My Path to SF

There’s times that I hear people talk about the hard work required to get where you want in life, and at times I think that they’ve got it wrong. Work all through your 20s with no free-time to guarantee yourself a better life later. But at what point? I certainly think that a strong work ethic is indeed important, but so is balance. But I also think that maybe I didn’t live my own world view that well. I did well in school growing up and participated in sports, so I was well prepared to succeed in life. From what I saw and the stories my dad told after returning from Somalia, I knew I wanted to join the military. I believed that there were places like Somalia that needed a lot of help, and sometimes force was needed to help those places move in the right direction. From that point on I was dead set on joining the military.

At first, I wanted to be a Navy SEAL. I had seen movies and TV shows, read books and watched news specials on how they were “the best”. I was sure that college was in my future, so my best bet was to apply to the Naval Academy to have a good shot at getting a slot for BUDS when I graduated. So throughout high school, on top of maintaining good grades and playing sports, I made sure I was physically prepared: each morning starting with 100 pushups and 100 sit-ups, and finishing the day the same. High School sports certainly helped a great deal to keep me in proper shape, but I did some running just to be sure.

During this time I also started taking martial arts—in my neighbors garage of all places (at first, once he was established we moved in to a proper dojo). Since we were in a military town, I was training with a few Special Forces Soldiers. When one of them asked what I was planning to do after high school, I said that my plan was to go to Annapolis and head to BUDS from there. I received some life changing insight after that. One of them told me that the reason SEALs are the best is they tell everyone they’re the best, and Green Berets don’t have the need to tell everyone how good they are.

That left me with some thinking to do, and I realized I saw myself being in the Army outside of being in Special Forces, but I couldn’t see myself in the Navy unless I was a SEAL or a pilot (and my eyesight wasn’t good enough to be a pilot). Beyond that, I started to realize that I believed more in the mission of Special Forces than in that of the Navy SEALs (which goes back to my dad’s experience in Somalia and the belief that the best way to help these countries is to teach them to fight their internal threats better themselves). At that point, I was in a rush to get my application submitted to West Point, but in the end, I was accepted and on my way to my (slightly deviated) goal.

West Point was what is was. Physical Training was a requirement while there, but the entire time you’re inundated with more than you can handle, which actually went a decent way to teaching prioritization. Like most, I kept up with my training, running and lifting weights after classes and whatever other requirements we had, and then hitting the books. Not one to lose sight of my goals, I asked others who were on a similar path what sort of training they did. We had an extracurricular club at West Point that was very much Ranger and Special Forces pipeline focused, complete with a mini-selection. I trained as best as I could for the try-outs, and took part in the mini-selection, but my best wasn’t good enough that day.

Academics was generally the most difficult part of West Point, but our dean once actually told our graduating class that if you’re too far towards the right on the bell shaped curve, you’re not getting out enough. During my stint at West Point, I took a little bit of pride in being the engineer that spent the most time at our on-campus bar. By the time we were graduating, I was squarely in the middle of the graduating class. Not bad, considering they’re some of the best our nation has to offer. Of course I did get a little grumpy that I was ranked against people with much lighter course-loads, but there were obviously other benefits to be had.

The first year and a half in the Army was a long pipeline of training. For a profession often referred to as “knuckledragger” (I was an infantryman), our training pipeline was quite long. Basic Officer Leadership Course, Infantry Officer Basic Course, Ranger School, Airborne School, Ranger School again if you’re so lucky, and you finally have a place in the world. Once I was a real boy out in the Army, I was a bit more in control of my training than I had been at West Point. At the same time, I had a new tool to help me on my way. While on leave back home (which was Fayetteville, North Carolina), I learned that many members of “The Unit” were training in CrossFit as part of their physical regimen. This changed everything for me. The first workout I tried was :”Murph”, and it was an experience like no other. It took me seemingly forever, but it felt like I accomplished something, and after that, CrossFit was a major part of my training as well, and I absolutely attribute it greatly to my success in getting into Special Forces.

Graduates from West Point enter the military as 2nd Lieutenants, and in the infantry that generally means you’re an infantry platoon leader. I knew the infantry would prepare me best for Special Forces, as military tactics are generally the same wherever you go, and the infantry does it in the true boots on the ground fashion. As for my physical training, I was now doing PT five days a week with my company and platoon, one day each of running and ruck marching, which were two very important skills for selection prep. The other three days, I, my platoon sergeant, or one of my squad leaders would come up with some form of physical pain for us. Often CrossFit based.

At some point, it became a regular thing to go to the gym before our morning meeting that preceded PT. So I was now lifting weights each morning, doing morning PT, and religiously following the 3 on 1 off training philosophy of CrossFit. The biggest downside to this training was that it interfered with my dating life: my girlfriend got quite upset that I would fall asleep halfway through any movie we watched together because I was so exhausted at the end of the day from this somewhat absurd training plan.

The entire time at Fort Hood, after discovering CrossFit, diet was also a huge part of my focus. I ate a quite clean “Zone” diet, and I certainly benefited from it. Although I was working out hard enough to know that I didn’t need to worry about bad food giving me a belly, the clean, healthy eating allowed me to benefit that much more from my training.

I continued training in this manner right up until we deployed to Afghanistan. While we waited to move out to our FOB in the middle of the desert, we had all the gym we could need at Kandahar Airfield. I’d make it out there at least once a day, and sometimes I’d be able to lift and get a “CrossFit style” workout in. Once we moved out to build our FOB though, the accommodations weren’t nearly as cozy. We were now in the middle of the desert with no gym (yet), but I didn’t let that stop me. As much as I could, I kept a decent routine of body weight exercises to make sure I didn’t lose too much of my training.

As our FOB got built up, we had more resources. We built a gym, and as the resident CrossFitter, I got the help of some of the Soldiers in my platoon to build a pull-up bar and some boxes for box jumps (the boxes were properly beveled on the top, so they looked awesome). I even made it onto the CrossFit main page from a shot I took while out there. Throughout the rest of the deployment I made sure I maintained my peak level of fitness while also ensuring I had energy for the week’s patrols. Fitness was such an essential part of my path at this point that when we were on QRF (Quick Reaction Force), I would work out in uniform in case we got “the call”.

Following our return from that deployment, our work schedules were certainly much lighter than our train up. For any issues I had with my boss at the time, I have to appreciate that he would let those of us who were attending selection train on our own. This meant I was often back on two a days, at least a few times a week. I got a membership at a CrossFit gym for the afternoons, and many mornings I would ruck a few miles, as ruck marching is a huge part of selection. Only a few short months after returning from Afghanistan, I was off to Fort Bragg, NC to attend selection, and I was without a doubt in the best shape I have ever been, and probably ever will be in.

Physically, selection was pretty tough. We had unknown distance runs and rucks, which turns into a huge mind game, because you want to keep yourself in the top of the pack, but you don’t want to burn yourself out on a long ruck trying to keep to the front either. You don’t generally know how well you’re going, so you have a tendency to “self select”, meaning you think you’re doing poorly, so you quit to avoid the pain of trying hard and not making it (and cadre also work to help this along). I felt like I was doing fairly well on the rucks and runs, and when we weren’t doing that, we were having some sort of physical tests or general smoke sessions.

Following the week of unknown distance rucks and runs and smoke sessions, we moved on to Land Navigation. Now I’m not great with land navigation, so I made sure I paid attention as best as I could, and I genuinely thought the land nav classes were the best I’ve had in the Army (even if our instructor was a prick). One of my favorite examples of people not necessarily knowing what the cadre is looking for went a little something like this (memory might miss some of the details but in general…) one student during land-nav lost his rifle and freaked out and quit, thinking himself too stupid to pass if he lost his plastic dummy rifle on the land nav course. Another student lost his rifle, admitted it to the cadre member when turning in his land nav card, and lo and behold, the cadre had an extra rifle that someone found out on the course and had no problem giving it to the student.

The culmination of land nav week was the star course. You have a set time limit to find 4 points, generally arranged in a star pattern on your map, allowing you a great opportunity to learn the terrain. When I went to selection, it was November, so it wasn’t terribly warm. We also started south of a location nicknamed “scuba road” because there’s supposed to be a road there somewhere, but most everyone just ends up swimming. So I’m thinking to keep my uniform dry, I’ll get into my Gortex and stuff my uniform in the ruck. I should at worst get wet to my waist and the Gortex will dry easier.

Well after prodding the tree line for several minutes in the pitch black night before starting this glorious journey, I could not figure out where this road where you could get less wet was, and no one else had figured it out either, so I busted through the brush and started on my way, and plummeted straight into water that was deep enough that my rucksack was keeping me afloat, and I was swimming towards my next point. Then water was miserably cold, and I hate the cold, so I wasn’t too happy. After swimming to the other side, I changed out of my wet Gortex and into my uniforms, and came to the realization that I had to get all 4 points, ‘cause I probably wouldn’t survive the night with rain coming (there was a hurricane off the coast).

With that realization in mind, I threw my Gortex in the ruck and started towards my first point. We still had a few hours of night left, so it was awfully dark. It didn’t matter and I was running as fast as I could with an 80 lb rucksack on wherever possible. Fortunately I could make my route mostly through open fields, so I could make up some good time. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of deadfall that you don’t see when it’s dark out and you’re running as fast as your ruck will allow, so a few times I went from near spring to lying flat on my face after tripping over a fallen tree or two. After feeling sorry for myself, I got back up and got back to running, and before long, I was at my attack point. So I pulled out my compass, took an azimuth to my actual site, and it was dead on where my azimuth and pace count said it would be.

For the next couple points, I wouldn’t say I was as lucky, but c’est la vie. Looking back at it, I think I trusted and focused my techniques at night because I had nothing else to go off of to help. When I could actually see, I had a tendency to rely on that some and it prevented me from fully using and trusting the more pure and basic techniques. So I was wandering a bit for my second point, but my third, I was back on my game. I finally felt like I could read micro-terrain on a map, and was able to use the terrain features of the map to get me to the target site. At this point, I traveled close to 19 km for my first point, 17 km for my 2nd, and roughly 12 km for my third. So when the site keeper at the third point told me where my final point was, I asked him to repeat himself several times. I couldn’t believe it, because I had maybe an hour or two, and my final point was only 5 km away. I actually felt like I had a chance to get there, and I made it with maybe half an hour to spare. I made it, and wouldn’t have to do a second attempt the next day (you actually got a chance to rest back at the bays at camp if you got all 4 points, elsewise you had to take another stab the following day).

That night was crazy. With the storm on the coast, there was a torrential downpour at McKall. People were quitting in droves not wanting to embrace the suck out in the rain. This gave me some pleasure to be sure, especially considering that the less people that were left, the more likely I had a chance of being selected. Once the day two land nav-ers were done, the next day started “Team Week”, the grand finale and the culmination of selection. At this point, I was starting to be worn down. They still ran sick call out there, so I went in to get my ankle looked at. They didn’t give out meds generally unless something was infected, but I thought if I could get my ankle wrapped, I might be good to go. For one reason or another I thought I wouldn’t be able to, but I managed to get some bandage to wrap my ankle, and it was enough to power through the next grueling days.

Team week consisted of more mind games, with the cadre always claiming you were on the clock and if you didn’t make your hit times, you wouldn’t pass selection. So the person in charge was responsible for balancing a cadre in their ear with a team verging on mutiny if the pace was too hard. People dropped, but after the last year of training, I was good to go, and survived all they had to throw at me, and at the end of team week and selection, I was set for the Q Course.

To Be Continued…