Why the @#$% Would you GORUCK?

Well, I'm committed. Last week I signed up for the GORUCK Challenge here in Raleigh. What's a GORUCK Challenge, you ask? In brief, the GRC is a 10-12 hour team event covering 15-20 miles (on foot). Challenges happen all over the country, and are led by former or active-duty special operations guys from GORUCK, which is a company in Montana that makes high-quality backpacks. Details are vague (and that's the point), but over the course of the night we can expect to endure plenty of physical hardship, in the form of indian running, bear crawling, crab walking, buddy carrying, and transporting heavy "coupons" and most likely a large log. Did you catch that we're doing this at NIGHT? Also, we will all be carrying 30+ pound backpacks and are almost sure to get completely immersed in water at some point. That last one is a big deal, because the Raleigh challenge is happening at the end of February, when it could very well be below freezing.

So WHY would I volunteer (and even pay money) to put myself through this?

Adventure

I love adventures of all kinds, and particularly since I finished school and started work I've found unique, challenging, or slightly risky activities to be a good way to spice up the day-to-day grind. I've been especially drawn to endurance events since college. Growing up I was pretty much terrible at every sport I tried, and never thought of myself as athletic, so it's been enormously rewarding to complete triathlons, open-water swims, and other events that even some of the "jocks" I knew in school find daunting.

Mental Toughness

Why not just stick with mainstream adventures like triathlons? Because ultimately, those events are about individuals confronting a known physical obstacle. If a race director doubled the length of the swim course or sabotaged the bikes in a triathlon after the race had started, most of the athletes would probably quit. It wouldn't be what they signed up or trained for.

But life isn't full of known obstacles, it's full of unknowns. As I read people's accounts of the GRC, I began to understand that what makes this event unique is its focus on dealing with the unknown as a team. By design, the GRC forces you to cope with not knowing how far you have to go or what's coming next (participants aren't even allowed to wear watches). Adapting to those difficult circumstances will be the key accomplishment of completing the challenge. From the GORUCK FAQ:

We build teams and solve problems – we never tell people what they can’t do, we show them what they can do, together, as a team.

Person after person who complete the challenge have written about discovering that they are many times tougher, stronger, and more capable than they ever imagined before the Challenge. I want to know what that feels like.

Finding my 100%

Through all the events and even individual workouts I've done, I've almost always had the sense that I could have pushed harder, that I had something left at the end. I'm often left wondering just how fit I really am. What could I do if I had to? I want test my true physical limits, but I need constant motivation and encouragement to do it. I think the supportive team environment of the GORUCK Challenge is exactly the way to get there.

Honoring Veterans

The military inspiration for the GRC is a significant part of the appeal for me as well. I've never been in the military, but the lion's share of the men and women who have served in the last decade's wars come from my generation. I'm mindful of the fact that while I was pursuing an education, getting married, and starting the career I'd always planned on, many of my peers were putting their own plans on hold to serve overseas. I feel indebted to them for that sacrifice, and for me, the way to repay it is to "be all that I can be" in civilian life.

American consumer culture makes it easy to get too comfortable. We're bombarded with ads for new gadgets designed to save us from some small inconvenience or a minute's worth of effort. The inescapable message is that avoiding inconvenience and discomfort should be a major goal in life. Get a job, make some money, buy things to make your life comfortable, and coast.

Our soldiers enjoy a warm bed and a hot meal just as much as the rest of us, but they'll jump out and crawl through the mud at a moment's notice if that's what has to be done to accomplish their mission. The rest of us should take their example to heart and be ready to abandon our spiritual, mental, physical, social, or economic comfort zones to advance the goals of our friends, families, communities, and country. Elite military units learn to do this through physical challenges, and I'm hoping the GRC will teach me the same thing.

It's also worth mentioning that GORUCK is owned and operated by former Green Beret Jason McCarthy, who seems to embrace a true commitment to quality and pride in American craftsmanship. 10% of the entry fee for the GRC is donated to the Green Beret Foundation, which supports wounded special forces soldiers and their families.

Why Not?

My highest aspirations in life are not to avoid pain and hardship, nor to pass some threshold of achievement and rest on my laurels. I want to go to my grave knowing that I lived up to my fullest potential as a human being. Embracing life's challenges, pushing through my own limitations, constantly raising the bar  - this is the approach to life that I embrace.

My hope is that I'll complete the GORUCK Challenge, and that doing so will give me a new level of confidence in myself; a feeling that I can adapt and overcome whatever life throws at me. If that happens, I'll feel more ready to leave my comfort zone, take risks, and realize my full potential in life.

No matter what happens, the GORUCK challenge is going to be a memorable adventure that will push my physical and mental limits. But if I complete it and have a positive experience, it just might change my life. So in closing, I can think of a whole bunch of reasons to GORUCK.

You might still be asking "why?," but I'm thinking "why NOT?"

Postscript: Why Write About it?

Hopefully it's clear that I'm not doing the Challenge to impress anybody. However, I've found preparing for it to be a powerful experience that's given me a lot to say. My interest in the GRC started with this blog post describing the Challenge as a "13-hour adventure that will introduce you to yourself," and since signing up I've turned to many other posts and articles by GRC veterans as a guide to my own preparation. I want to share my own experience in case it convinces someone else to sign up.

Note: this post was written in late January 2012, when I started blogging and after about 8 weeks of actively training for the challenge.. I'm back-dating a lot of the posts to give an accurate timeline to the story I'm telling.