions that the rest of GORUCK nation has had. Truly appreciate that. If you want to do an event with Blayne, St. Augustine Zombie Apocalypse.

Blayne: I will likely be at the Veteran’s Day in Jacksonville, but I’m not sure. I may be somewhere else at the Veteran’s Day event. I might push out and go to one somewhere. St. Augustine on the 27th of this month, and then I will likely be around HQ at one of the events for Veteran’s Day as well.

Brian: There you have it. October 27th, St. Augustine, do an event with the president of GORUCK; Blayne Smith. Thank you so much for taking all these time out of your day. Truly appreciate it, and I’m just really excited to see what you continue to bring to GORUCK and just everything that you’ve got going on. Thank you so much, Blayne.

Blayne: All right, Brian. Appreciate it.

Brian: All right, take care.

The post ADR 020: Blayne Smith Interview (GORUCK President) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.

In this interview we’ve got BOTH Bill Vernon (founder of Team Ninja) and Cadre Mikey Bee (GORUCK Cadre and all around badass) here to talk about the Santa Ruck GORUCK Custom Events.

The Santa Ruck events are a huge fundraiser that Team Ninja runs to raise money for the Riley Hospital NICU. The Non-Indy events raise money for local charities so everyone who registers knows that they are helping their local community.

This will be the fourth year that Team Ninja has run this charity event and it continues to expand. This year Santa Ruck events are occurring in Indy, DC, Philly, Seattle, and St. Paul. If you’re in the area we highly recommend checking them out. If you’re not check out the donation link anyways and maybe we can get Cadre Mikey Bee to wear a Christmas-themed Speedo during the Indy 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: I’m here talking with Bill Vernon, who is the founder of the Team Ninja Ruck Club based out of Indiana; and Cadre Mikey Bee, who is an integral part of this year’s Santa Ruck and Indi Ball events. How are you guys doing today?

Bill: Good, thanks.

Mikey: Great, Brian. Thanks for having us.

Brian: Super excited to have you guys on. I was able to take part in Santa Ruck in Seattle last year, and it was amazing, and I’m just glad to hear that it went well everywhere and it’s coming back.

Bill: Yeah, we had a really good showing last year and it was something that lieu to expand out, and everybody jumped at the opportunity, so kind of keep it going.

Brian: Awesome. Before we get into the Santa Ruck event, Cadre Mikey Bee answer this questions on the previous podcast where he talked about GORUCK Selection, but I want to direct these at you, Bill. Let’s start out with your involvement in the GORUCK community. How did you even stumble upon GORUCK?

Bill: My first class was class 182 in Indianapolis in November of 2012, and back then there was no Heavy or Light, it was just the GORUCK Challenge. My brother-in-law actually found out about it first and said, “Hey, you’re doing the Spartan Races and Tough Mudders and stuff, you should do this.”

I took a look at it at the very, very limited material that was available online about this thing called the GORUCK challenge and said, “Okay, fine. I’ll do it,” and expected him to be there as well.

Back then the internet was just blank when it came to GORUCK, at least the challenge part. They didn’t want it to be publicized. They didn’t want it to be out there, and they wanted it to be this unknown. In my head I’m thinking the worst of the worst. It’s going to be nothing more than a drill sergeant yelling at us making us do pushups till we puked. You get ready. You wrap your bricks. You take a pool of laps around the neighborhoods, see how it holds up and over-pack like everybody else does on their first one. We headed out. I actually talked to my brother in doing this as well as one of our friends, and she was practicing and getting ready for this as well. Very much all doing the same thing, trying to do as much of our normal workouts as possible just with our ruck.

Until the day comes, we get to the circle, downtown Indy, and my brother-in-law was a no show, so the three of us ended up with the event. We had Bo as our cadre, and it was eye-opening. All we had to do for our “welcome party” was one perfect pushup in sync for the entire class. It took us well over an hour of just doing pushups to get one pushup. That right there — Finally, just the step-off. Once we got it done and to step-off. It couldn’t have been at a better time. Everybody’s feeling great, and then we spent the entire night going through areas of Indianapolis that I didn’t know existed, under bridges, through rivers, carrying logs. Where have you found these logs? I have no idea. I told everyone not to do this event. This is something you don’t want to do, “Oh! I want to do it. Sign me up. When is the next one?” “All right, fine. I’ll do another one.” I did one with a handful of more friends.

Again, it sucked. It was horrible, but everybody else wanted to do it, so we ended up getting our own custom Light. At that point, Lights had come out. It was Ranger Jason Jay, and it was his first “Light”. All he’d done prior to that were heavy. We got a Heavy-Light, and it killed us, and we still came back for more. That’s my intro at GORUCK, and we’ve had — I don’t know, so many events here locally and we’ve probably had 300, 400 Ninjas go through GORUCK events at this point.

Brian: The question I’ve got is did your brother-in-law ever do an event?

Bill: No. No, he has never done an event. He’s more of a triathlon, kind of running kind of guy. The idea of putting a weighted ruck on his back would probably snap him in two.

Brian: Oh! Well, I’m glad he convinced you to signup, because I’m guessing that without him doing that you would have taken a much longer time to find GORUCK and you might not be as far along as you are with getting all the awesome stuff you’re doing and going. Even if he didn’t show up for an event, thank you to Bill’s brother-in-law.

Bill: There you go, Jeff. There’s your callout.

Mikey: Hey, Jeff — Jeff should at least come out and do the Santa Ruck. Kids do it for Pete’s sake, Jeff. I’m calling you out right now, Jeff.

Bill: I think we’re going to have to force that a little bit.

Brian: There you go, Jeff. Come out, do the Santa Ruck.

Mikey: How many events does your sister does, Jeff? Oh, man! That’s a low blow bro. Just throwing it out there.

Brian: That’s awesome. At what point did Team Ninja start? Was that around before you started doing GORUCK events, or was that formed after you had already done a couple?

Bill: Actually, Team Ninja started about a year prior, so it’s 2011. We were getting ready to do a Spartan, and that’s actually how Team Ninja started, was all around Spartan Races and OCRs in general, or obstacle course races. I wanted to do a Spartan, and so they said that if you signed up a group of 15 or more, you get $5 off. All we had to do is create a “team”.

And so I created this team and I had a group of people from my taekwondo school, and so we were all going to go to the every first Indiana Spartan together. As I’m filling out the firm on the Spartan website, I’m yelling out to Carli, “Okay, I need a team name. It’s going to be everybody from taekwondo school. What do you want to name it?” She came back immediately with, “What about Team Ninja?”

In a 10-second conversation, the name came up and Team Ninja was born. We started there. We did the Indiana Spartan, the very first race of Spartan Race in Indiana with — It was 21 of us. Right after that we found out there’s more of these events, and we pretty much got hooked right then and there. We found out that there are more of these events nationwide, and so we started doing some local races. We were doing 5Ks, we’re doing Color Runs, we’re doing Tough Mudders and more and more Spartans, and then they created that whole trifecta thing, so then we started doing lots of those and we were travelling cross-country to go do Spartans.

Then we got into the GORUCK scene, and so I started really pushing for that and getting people to do those and then we’re back on Spartan and Tough Mudder. Then we started half marathons, full marathons, and as we’re expanding out, we’re taking our tents. So we got these really 20×10 customized popup tent and we’d take that to events and not really pushing the team. More like just going as a place to crash and have people come up and, “Oh! Hey, I want to be a ninja.” “Okay. Go to our Facebook page. Everything is there. It doesn’t cost anything to join. Cool! You’re in. Now you can sit on our tent, done.”

We just had people signing up from there and we have people — As we’re traveling around, we had people in different cities signing up and joining us, and so we started kind of making these mini chapters across the country and it’d be just little groups of ninjas that would get together to do their own workouts or some would only get together every time a race came into town or a GORUCK event came into town. It’s more or less little specialized, but it grew from there and now we’re well over 2,500 members.

Brian: That’s amazing. Congratulations, guys.

Bill: Thanks.

Brian: That’s awesome. Who would have thought?

Bill: Thank you. Not me. I didn’t plan on any of it. I still try to do as little as possible to let the group decide on some things and where the actual team goes and is organized as such. Whatever people want to do we do, and that’s the whole motto of Team Ninja is get up and do something new. Whether it’d be you want to go for a walk or you want to do an Ironman or — That’s kind of two completely — I’d go from one side of the spectrum to the other there, but everything in between. All you have to do is post it on our Facebook group, say, “Hey, there’s an event coming up. It’s a Color Run. I want to go do that,” and see if somebody wants to go with you. Nobody wants to do these things for the first time by themselves. That’s one way just to get people out, get theme empowered to be able to do it by having somebody there with them. It could be a Tough Mudder, it could be a triathlon. It could be going out to do your first half marathon. Well, you need a training partner to get you out of bed in the morning and hold you accountable to get out there and running. That’s primarily what it’s all about. We’re an all-encompassing group of outdoor athletes, we call it.

Brian: I like that. That’s awesome. I’ll definitely put links to everything in the show notes so that if there’s people looking to join up, they’ll know where to go.

One of the custom events you guys were on is a yearly event. It’s called Santa Ruck, and it was just a GORUCK Light, and I think last year was the first year you guys added the GORUCK Tough, but I know it’s back again this year. What was the first year that started and why did you decide to create this event?

Bill: Let’s see. We started in 2014, it was a Light, and Cadre Jesse led that. It was a regular GORUCK Light. Nothing special other than we had some special props. Still, all adult is doing it. It’s still the full speed down, but you made it fun. I think it was just the 35 people from a normal custom event. We had a fairly good group, but it wasn’t anything huge, but the people that it affected — It’s a charity event, so we give all the money that comes from the event, plus the gifts and stuff that we bring to Riley Children’s Hospital, which is the Indiana Children’s Hospital. It’s the biggest one in the state, in particular the NICU unit; neonatal intensive care.

We both do gifts in the sense. It’s not wrapped toys and presents and stuff like that. It’s gifts that the hospital could actually use. We get a list from Riley from every year of what they need. What are they short on? They get millions and millions of dollars from corporate events and big stuff like that, but what does this unit, what do they particularly need that the general population can go out and supply?

We go out and buy what they need, and those are our gifts to them, because the kids in the neonatal unit of varying different ages, they can’t get a stuff there, because the allergens that are there and all the other — You can’t pass them along. The stuff that they get is specialized. We’ll go out and buy some stuff for them and then that goes into our sleigh, and we’ve got a huge nine-foot long, weighs about 300 pounds sleigh that we carry around. In place of a log, we get that. Then we’ve got some additional stuff from there.

We started in 2014 with Cadre Jesse. 2015 saw another Light and that year it got even bigger, and we decided that we’re going to make this a family event. We started adding — If you sign up as an adult, you can bring as many kids as you want, and they’re all free. We had about — I want to say about 250 people at that event, and then 2016 — Yeah, 2016, JC Jordan was the cadre, and that was the first year that we introduced the Tough. That was an experience. That was a full Tough, again, but then the next morning is the Light, which is more family fun. We can get back again to that later.

Then Team Mikey Bee, is it? Again, we’re going to have a huge Light and it will be a family friendly event. Again, kids are free, and the swag that comes out of these events is second to none, and that’s part of what makes this fun on my part, is that Carli and I, my wife, we get to try to design up and prep out all of the logo material. Everybody gets a swag bag when they register, and so you get t-shirts and you may get a hat, you may get a sweatshirt, you may get this, you may get that. I’m not sure what’s coming in this year. You’ll just have to show up and find out.

To see that many people with all of our gear on, doing this event — And the kids get gear too. They get everything just like a normal person, what the adults get. See that many people, 200, 300 people all singing songs underneath the Christmas tree at Riley or carrying in a huge 12-foot long candy cane/pipe. It’s very good and we hope to continue this event for many, many more years.

Brian: That’s awesome, man. That’s such a wonderful thing to do. Provide so much to the NICU unit. That’s such a tough spot for the people who work there, I’m sure, because that’s just got to be very emotional especially that time of year. Thank you. You guys deserve —

Bill: You’re welcome. If you get a chance — Even if people gets a chance, through your link down at the bottom. If they’re interested, I’m going to post the list that Riley gave me. I’m going to post it on the Santa Ruck page, and people can go in and take a look, see all the stuff that we go out and buy, because every person that does the event, they’re required to bring one of these items, one of these bags. They have color-coded bags based off of the different areas of need within the NICU.

Every person brings one of these bags. Last year they had these big containers on rollers. They’re about six feet wide and three-feet deep and we filled three of them with these bags, and they wouldn’t even fit. Everything wouldn’t fit in the sleigh, so we had people run with them. We had to carry them. We had entire trash bags full of them just to keep them dry. It was amazing the amount of stuff that we took to these events, and it probably took us a good 45 minutes just to unload everything, and the bags, the gifts kept coming and coming and we had all of our Riley’s reps in tears because of so much that they received.

Brian: That’s amazing. That would be for this year coming up, where are Santa Ruck events occurring this year?

Bill: Last year we expanded out to Seattle, D.C. and Philadelphia, and they had a great time and everybody is coming back, plus we’re adding St. Paul, Minnesota. We’ve got Seattle, St. Paul, D.C., Indi and Philly.

Brian: Congratulations on the expansion. That’s awesome.

Bill: Yeah, it has everything to do with the GORUCK community. All it takes is one person to say, “Hey, that looks like a ton of fun and we have our local children’s charity that we could raise some money for. Let’s do it and set them up.” They’re the ones that have to do the local organization. If you want one in your city, I’ll help out and do what I can from here, but it really takes local, I guess, boots on the ground to get the events to go. My hat goes off to them every year for the reps that run these events in all these different cities, and the idea that it’s really handling out.

The other thing that I do ask is that you actually do the event one year and then I’ll help you set up for the next year if you want to have one in your town. Yeah, we’re doing Lights in every city. D.C. is doing a Tough and a Light, and then Indi gets our own special event, plus a Light.

Brian: Which city is Cadre Mikey Bee going to be at?

Bill: Mikey Bee, all Indi. He is in charge of the Indi events this year.

Mikey: I will only do Indianapolis for Santa Rucks, and I’m sorry to everybody else, because I’m from the area originally. My mom and stepdad participated in the Team Ninja event. My cousin’s daughter actually passed away there in 2006 from a really rare leukemia, so I didn’t know much about it. I was deployed at the time, but anything I can do to give back to my own community. Kind of like what we talked in the last podcast where GORUCK is this overarching community, right? Team Ninja is like my specific hometown GRT kind of community, if that makes any sense.

Brian: Absolutely. Absolutely, it does. I hear for 2017 there’s a theme for the Santa Ruck events, and I heard it’s Snowman. Can you dive a little into where the name of that came from and why this event will be themed this year?

Mikey: Every year, Bill started out with just a basic logo. What was the first year? Like an Elf, or was it Santa Claus? I forgot which one.

Bill: It was ninja as a Santa Claus. Our ninja guy or mascot.

Mikey: Yeah, it was like ninja Santa Claus, right? Then the next year it turned ninja Santa Claus with an elf. Then the next year, another elf. Then now this year the logo is going to have the ninja snowman in the forefront. This year’s theme is snowman all across the country for the Santa Ruck.

With that being said, some of the cadre in Indianapolis may or may not be dressed as snowman. You may or may not have to carry a snowman that the cadre made for you, maybe at Atlas ball. I don’t know. We’re going to get crazy with it.

I can’t tell you this about the Indianapolis event. This year is going to be different than the other events. We’re showing up with our big beach speakers that run on batteries, and if everybody sings with Christmas cheer, we’ll have fun. If you don’t sing with Christmas cheer for all hear, Mocha will be dressed as Krampus and he will appear, and Krampus loves PT and he will smoke the bags out of you and your little chit ones and it will be fun. Learn you Christmas carols between now and then.

Brian: That is going to be amazing. Cramp is — Oh!

Mikey: Yeah. This is going to continue on too. Every year we add a new character to the patch, so this will be the four years, our fourth year. That’s where Snowman comes from, and then next year, who knows? Maybe the Grinch shows up. It’s all the big white snow and then hopefully — Actually, hopefully one of these years actually will have snow.

Bill: Nice.

Mikey: It was cold enough last year, okay?

Bill: Remember Machine is from Miami. He is coming from Miami, and I told him it was going to be warm according to the farmer’s almanac. I didn’t even look. I told him it was going to be warm this year, since it was cold last year.

Brian: Yeah, he’s going to be happy.

Mikey: What’s funny is that with machine, I think Aaron is more excited to get the gun than actually doing the event. Yeah. They’re all coming for the ball and staying for the event. I’ve sent out some big time request for this ball as well. I sent out a request to Billy Waugh. If you don’t know who Billy Waugh is, Google the name. He’s the guy who’s got the Jackal, one of the very first Green Berets was in the agency for a while. He’s one of the first guys ever do surveillance on Osama Bin Laden

Back in 1979. Really great dude. Great American. Haven’t heard back yet, but hopefully we can get guys like Billy Waugh to come out and be the guest speaker.

Brian: That will be wild.

Mikey: really trying to push this ball. If this thing takes off and does really well, we’d love to try to expand out and send the format out to other cities next year, because it’s a great way to raise money and it’s low threat and it’s a great way to bring people into this community.

Brian: Absolutely. I truly I hope the best for it, because I would love to see a ball here in Seattle sometime. It’s a little selfish, but I hope it goes amazing for you guys.

[0:26:43.5]Bill: Whatever we get, charities, Riley, they get 10 times. All these money that we’re raising for — Let’s put it this way. Everything from the auction is being donated. One way or another, these kids are going to get some big bucks from this, hopefully. We raise a little over $13,000 last year. We’re well on our way to 15,000 this year. We actually had one donor step up and donated $5,500 in cash just a couple of weeks ago, and that just completely unreal and we’re so thankful.

I will do the event in a Santa Claus speedo if we hit 30,000 bucks this year. I will do the entire event, the 30,000 bucks, in a speedo.

Brian: If we can raise —

Mikey: For the kids, man.

Brian: $30,000 for the kids, Cadre Mikey Bee will do the event in a Santa speedo and this I’m sorry machine, this is not going to be a warm event. I want everyone to know right now. This is December in Indiana, so it is going to be cold. A speedo, all right.

Mikey: A speedo, 30,000 bucks. That’s not how much Bill has in the account to pay for events and everything. That’s a giant big $30,000 check I get to hand to Riley’s in a speedo with Bill. That’s what needs to happen.

Brian: That does need to happen. I need a picture of that.

Mikey: I’ll give you the link, so you can click on it anytime you want to check on that current balance, because unlike a lot of other events where we collect all the money and then give it to Riley eventually. When people donate to Riley, we give them the Riley donation link. We don’t touch the money, and plus then they can get all the tax benefits from it too.

For getting to the Mikey Bee’s level of donation to do this. We want everybody to feel 100% sure that their money is going exactly where they want it and they can get all the benefits from it as well.

Brian: There you go, and that link will definitely be in the show notes, at least two or three or seven times.

Mikey: If we had 30,000, dude, I will wear a speedo for those kids. If you guys don’t know, the first year in 2015 I did this with Bill. What was the number I said? 10 grand? I forgot what it was. You raise 10 grand, I’ll wear a pink bunny costume. None of the other cadre did.

Bill: We did that one.

Mikey: It was one my deal with Bill and I wore the pink bunny pajamas from a Christmas story for 10 grand. You want to see me in a Speedo, it’s got to be 30,000 and one cent.

Bill: I don’t know if anybody can really say they want to see you in a speedo.

Brian: How much you have to pay to cover it up?

Bill: Haha raise the money. 32,000 then.

Brian: Yeah, 32,000 and they’ll cover it up.

Mikey: It would scare the kids, okay? I got it.

Bill: Yeah, we’ll make sure you’ll robe you when we have to go into the hospital. I love that.

Mikey: Yeah, or I could just stand outside and be cold the whole time.

Brian: There we go. Maybe if we hit 30 grand, for an extra 5 grand we’ll get to choose a special robe for you to wear.

Mikey: Sexy santa robe. How about that? Hey, if we hit 25 grand, I will let the kids shave my head at the event, 25 grand, straight up, just hair, and I love my hair.

Brian: This is getting better already.

Mikey: Yeah. Okay, the kids, man. 25 grand, you can shave my head. Everybody gets a swipe.

Bill: I’d step up right there with you, but I’m already bald, so it doesn’t really do. It doesn’t have quite the effect, but that’s freaking awesome. We’ll do that one.

Mikey: Hey, I’ll throw Mocha in there. 25 grand, you can shave Mocha and I both, because I know Mocha is down. I wouldn’t do that at the machine. Actually, you know what? As lead cadre — No, I’m not going to do that. It’s a low blow. I know Mocha would totally shave his head, let the kids shave his head.

Brian: That’s going to be great.

Mikey: Hey, and I challenge all the other cadre out there to like do some silly stuff to raise some money.

Bill: Yeah, we need to hear from those other cities too.

Mikey: There’s no shame in it. FTK, for the kids.

Brian: No shame at all. What are you most excited about for the upcoming Santa Ruck events in Indi?

Mikey: Oh, man! I’m excited for so many things. One, I’m a little sad that the kids rucks the brats, rebels, all that stuff — Those kind of faded away over the last 12, 18 months, and like this is a great event to get kids outdoors and to do something and to connect with kids, one; and to do something great for the community, two. Then three — Man! I get to see some of my best friends that I haven’t seen all year, like I get Mocha. I get to hang out with Mocha. I get to hang out with Jesse in the past. It’s kind of like a homecoming for me. I get to see my family, and then all my SF brothers is there to cadre with me. It’s really awesome.

What makes this year different than the last is when Bill asked me to do the event, to be the head cadre for it. I said, “That’s awesome, Bill, but we’re not going to do a Tough.” He’s kind of taken back when I said that and I was like, “The main event is us taking those sleighs to the children’s hospital, and that’s what the Light does. The Tough is just a traditional type of Tough event with the Christmas theme and do it the day before.”

The guys, the heart of the ninja crew did the entire Tough, and then the next morning they looked like death warmed over. It didn’t have the same vibe as the year before, the same amount of energy and enthusiasm, but I know there’s still enthusiasm there, but guys were a little slugging because they had to spin up all night and get their tooth kicked in. I asked Bill, “Let’s do something different instead.”

Knowing how busy how Bill is, because I’m pretty well-engaged with the Team Ninja guys, I know Bill starts usually after like the Christmas in July sale from GORUCK. Bill usually starts like — I hate to say this, for lack of better terms, like Bill Starts panhandling for a Santa Ruck like July, and Carli has kind of talked to me about it in the past. I’ll try to get sponsors, find people to participate and to really push the ball down the court. I wanted to see if I could try to bring something that’s bridging that gap once again for my hometown community. I wanted to bring the ball. Friday night we do a ball where it’s non-threatening. It’s a fun night to close out the year for Team Ninja.

We get together and we show a couple of vignettes and videos and whatnot that the ninjas have done over the last year as well as like just the camaraderie of friendship. Then we’ll piggy back on top of that a silent auction along the walls during this ball, this fancy formal type of dinner and we’ll do a silent auction, that way Bill doesn’t have to be out there panhandling and kind of bearing this huge burden alone. We as a community can take on those burden together, like kind of ties a bow around it. We can talk more about the ball and why do we do it in December and what the ball is all about here in a little bit.

Brian: That’s great. Is this the first year that it will have been for the ball?

Mikey: Yeah, this will be the first year.

Brian: Bill, how did you feel when you told Mikey Bee that you wanted him to be the head cadre and he said no Tough?

Bill: It was something that everybody was looking forward to, and they all want to do a Tough and a Light, because everyone wants to go backtrack. We didn’t make a lot of charity money off of the first Tough, which it was just something new, so we had to limit the number of people that were in. I was thinking and hoping that we would have stand out on it, make it bigger, and it would be a good maturity point right there.

In that microsecond of saying no, I kind of sunk, and it worried me a little bit. He’s like, “No, but I got another idea.” I go, “All right.” Then he started warming up to this and I was like, “Okay. This is way, way outside of my knowledge-base, and I’ve got the Light to get ready for. You know what? Let’s do it. We just need a little help. I’ll wear a Tux, but I can’t be the main point for this one, because I don’t know what is going to happen. We had the girls step up, Carli, my wife, Amy Dixon, Angie Rich, they all stepped up and are now leading the charge with Mikey to get these things set up.

Brian: That’s awesome. That sounds like it’s going to be quite the event. Do you want to take it away, Mikey?

Mikey: Yeah. It’s kind of a tradition every holiday, like around — In the military, the month of December, it’s pretty much like set aside for family time, but before everybody splits off on Christmas vacation we always do this big military ball. What the ball — That’s the one time a year, like on an SF Team, like you get to see your buddies that you’ve grown up with, that maybe on your sister team or another team. It’s the only time that everybody is really home throughout the year is Christmas time.

In the first Special Forces group where I grew up, the holiday ball or the Christmas ball, or whatever they call it now, is this huge, huge formal, right? It’s like got a lot of military traditions to it, and it’s very formal upfront with the protocol that takes place as a receiving line people walk through. There’s a specific dress code. The flags are marched in. We’ll have a POW MIA table. We’ll talk about the history behind different stuff. Militarily, we’ll play all the different songs, render honors to the flag, go into a specific order of like toast for a military formal ball. Then once formal procedures are done, then we’ll kind of digress into like a war story type of environment where a few of the cadre will get up, share a couple of war stories while people continue to bid on the silent auction.

Then at the same time it gives people an excuse to get dressed up, man, and you get to kind of close out the year, wrap a bow around it, like, “Hey, this is where we started.” Like the Santa Ruck, I’ve already started working on a little bit of a video for it. This is everything that ninjas have done since the last Santa Ruck until tonight and just go through all the events, all the memories and just tie a bow around it and kind of close up the year for the ninjas as well as, “Hell, man! You get to go put on your Sunday best and show up and have a good time with your friends and adult for one night.”

Brian: You can’t beat that.

Mikey: Plus, it’s something different, right? It bridges the gap. It’s a military-style ball. It bridges the gap and brings people into our world just for one night, and all the money goes to charities. It’s a guilt-free kind of night. We’re going to have a full bar. Everybody will get a couple of drink coupons when they come. We’re working on a guest speaker right now, but it’s probably going to be somebody. Right now we’re looking at people from like the Vietnam ear to come in and tell their war stories, because you get to hear our war stories every event that you come out to. We’re trying to find some big names and some local heroes to come out and share their stories.

Brian: That sounds like it’s really going to be a unique and memorable experience. It sounds like everyone’s putting a ton of effort, a ton of work into it. It’s not going to be something that you can find out at any other GORUCK event or even any other custom. It’s going to be truly special for this time of year and for everyone involved.

Mikey: The building that we’re using is the — I don’t know if I’m saying this right, but the RAF Skelter. Is that how you say it, Bill? I assume it is.

Bill: Yeah.

Mikey: The RAF Skelter. It’s a really old building. Got a tour of it. It’s gorgeous on the inside. We have a huge ball of room set up. It’s already laid on, but even the history of the building we’re going to be in is pretty cool. It’s an old — It was a German consulate at one point in time for the Midwest. It’s a really cool building, and it was like a German club and then it was a community center. It’s a really old historic building. The venue is great. I’m going to be MC-ing the whole thing. If you watch the Selection videos, you know it’s going to be full of amazing one-liners. There’s no kids allowed, and it’s going to be a fun night of adulting and you get to dress up and come and have fun.

The cadres that are going to be there, it’s going to be myself, it’s going to be Mocha, Machine will be there, Heath, and JC. Did I miss anybody? Oh, and Josh. The guys are still active duty, we’re going to be in our dress blues. Come by, take some picture with us. It’s going to be fun. You get to come hang out with a cadre while we’re all dressed up like Mexican general, looking all fancy, and it’d be a fun night. We still have 35 tickets available and I’m pretty sure after this podcast they’re going to go pretty quick. Check that link below and come on out.

Brian: Does this occur the night before the GORUCK Light?

Mikey: Yeah, it’s going to start at 6 p.m. the night before. 6 p.m. is like start time. Myself and Amy Dixon are going to take the microphone and we’re going to MC this thing, and it’s going to be pretty funny, kind of like an Emmy’s style. A lot of jokes back and forth before and her and I, probably hazing and harassing guys in the audience as well. Then at about 10, 10:30, it will end. Everybody will part ways. They have a private little VIP section outback where people that want to continue to stay and hangout and have beers, if you’re doing a Light the next day or whatever, go downstairs, hangout in there, ballroom/dance floor.

Brian: It sounds amazing. Like Mikey and Bill said, as of a time we’re recording this there’s only 35 tickets left, so I’m guessing when this is posted there will be less. If you’re listening to this, you’re in the Indiana area or planning on travelling there in the early December, then check those links and figure out if you can still get in there.

How many tickets were sold to begin with? What’s the max capacity?

Mikey: A hundred is our max capacity for the event. There’s going to be some pretty cool swag that comes with the ball alone. Some of the cadre are bringing some stuff to give out to people that attend. I know somebody was talking about getting some of their own personal coins made just for that night. All the cadre are kind of — They get into this ball spirit and like want to bring you guys into this tradition that we kind of grown up with our entire adult lives.

You’re going to get to bid on stuff that you can’t touch anywhere else too. I’m bringing — I know this sounds gross, but I’m bringing my deployment boots. I wore the same set of boots on all my deployments. There’s blood and junk all over them. If you were a size 9-1/2, come on out and bid on them. I’m going to have my own basket that’s going to have books, like my recommended reading list, a bunch of shooting stuff, some 80% lowers, a bunch of different stuff. I’m going to make my own cadre basket.

I know Machine is making his as well, and Mocha is going to be bringing some stuff. There’s going to be guns auctioned off. There would be all kinds of stuff, all kinds of swag, rucking gear. I know we got some rucks to auction off. If you’re looking for a cool, unique stuff that you can’t tough anywhere else, a memorabilia for GORUCK and the GRT community, come on out and bid on this stuff and have a fun night.

Brian: There you have it, stuff you can’t get anywhere else. The only place is here, so check those links. You’re not going to regret it.

Mikey: Heck, man! You can get a flight to Indianapolis for like 215 bucks round trip if you buy it now.

Brian: It’s true. Midwest is not that expensive to fly to. No excuses. How are you feeling about this, Bill? Are you excited?

Bill: Oh! Over the moon. This is going to be awesome. Just talking to — I’m out, I am panhandling for everything else for the event in itself, but the ball — As soon as I mentioned the ball, my current corporate sponsors, their eyes lit up. Man, I’ve even landed a few just because of the ball. We’ve got a local gun range that’s now a sponsor as well as their gun shop. We will have them on site filling out the necessary forms in order to have the people that come to the event. They’ll be able to walk out with any of the firearms that they win.

Brian: That’s incredible. That’s not something you see often at all.

Mikey: It’s an event where like — That’s a whole another facet that Bill brought up is the fact that now, it’s something not scary that we can invite people to. Does that make sense? Hey, I’m not going to kick your teeth and make you do pushups and bear cross the next six hours. But hey, we’re just going to come. The fence is going to be down. We’re human. We’re going to have fun with you guys and relax. That’s something that he can invite the sponsors out too, where it’s very low-threat and they can kind of see what they’re getting and what they’re investing into. They can touch it without having to deal with any of the scary GORUCK welcome party stuff.

Brian: Very nice, and I can’t wait to see how this all turns out.

Bill: You should come out, Brian. You should come out. Get a babysitter. Come on out.

Brian: I’ll look into it.

Last time you’re on, Mikey, you had some awesome shout outs at the end of the episode. Do you have any more this time?

Mikey: We don’t have any shout outs besides I love Bill, I love Team Ninja. They do great things outside of GORUCK for their communities. I encourage all the other GORUCK communities to start doing something bigger than share an event. When you’re doing your community service projects, look at something bigger that’s going to change people’s lives or change someone’s trajectory in life. Don’t just — I don’t know, “We picked up trash on the beach.” That’s a great community service project and all, but we’re all better than that, so let’s start thinking bigger as a GORUCK community and looking at doing something ethic that changes people’s lives.

Brian: There you have it. Why about you, Bill, anyone that you want to plug or give a shout out to?

Bill: I got to thank my wife. Carli Vernon is probably more of the actual worker of this group than myself. In her heart she does way more than I do. I got to thank her. I got to thank my local crew. They’re always stepping up to lead the workouts, lead events, help with all of our charity stuff we’re doing for Riley. I’ve got tons of names, but they all know who they are. I’m good there.

I got to thank GORUCK for giving me so much leeway and putting these events on, because — I don’t know, I think we break at least six to ten of their diehard custom event rules every time I say, “Hey guys, can we do one more thing for this or whatnot?” They give me a lot of leash when it comes to doing this. Gotta thank them and for their continued support of the Indianapolis area and allowing us to do our thing, like custom events and fad and, “Hey, have you ever guys ever thought about doing one of these and then using these as the test bed for it?”

We get tons of stuff and I think it’s just because we’ve got enough people here that kind of trust, ruck kind of trusts me that it will be a good event. When you see those kind of beta events that are kind of just the idea in my head coming to fruition. Those are the cool ones to jump in on, because they usually have some really cool ideas that may or may not ever hit the public again. That’s my big shout out to my crew.

Brian: We might need to have another episode sometimes, Bill, where we talk about all the firearms day events you’ve had going on there. For those who are listening and don’t know, Bill has had a ton of firearms events with Team Ninja in Indi, and the majority of them are custom and it’s where a lot of — I don’t know, maybe GORUCK tries out a lot of their ideas combined with Bill’s ideas into these new events. I think that’s where some of the newer firearms day events, like Force on Force and the team ones came from. We’ll have to chat sometimes.

Mikey: Can I jump in on that real quick and just kind of wrap that up for you?

Brian: Absolutely.

Mikey: It’s not a ding on anybody else or any other crew that’s out there. Brian up in Cleveland, he does a lot of amazing custom events as well, but the reality of it is, Bill, is super vocal. He knows what he wants, ask for it and then we tent his enthusiasm with reality and tailor something that fits this crazy idea that Bill has. If you got a crazy idea out there for a custom event, reach out to HQ. Start walking the dog on it, and if it’s too crazy, we’ll do it and tailor it to be something that’s probably 70% to 80% of what you’re looking for based off of time and money and safety constraints obviously.

Brian: There you have it.

Thank you guys, Bill, Mikey. Just thank you so much for taking nearly an hour out of your day to talk with me about this. I had an amazing time last year at Santa Ruck. I’ll be at Santa Ruck again this year in Seattle, wouldn’t miss it. You guys are doing amazing things both with what it sounds like the ball will be and just everything you do for the charities and all the local communities that are having the Santa Ruck events. It’s just phenomenal.

For those listening, I’m going to have the links to the locations, to the Team Ninja website. I believe there’s also a patch on the Team Ninja site that you can buy just to support the Santa Ruck, and I’m pretty sure that’s the case, because I bought one a couple of days ago when I picked up the Mikey Bee set.

Even if you’re not able to make an event, you can still donate money. You can still buy a patch to support the event, or you can even just let people know if you got friends out in those areas that are ruckers, point them their way and get them signed up for something that will be truly memorable.

Thank you guys, again. This was really fun and I truly appreciate it.

Bill: Yeah, thanks Brian. Thanks for having us.

Mikey: Thank you.

The post ADR 019: Bill Vernon & Mikey Bee Interview (GORUCK Santa Ruck 2017) appeared first on All Day Ruckoff.