It's Go(ruck) time!

The butterflies have already begun in my stomach.  With three days until the most epic St. Patricks Day ever for me, in Boston.  Down to three days to go before my very first Goruck Challenge the email was sent out today from Goruck Headquarters.  It included our start point, our Cadre's names, and our class numbers.  Our group of 30 people are considered a 'class' and every class gets a number.  Our class will be #131 or #132 depending on which group we get placed in, with Cadre Lou and Devin.  Our start point is at the famous Boston bar, Cheers.  Today I decided it was due time to lay out all my stuff and make sure I'm fully prepared for the craziness I'm about to embark upon.

This is my pile of stuff I'll be lugging or wearing to our start point.  You'll notice the most important part of the challenge seems to be missing from the picture.  The Goruck GR1 bag.  When you register for the challenge you have the opportunity to save 20% off the cost of the bag if you pick it up the day of the challenge.  Since 20% of $295 is a pretty significant amount of money, I decided I'd wait until the challenge to get my bag.

You may recognize some of the items in this picture, others you may not have seen before.  I'll be wearing my Under Armour compression leggings and shirt, a windbreaker, running shorts & sneakers, Injinji socks, running socks, our class T-shirt, Mechanix gloves, and of course my Goruck hat.  Since the challenge starts at 10pm we're also required to wear a headlight which you'll notice in the upper right-hand of the picture.  At the top in the center are my wrapped bricks.  6 bricks wrapped in foam and duct tape, ready to be lugged around Boston for more than 12 hours.  Each class is also required to bring an additional 25lb weight and our class decided on gold coins.  Our gold coins happen to be metal washers spray painted gold, but there's going to be a couple thousand of them to carry.  We're also required to carry water, that's the blue plastic bag with the hose coming off of it.  It holds 2 liters of water and it fits right in the Goruck bag.  I'm also bringing an assortment of foods that pack a lot of energy into them.  Sport beans, Sharkies jellies, Clif bars, and I still need to pick up some M&M's which are considered a Goruck staple food item.   Goruck veterans said that carabiners are a must so I have a few of those along with some nylon straps to help secure the bricks.  I probably won't know if I forgot anything until it's too late, but hopefully having it on the screen here might help.

In my next post I hope to be certified "Goruck Tough" and I look forward to explaining what the challenge entailed.