What? I should actually post something?

In attempting to verify this blog to Pinterest, I noticed that it had had nine views today. My apologies for making you look at my most recent (ha!) post so many times. It's only 50-plus days old. I spent parts of some of those days thinking about how and why I had not posted. It all comes down to priorities. There is work. There is family. There are friends. There is a house. There are pets. There are lots of things that ask for or demand my attention. Last on the list are those things I do for myself, such as write or make art or try to learn some Vietnamese. These things done purely for myself get kicked to the curb when the things for others whisper and hook an index finger at me. Lately, I have spent or made much free time working on two quilts, a commission from a dear friend of long standing. I delivered those today to someone who will see that they get to the right person safe and sound. This should mean that I can get back to writing, which I love, or Vietnamese, at least some of which I would really like to learn, but no. There is another, smaller, quilting project afoot, followed by a bigger one. Yes, they are for other people who shall remain nameless. Perhaps I am my own worst enemy. I shall ponder this as I clean up my desk and prepare to start proofreading a 23-page document.

Taking What I Can Get

I have recently discovered two things at which I am better than the average bear, as Yogi would say. One is wall squats, in which your back is against a wall while your legs make a right angle in front. Basically, you look like a chair against the wall, an empty chair. We recently did this in SEAL Team PT workout, and when the instructor called stop after two minutes, I was one of the few people still squatting. The other thing at which I am apparently very good is the game of hot hands. If you don't remember this, it's when two people extend both their hands. One person has their hands palm up, while the other has theirs palm down. The person whose hands are at the bottom attempts to whip a hand around and slap the other person's hand. The person whose hands are at the top attempts not to let this happen bu pulling their hands away. If they succeed, they take over on the palm-up-slapping side. We did this in karate recently, and I spent most of the time as the one doing the slapping. We rotated regularly, so I did this with most of the other students there. Older son told me later that when he rotated to work with the black belt with whom I had just "played," that black belt commented, "You mom is really good at this." Wall squats and hot hands. Not as useful as some other things in the big picture called life, but I'll take success where I can find it.

A Challenge of a Different Sort

Older son and I are doing something called the 90 Day Nutrition Challenge. It's sponsored by our workout group, SEAL Team Physical Training. We missed out on the 90 Day Fitness Challenge, in which you work out daily for 90 days, because it started on the same day we started SEAL Team, and we didn't know we could have done it. Instead we're doing the 90 Day Nutrition Challenge which is not, unfortunately, just eating daily for 90 days.

Ninety days covers 13 weeks minus one day. The day after tomorrow, we will start the last two weeks of the challenge period. Up to now, there have been five two-week-long challenges and one one-week-long one. The first two weeks, we could eat anything we wanted to eat, but the only beverage that we could consume was water. Lest you think this meant giving up caffeine cold-turkey, coffee beans are not consumable only in liquid form. Caffeine-deprivation headaches aside, I enjoyed this challenge. I'd often told myself that I should stop drinking diet soda because of the acid on my teeth, and the numerous unrecognizable ingredients, and this was an easy way to do that.

The second two weeks, we were instructed to eat a fresh, colorful salad each day and have fresh fruit with or as one meal each day. Dressing on the salad was optional, though the SEAL Team director doing the challenge told us that he always had his salads dressing-free. Since I work from home and often make a salad for my lunch and already eat fruit multiple times each day, this one was no sweat at all. But wait! Older son suggested that we do the 90 Day Challenge cumulatively, meaning that we would continue to have water be our only beverage while adding the salad and fruit deal. Since it made sense to give up caffeine only once, I agreed, though with the thought of my approaching 57th birthday in the back of my mind.

Yes, a birthday, a day typically marked by the consumption of cake (or in the case of younger won, pie inside cake). The third two-week challenge was to give up refined sugar. We became the people reading the label on everything we picked up at the grocery store.  Sugar or brown sugar? Both are refined. High fructose corn syrup? Obviously bad. Evaporated corn syrup? Equally bad. Malto-dextrose? "Ose" is a bad word. Raw honey has become our go-to sweetener. The bread recipe I use only required one tablespoon of sugar, but honey does fine. In fact, I think I prefer the bread made with honey to that I made with sugar. Morning cereal became Shredded Wheat or the granola I started making in large quantities. Chicken dinner became Shake 'n Bake chicken for the husband and plain, unadulterated chicken for us. No more deli style sandwiches, because most deli meat I looked at contained sugar in some small amount. I discovered that there is sugar in things that you would not expect to contain sugar. Pure vanilla extract, not the artificial kind? Food Lion brand contains sugar; McCormick brand does not. Beef broth? Straight-up fructose rather than the high-corn-syrup kind.

I started to work on reconciling myself to no birthday cake or to one that I would have in August. Younger son had other plans, though. He located a recipe for a refined-sugar-free cake that was also dairy-free and gluten-free. He ordered some of the hard-to-find ingredients such as hazelnut and almond flours, and enlisted the husband to make the cake while the sons and I were doing a GORUCK Light at a ski resort about an hour away. They presented the cake when I came down from the shower, which is why I'm wearing a bathrobe in the photo below.

The cake is chocolate, the frosting is made with coconut milk, and there are strawberries between the layers as well as on top. While older son thought one helping was enough for him, I thought it was actually quite good. I have had vegan cupcakes before, and this tasted so much better. I don't think I'll need another cake in August, though I would not turn one down if someone offered.

As a family, we don't eat out often, with the exception of Friday night after martial arts or working out at the gym. When we hit the no-sugar challenge, we put that on hold. As a result, the next two-week challenge of not eating out (unless absolutely necessary as when traveling or at a business meal) really didn't change anything for us. It did remind us, though, how much we typically do not know about the food we order in terms of what really is in it or how it is prepared. 

When the challenge started, I figured that one of the two-week periods would involve no trans fats, and that prediction came true in the last of the two-week challenges. More ingredient list reading looking for the dirty words "partially" and/or "hydrogenated." Even if the nutrition information label says 0 (zero) for trans fat, that doesn't mean it's not there. It just means that there is less than a specified amount in one serving. With this challenge, I actually discovered how little trans fat we were consuming. With the no-refined-sugar challenge, I found lots of things in the pantry that I could no longer eat. I don't think I found one thing that I couldn't eat because it contained trans fat. 

Last up was the one-week challenge that ends tomorrow night, and this one is having a real effect on my life. It was also another one that I thought would be part of the overall plan: Don't eat in the two hours before you go to bed. I do karate or kendo every weeknight, typically eating a snack before I go and another snack when I get home. Since I don't get home some nights until after 9:30, eating that second snack would mean staying up until 11:30. Going to bed at 11:30 with the alarm set for 5:00 so older son and I could make our 6:00 workout? That would not end well. I've been eating a slightly larger pre-martial-arts snack. Some nights, I go to bed hungry, but it's hunger in a first-world problem sort of way and not at all a real hunger.

Starting the day after tomorrow, the challenge is to do all the one- and two-week challenges at the same time. Since older son and I have been doing the challenge cumulatively, nothing changes for us. We just keep on keeping on for the next two weeks, the same as we've been doing this week. 

A SEAL Team PT member not doing the challenge whether I would go back to my old ways when the challenge ends. Given that a dear friend of long standing (what some people would call an "old friend") wants to take me out to dinner in August as a belated birthday gift, I will certainly be eating out again. However, I expect to be a little more discerning about what I order. I do believe that I will enjoy the bottle of red wine that I was given for Christmas, but I will not start drinking soda again. In all honesty, I've about had my fill of salads and will be looking for other ways to serve vegetables. I've always liked steamed vegetables, for example. I'm going to keep making my bread with honey, and I plan to think twice or thrice about anything with high fructose corn syrup in it. I hope to limit my consumption of sugar to sugar-containing things that are worth it, like good ice cream or pie (I am known in some circles as a "pie diva"). The one that will likely be the most difficult? I love coffee and find that a cup of Joe makes reading the morning paper more palatable. I also find that a cup of hot tea on a cold winter's night really hits the spot. I plan to try to stick to decaf coffee and tea, and, if I can't stick to the decaf varieties, to limit the amount that I consume. 

Am I glad I did the 90 Day Nutrition Challenge? Yes, though I the 90 Day Workout Challenge would have been much easier. There, once you've done the morning workout, you're done. You don't have to think about it until the next day. With the nutrition one, you think about it virtually constantly. You want a snack? You need to figure out what it can be. The challenge is with you all day and every day. I'm not sure if I will do the nutrition challenge again should it be offered next summer, but I know at least some of what I've done this summer will stay with me. After all, didn't someone once say that we are what we eat?

Reflections on the Upcoming Passing of Time

My birthday approaches, and I find myself getting reflective, thinking of what I intended to do this year and whether I accomplished it six months in. Looking back at my post on December 31, 2012, it appears I resolved to do a GORUCK Challenge and to learn some Vietnamese. I have succeeded better on the first of those than on the second. I did successfully finish a GORUCK Challenge in May and today finished my second GORUCK Light. I felt more successful at today's Light than at either of the other two events because I managed this one without having to pass my rucksack off to anyone else so that I could keep up the pace or complete the task. While I wasn't up to helping someone else by taking their pack, I did all I could to encourage them and help them hang in there. While I have yet to register for another GORUCK Challenge, I am doing another Light in a week and one more in November. I'm skipping the July 12 Challenge here but will shadow and shoot photos as older and younger sons do one on their own, without worrying about helping me. There's another Challenge here on September 7, and I'll see how I feel about that as the date nears. I will say that I feel much more comfortable carrying two bricks than four. I was able to get my ruck over my head every time I had to today, a major improvement over the May Challenge.

As for the resolution to learn some Vietnamese, life intervened in March, and Rosetta Stone went untouched from then until about a week ago. I'm working on redoing all the lessons to get to the point at which my progress stopped. I'm not convinced that Rosetta Stone alone will do it, though. I think I might need to augment it with some straight memorization with flash cards and a bit of grammar out of a book. One hard thing is that nouns have different articles attached to them, and it's not as simple as "el" for masculine nouns and "la" for feminine nouns in Spanish. Different types of nouns have different articles. There's one for animals, another for foods, another for articles of clothing, and so on. You may not need to change the verb form to indicate tense or the noun form to indicate a plural, but they make up for it in other ways.

As I ponder passing from my 57th year into my 58th, I am thinking more about what age means any longer. If I am not in the best physical shape I have ever been in, I am certainly approaching it. At the same time, though, I take longer to recover when I do even a bit too much. (That does not explain why, at the current moment, both sons are sound asleep "recovering" from our morning Light, while I've been doing several other things around writing this.) I should be ready to go by the Light next weekend, though I may be taking it easy at SEAL Team workouts for the next several days. I do not know what my impending age of 57 means or even my current on of 56 means. I know there are people who look askance at things I do, like the GORUCK things or the martial arts, thinking I'm too old. I'd prefer to think that while one might be too young for physical things, one is only too old if they think they are. I may not move as fast as the younger people doing something, but I generally figure that as long as I don't quit, it's okay.

Those are muddled thoughts which may or may not clarify themselves in the coming eight days leading up to my birthday. I do like birthdays because they start a new year of your life, of you. Some people like to stress that each day is a new day and while those people are correct, there's something about a new year that grabs me. I expect I shall reflect more on all this, especially on the relevant day. We shall see if I make the time to release such reflection from my mind out into the world.

On Being Challenged

As with the GORUCK Light patch shown in a previous post, you cannot buy this patch. Its issuer will never sell it, and I would be shocked--shocked--if anyone who has earned this patch would sell it. I earned one over the weekend, and it was much harder than I had expected, and something I could not have done on my own. From the sons' (especially the younger one) inviting me to try the GORUCK Challenge with them to their (and others') willingness to carry my pack when I was struggling, put a hand on my back to help me run a bit faster up a hill, and just verbally encourage the oldest member of their team, my success was not my own but part of a true team effort.

The Challenge I did was actually short by GORUCK Challenge standards. The Challenge is billed as 8 to 10 hours, 15 to 20 miles, but under the GORUCK philosophy of "under promise, over deliver," most are longer both time- and distance-wise. Ours lasted only 9.5 hours, but those hours started at 1:00 a.m. Using the MapMyRun map editor, I estimate that we covered somewhere around 8 miles. That said, those 8 miles only included our point-to-point travel, not any running, crawling, or other means of locomotion that we did at those points. And the point-to-point travel in most cases required carrying team members, somewhat large rocks, or what would be more appropriately described as a tree than as a branch.

I could not have succeeded at the Challenge without having done the GORUCK Light that I did in March. At the end of that event, Cadre (leader) Devin, said he thought that everyone who had been with him at the Light could finish a Challenge. I repeated that thought to myself often during the Challenge, especially at the outset when it became clear how the different cadre would make the two events even more different than the "Light" and "regular" nature might imply. After the Light, the sons and I estimated that it was about 10 percent physical training (PT), 10 percent carrying stuff (and people), and 80 percent rucking or traveling by foot from point to point carrying our weighted rucksacks. Our Challenge was closer to a third each of those things, and the PT we did was more varied and intense than it had been in the Light.

It became very apparent at the outset how much the tone of an event is due to the individual cadre running it. The Challenge's Cadre Matt was much more intense and loud-spoken than the Light's Cadre Devin was. That made everything we did seem a bit more pressured. When we didn't keep up the pace to Cadre Deivin's satisfaction, he added sandbags for us to carry, and those who were not filling those sandbags did push-ups until the bags were ready to be carried. He didn't yell at us; he simply noted we needed more encouragement. When we didn't keep up the pace to Cadre Matt's satisfaction, which was more often, we did PT typically involving removing our rucksacks from our backs and resting them on our heads (or as close as we could get them to atop our heads) as we did squat after squat after squat, and got yelled at in the process. In the Light, the casualties we had to carry became casualties for a reason. When we let too large a gap form in the middle of our group, that gap caused two members to be wounded or killed, so two team members had to be carried. In the Challenge, we just always had to be carrying a certain number of casualties, but for no apparent reason.

I actually started to write  a detailed summary of what we did and where we did it, but I just deleted that in favor of the highlights version. If you really want to know, ask me and I can tell you. Besides the PT already mentioned, we box-jumped (taking off on both feet and landing on both feet) up steps low and high, low-crawled (infantry style, on our bellies), bear-crawled, crab-walked, lunged, and rolled on the ground. We did push-ups and flutter kicks. We carried our rucksacks on our backs, on our fronts, and without using any straps, like babies. We did PT on the grass, in a river, in sand that was closer to powdered gravel than beach or sandbox sand, and on pavement. More than once I thought I was either going to have to quit or going to die. More than once, I wasn't sure whether the liquid running down my face was sweat, tears, or a combination of the two.

At the same time, more than once another team member or one of the shadows (people following and watching but not actually participating) told me what an inspiration I was. I may have been in last place had we been doing this as a race, but I never quit. I pushed as hard as I could, and I tried as much as I could to encourage my teammates. When someone took my pack so that I could move faster or better, I moved faster or better. When I got angry, I didn't show it but tried to channel the anger into whatever action was needed. (Readers who know me well may be surprised at that statement.) Somewhere between first grade and now, I may actually have learned how to work and play well with others, though as the title of this blog suggests, I do still run with scissors.

There is, of course, a downside to having successfully finished the Challenge. I can no longer say that I'm not capable of doing something because I have demonstrated to myself how much more I am capable of than I thought. When (note that I did not say "if") I get discouraged in karate, well, if I can do a Challenge, I can do karate, right? If someone offers to help me, I should be able to recognize that their offer is not because they think I can't do it but because they want to be helpful and perhaps make it easier to get the job done. Some of those things will be easier to do than others, but I should no longer be making excuses.

Will I do another GORUCK Something? I'm already signed up for the Light here in Charlottesville on June 22; I've even convinced a karate-mate to register to do it and hope to recruit some other bodies as well.  The sons invited me to do the July 12 Challenge here in Charlottesville with them. It seems that younger son worries his finishing the one we just did might have been a fluke. When he said that, I knew that they needed to do a Challenge without having to look out for the Mombat. I told them that I would shadow it and practice my night photography, but they could have the pleasure of not worrying about me. Finally, thanks (or not) to younger son, I have registered to do something called the Nasty in September. This one, I will admit, has me worried. I didn't take the time to watch the video on just what some of the obstacles are before I registered. If I had done so, I probably would not have wanted to register. But hey, I'm GORUCK Tough, so I should be up for this, right? As I said, there is that downside.

Finally, something of a punchline to everything else we did that day. I mentioned that we carried something resembling a huge branch or a medium-sized tree. We left that underneath a local bridge, after which we all filed into the river for a PT session. There was a seemingly homeless man who apparently had slept on a blanket beneath the bridge. He got up and watched as we ditched the log and got into the water. He may have been surprised by us but probably not as surprised as some of us were when he pulled out a camera phone and started taking photos of us.

Be Careful What You Want

The sons first heard about the GORUCK Challenge over a year ago, when the older one asked for a GORUCK bag for Christmas. It sounded intriguing but not something I'd be interested in. A while later, I saw a man at the gym wearing a GORUCK t-shirt. I asked if he'd done a Challenge, and mentioned that my sons were interested in them. He said that he had indeed done a Challenge and that it had been something of a life-changing event. He told me to tell the sons that if they ever had the chance to do one, to jump at it. It sounded even more intriguing, and I admit that I got a wee bit interested at that point.

Fast forward to the Christmas holiday immediately past. It had become clear that younger son would be moving back to the East coast, and they started talking about doing a Challenge in the Washington, DC area. I happened to be online at the time, so I clicked around the GORUCK website and found that there would be a Challenge in Charlottesville on May 18. They immediately planned signing up using the register one, register another for free plan. I felt a pang or two of jealousy.

A couple days later, younger son suggested that I register and do the Challenge with them. I think I said something about not wanting to embarrass them. Younger son said that would only happen if I broke down in tears in the first ten minutes of the Challenge, and he didn't think that would happen. I noted that I was a 56-year-old woman, and the Challenge seemed designed for 20-something men. He suggested I email the GORUCK people and ask them for their opinion. He also noted that while one could always ask why they should do something, sometimes it was better to just say why the hell not do it.

I took younger son's advice and left the following comment on a blog post "The GORUCK Challenge Explained": "My sons, ages 25 and 23, have signed up for a challenge in May. They’re trying to persuade me, their 56-year-old mother, to sign up, too. I do work out regularly including martial arts six days weekly. Is it reasonable to think I could train and do it? It would make for a good challenge for the new year."

Within two days, I had a reply from Jason, GORUCK's founder: "Jean – yeah it’s totally reasonable. The older we get in life, I think that we’re capable of more it just requires a little more recovery time when we’re through with it. The Challenge itself is a team event, so everyone gives what they can. I find that the best classes have a mix of young and old, men and women, etc. Young bucks sometimes like to work harder not smarter. Wiser folks prefer to work smarter not harder."

I signed up that night, and publicly committed to doing it here. I started to actually train for it, as described here. I even discovered a new GORUCK event, the Light, through which the sons and I could get a taste of what might be in store for us in the Challenge. I described the preparation for and nervousness before that event here. Finally, I described the experience here, in a post that has since been reprinted as part of the GORUCK training website.

So here I sit now, the Monday before the Challenge on Saturday. It might be better to say "on Friday night" because the Challenge actually starts at 1:00 a.m. on Saturday. It could be interesting. The starting point is just off the University of Virginia Lawn, which will be the site of graduation ceremonies both Saturday and Sunday. One of our partners in this dose of good livin' is an assistant district attorney here, and he's made sure that the appropriate police departments know that the thirty or so people wearing black rucksacks and running around the local UN World Heritage site (the UVa Lawn) in the wee hours before a major public event have nothing in common with the two young men wearing black backpacks at the Boston Marathon.

Despite having successfully finished the Light, my nerves are starting to tingle. Some of the other people doing this Challenge have prepared by doing 20-mile rucks carrying the bricks they will carry during the Challenge. I have not. Interestingly, when the GORUCK training website went live a week or so ago, I found that their six-week training program to prep for a Light or a Challenge was not all that different from what I've done. I hope it's enough. I'll let you know in a few days if it was.

What I Did this Weekend

You cannot buy this patch. Its issuer will never sell it, nor do I expect that anyone who has one will sell it. You have to earn this patch, and doing that is not all that easy. The short version of earning mine was spending six and a half hours walking and jogging 13 miles through the streets of Washington, DC while carrying 12 pounds of bricks and three liters of water on my back. At various points along that journey, I carried other things including a 15-pound stuffed bulldog, an American flag, and a share of a large log. I never carried another person though I was carried by someone else on more than one occasion.

I earned this patch as a member of Class 002 of an event called GORUCK Light. The people who run the event describe it here. I know. They say four to five hours and seven to ten miles, and I said six and a half hours and 13 miles. It's all relative. Class 001, in New York City the weekend before, lasted seven hours and covered 11 miles. It's whatever time and distance it takes a team to complete the missions devised by its cadre or director. You can read more about cadre here. Ours was Devin. There was another team as part of this Light; Brent was their leader. They finished an hour before we did, which means we had an hour more fun than they did.

The Light was scheduled to begin at 7:00 a.m., but when the sons and I were dropped off at 6:30, there was already a large number of people there. The starting point was the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and not all the people there were going to take part in the Light. With the sun rising behind the Washington Monument at the far end of the Reflecting Pool, the Lincoln Memorial is quite popular with photography buffs. I know I would have had my camera out if I'd had one with me. I didn't, though, because a GORUCK event generally involves getting wet in some way. I also didn't expect to have the opportunity to stop or slow down and do any shooting.

There were 60 of us there for the Light. Some had done other GORUCK events and knew what to expect. The newbies among us had learned a few things from what other people had posted on the web and from the two Facebook groups associated with the DC Light, only one of which could be viewed by the cadre who would be running the event. We started by lining up in four ranks. Roll was checked, and the cadre walked among us checking thatwe  each had the required number of bricks in our pack--two for someone weighing less than 150 pounds and four for someone weighing over 150. After we put the packs back on, we were told that they could not touch the ground until the Light was over. If we were supposed to be lying on our backs, we had to move the packs to our fronts. Someone else could carry our pack if the need arose, but under no circumstances were we to let one touch the ground.

Most GORUCK events start with something called the Welcome Party, which some people find more welcoming than others. We started with pushups with, yes, brick-loaded packs on our backs. Then we bear crawled from the mid-level terrace we'd been on, up the steps to the top level of the Lincoln Memorial. We had to coordinate this, each row moving as a unit, not leaving anyone behind. With 15 people in each row, this wasn't easy. When we'd all reached the top level, each rank turned around and began to crab walk down. I was doing this with the sons, though I was not in the same rank as they were at this point. Older son and I had been training for the Light with the SEAL Team Physical Training program, and we do a lot of bear crawling and crab walking. We talked later about how relatively easy this part was for us, and how looking down our respective rows and seeing many people sitting down gave us some confidence that we were going to do okay at this.

Once we'd crab walked from the top of the Memorial down to the edge of the Reflecting Pool, we did some leg raises and flutter kicks while lying on our backs wearing our packs on our fronts. Again, this was something I was fairly used to except for wearing a pack while doing it. We were then told to arrange ourselves into two equally sized teams. Someone yelled out that the logical way to do that was for the first two ranks to be one team and the second two to be the other. I was determined that I would do this with the sons, so I jumped ship to their team, which was perfect because we ended up with Devin as our cadre. He's finishing up a master's in international security at Georgetown, and the Facebook group had discussed getting him something Georgetowny as a gag present. I bought a stuffed bulldog and replaced the torso stuffing with 15 pounds of lead shot. This made the bulldog count as the 15-pound weight that each team was required to have along with an American flag. I naturally made sure that Devin's team ended up with the bulldog while the other team carried a 15-pound chain.

Because one person on our team had misplaced their ID somewhere on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the other team left well before we did. I have no idea if they did the same thing we did, though we did cross paths with them once during the day. The cadre are all Special Forces veterans, and what the team does is designed like a mission. The cadre appoints a team leader and assistant team leader from the team members, gives them the mission, and then watches how the team carries it out. Our first mission was to get to a certain location; our leadership was chosen from people who claimed to live in DC and know their way around. We moved in buddy pairs, trying to stay about an arm's length behind the pair in front. We also moved in Indian run fashion. The person at the front right carried our American flag. The person at the front left carried the bulldog. As the group moved along, the back two people would move faster around to the front and take over flag and bulldog duties. When they were in position, the new pair at the back would start up.

While the pace we were going at felt like jogging to me, the sons assure me that it was really nothing more than a fast walk. I am not always good at walking fast because I am not always good at lifting my feet up very far. Sure enough, there was a crack in the sidewalk with the far edge jutting up about half an inch above the near one. My toe caught it and despite my best efforts to catch myself or to execute the front fall I know from karate, it didn't work. The weight of the pack on my back made the fall happen super-fast and also pushed my head forward so that the top right corner of my face cracked into the cobblestone sidewalk. I must say that it actually made a nice thwacking sound. Immediately, there was another team member beside me saying that she was an EMT. Cadre Devin was there, too. They told me to roll over onto my back. I refused to, saying that my pack would touch the ground. They took my pack off and handed it off to another team member. The sons appeared and explained who they were and their concern. After I rolled over, the EMT asked me what day it was, exactly the question I'd been expecting and one which I nailed. They eventually let me sit up. They asked me--again--how I felt, and I answered that I felt more embarrassed than anything else. Devin told me that someone usually stumbled, and I had just gotten it out of the way early on. I assured them that I had never lost consciousness and felt fine except for the pain where my head had hit. The waiver one signs for these events includes a clause under which you agree that if the cadre tells you that you cannot continue, you will willingly stop. Fortunately, Devin allowed me to keep going after I guaranteed that I would inform him of any dizziness, blurred vision, whatever, that might indicate some sort of concussion. Someone was given my pack to carry, and my buddy was supposed to keep an extra eye on how I was doing.

It was clear at one point that we weren't moving as quickly as Devin would have liked. He stopped us and told us that since we weren't moving fast enough, he was going to give us more weight to carry. He pulled some empty sandbags from his pack and instructed some team members to run over to a beach volleyball court and fill them with sand. We then had to carry those with us, passing them from team member to member to share the weight. At another point, we let too large of a gap develop between two buddy pairs. We were told that we had suffered two casualties as a result meaning that two bodies had to be carried. This was after I'd fallen, so I didn't have a pack on. A team member (nick)named Bear flung me over his shoulder as if I were a rag doll. Another team member buddy-carried a third team member, and we continued on our way until we were told that the bodies/buddies could be put down.

We arrived at our first destination, one we'd been expecting that we would visit at some point. This was the bottom of the Georgetown staircase made famous by the movie The Exorcist, the staircase down which the priest is thrown. During a short break, which included a chance to use a restroom (there was no mirror so I couldn't see just how bad my head looked), I asked if I could have my pack back. Since it was equipped with a water bladder, I needed it if I wanted to be able to stay hydrated. If I'd thought about it, I might have waited to ask because our next mission was to get all 29 team members up the steps and past cadre Devin within 50 seconds. Someone on the team suggested that the slower people go first, and I specifically asked if I could be in that group. The stairs are in three different sections, and I didn't really feel the pain until the third one. Fortunately, I managed to pick my feet up enough that I didn't do another face plant. Even more fortunately, we all made it up with about a second to spare meaning that we didn't have to go back down and try a second time.

We got new leaders at this point and a new mission, to head to Roosevelt Island. This involved crossing several bridges, one of which we were told was under fire meaning that we had to bear crawl across it, staying below the level of the concrete sides. When we got to the Teddy Roosevelt statue on the island, we were told that the next part of the mission was to retrieve the fuselage of a downed aircraft and move it to a landing zone from which it could be extracted by a helicopter. Our route to the downed fuselage involved a footbridge which we were told we could not use. This meant that, as we had expected, we would be getting wet going through the water instead. Wet and cold. And muddy. I think this was where I most appreciated my teammates. I am not one of those people who can just jump into water no matter the temperature. I'm the one sitting on the side getting my legs wet, then sitting on one of the steps at the shallow end, then walking very slowly out, splashing water higher and higher on my abdomen until finally, when I can put it off no longer, I go all the way in. Mustering every bit of courage I could, I walked into the water up to my ankles, then knees, then thighs. And then the muddy bottom got very suctiony, and I started to slip. The man ahead of me grabbed my hand and held me up. He didn't let go as we went on. At one point, I was afraid I was going to lose at least one shoe to the mud; I could not pull either foot out easily. The person behind me took my other arm, and between the three of us--not to mention other team members offering verbal encouragement--I made it to the other side and up onto dry land.

Once everyone was across, we were shown a rather large log and told it was the fuselage. The path was at this point about three feet above the level of the ground. We were told that we had to lift the fuselage onto the path and then carry it down the path back past the statue we'd started from. Fortunately, we could use the bridge on the way back. The men among us managed to get the log up onto the path without much trouble. Trying to carry it back offered what may have been our biggest teamwork challenge. Several team members had rowed crew and offered guidance in terms of the best way for a group to pick up a very long object. While we tried to put the taller people at the back and the shorter ones at the front, some people ended up with more weight than others. Also, the front of the log was forked, meaning that it was much wider than the rear. This caused problems whenever we had to curve. Finally, we weren't the only people using the path. We had to step aside for runners and dog walkers and anyone else who thought it was a good day to get some fresh air. At one point it came up that not everyone knew exactly what the mission was; pushups were offered as encouragement to stay better informed in the future. Eventually, though, we did manage to get the fuselage to the landing zone, accomplishing that part of the mission.

We then had to cover two miles in 30 minutes, something we didn't do too well at. After multiple times of people calling from the back of the line for the group to slow down, the slower members were put at the front and told to set the pace. At times I had trouble keeping up the pace while wearing my pack, and each time another team member took it from me. Those who know me well know that I don't like asking for help, but I did here.

At one point, we stopped at the World War II Memorial, a place I'd never visited. One of the members was doing the Light as a tribute to a friend who had served in the military and who had died last fall. He gave offered tribute to his friend as we stood in the middle of the memorial. It was quite moving. At some point I'd like to go back and explore the memorial in more detail. There was much more there than we could take in in the little time we had.

When we ended up back at the side of the Lincoln Memorial, we were given the choice of heading up the Mall to the Capitol or over to the Jefferson Memorial on the Tidal Basin. The Capitol won, so we headed down the Mall. At one point we slowed enough that cadre Devin informed us that half the team had been killed. This meant buddy carries with the odd person (we were a team of 29) carrying the flag. We did make it to the Capitol end of the Mall, where we posed for a somewhat formal group shot as opposed to all the photos that were snapped of us as we'd moved down the Mall. After an extended rest that included a group availing themselves of the Smithsonian's facilities, we headed back to 14th Street, where we made a right turn to be able to finish at the White House. We did, with the last distance being done as buddy carries again. Cadre Devin congratulated everyone and distributed the patches of the type shown above. He noted that while we had done a GORUCK Light, we had not done a GORUCK Easy. He said that he thought everyone on the team had what it takes to complete a GORUCK Challenge, which is good because that's what the sons and I are trying in May.

Cadre Devin also asked everyone not to dispose of their duct-tape-wrapped bricks in public trash cans around DC, noting that GORUCK would like to maintain good relations with the DC Police. And the DC Police do know whenever there's a GORUCK event. After the group split, many to go for lunch and beer with cadre Devin, the sons and I headed to a Metro station. We walked past a police car only to then hear over its loudspeaker, "Congratulations! We know you did a fine job out there today." That was a nice way to have it all end.

Some random thoughts after a couple days of incubation. The Light may well have been the hardest thing I've done when both the physical and mental aspects are considered. (I have to get the mental side in there, because twelve hours of labor is nothing to sneer at physically.) I feel a real sense of pride that I was able to do it. On a couple of occasions during breaks, male team members told me that when they saw me fall, they were convinced I'd end up stopping or being stopped. They congratulated me on keeping at it and not giving up. That made me feel good. While I saw some people drinking beer from cans during the course of the morning, there was apparently more alcohol consumption going on that I was aware of. No one offered me any, which was good because even one beer would likely have put me under. Finally, when one is wet and cold, merely putting on a dry windbreaker does wonders. It also helps to be wearing wicking fabric that dries quickly, something I appreciate much more now.

Finally, I am aware that this post has but one photo. Our team was actually accompanied by a GORUCK photographer who took over 900 photos, including more than several of my forehead. I expect that some of those will go up on the web, but it may take some time to select which ones. When that happens, I'll add a link from this post to the photos, so you can see some of the fun we had. And, yes, it was fun despite being a bitch in terms of the effort required. The sense of accomplishment I feel comes with a very real appreciation for the teamwork involved. I know that I could not have done what I did Saturday without the help of others. I only hope I was as much of a help to some of them as others were to me.

Breaking news: Photos from the event, including some close-ups of yours truly, can be seen here.