A whistle bleated and our mass commenced a speed march of unknown distance and unknown overdue time. The power crowd left me in their wake as they sped off. Within the first hour I elected to woof my granola bar down, simply so that I would stop thinking about it non-stop. To my chagrin the ground took an unanticipated upward slope that continued for near two miles.
I had already stuffed the whole bar in my cake hole, when I realized my work rate was spiking my breathing rate, and a mouth full of Californians (flakes, fruits, and nuts), was preventing me from supplemental breathing through my mouth. I began to feel hypoxic, and ended by spitting out the granola in an isolated projectile purge.
Then a thing began to happen. By my estimate I was roughly 50% through the march, when I nearly stumbled over a mass in the road to my front. It was a brother who had collapsed.
“Jesus… get out of the middle of the road, (BKSE)fucker!!!(BKSE)… oh man, I’m sorry… are you alright??”
“Yeah, yeah… I’m done—just go.”
“Poor guy… well, you’d think he could at least move out of the center of travel, right??”
There was then another mass, and another, and a batch of masses… these were the power boys, the supplemented soldiers, the camp-booty commandos, and I was putting them behind me. They had almost what it took, they had the strength, the endurance, the speed, the flexibility… ah, but they were missing the abstract fifth ingredient; they were missing that mental audacity to give pain, fatigue, and despair the middle finger and drive on; they were missing determination.
In my squadron, in the realm of of the four pillars the power bars still existed, as well as the jels and powders. Men took Creatine, MET-Rx, T-Rex, Malcom-X, X-Box and X-Rays religiously, to their expectation and content. I became open-minded to it all eventually, and vowed to go on Creatine for a three month trial period largely out of curiosity for what it might do for my strength game.
I dedicated the training time to the weights, downing my Creatine dutifully. Station after station I was soon stacking out the machines. I hit the bench press with a personal goal of pressing 300lbs. In the end, I made it only as far as 285lbs. The first time I decided to crank out a mile run from down range to the squadron bay, I was horrified that in less than a quarter mile I ground down to a complete halt, feet clad in lead boots, heart racing, chest burning. I was pathetic. With that, I was satisfied with my honesty in evaluating training amid the power crowd. I found my balance between the pillars shifted wildly to the power side, leaving a deficit in the other pillars, as I saw it.
I faded by to my former training routine, resuming my vigil of anxiety over failing in combat for lack of the best balance I could achieve among the four pillars.
At home on the weekends, I typically came in to the Unit once to workout moderately, or sometimes I would go to a closer gym on main post Fort Bragg. At home, I had a treadmill and some other exercise apparatus. If nothing else, I had a rucksack and miles of pine forests surrounding my house. I could just set my watch and push into the thick for a stalwart rampage.
Throughout the training cycle in the Unit, all were subject to the many “Gut Check” episodes from team, troop, and squadron-level leaders, who all planned no-notice alerts to return to the Unit. Some eight or so hours later one might finally be coming to the end of a marathon event that might have started off with a parachute drop far off from the compound. The return route would include running, rucking, bicycle riding through sandy fire-breaks, miles of paddling down rivers, obstacle courses, live fire drills, anything and everything the leadership could pile on, to prove their men were the toughest in the Unit.
While these events were ball-busters without peer, they were adventurous, and brought teams together with a solid bond of brotherhood.
It calls to mind my own awareness of nuance I noted among the men of Delta, one that I had not acknowledged in other Special Operations Forces I served with. Conversations with my brothers outside Delta tended to gravitate toward stories to the effect: “remember that time we drank the beer, and got so drunk, and it was so funny how drunk everyone was, and that made us drink more beer and have more fun and beer…?
In Delta, after our sprint from the gym to the chow hall, conversations embraced a penchant that drove stories that more so went: “Remember that ‘death-march’ on skis we did that night in Camp Ethen Allan Vermont, that night it was 45 degrees sub-zero? How we scratched and clawed our our way though some of the worst conditions imaginable? We thought we might even lose a man or two to that extreme climate. Remember that?
I remember,
geo sends
COMMENTS