[Horrible]

Somewhere after we hit downtown, both quads cramped up, hard. Like, couldn't-flex-my-leg-at-all hard. The pain was pretty bad and I had to get out from the log for a little bit. Some nice guy gave me a few salt tabs and that helped. I'm pretty sure it was Cool Beard Dude from before. After about 5 minutes of hobbling my legs finally decided to work again. We kept the log going down every street with passers-by gawking at our sorry group. Being that it was still around 0200 there were not many people out on the street, although we did wake up a few homeless people (Sorry guys). One guy even offered us some weed. We passed by a Lululemon store and all the Crossfit people made jokes.

Mike informs us that we are taking a detour. We head up a few streets (making sure to painfully elevate our log as we cross each intersection) and stop at a mall parking garage. WHEW! Finally get time to take that load off. We don't get to unceremoniously dump the log just yet, instead we get to kick-roll it over to the building wall. Then we get a bathroom break. We've already had a few cops and other security folks ask Mike what we were doing, so for us to pee, we had to go about 2 blocks away to find a nice covert location (Which turned out to be some bushes). We finished up our business and headed back to the rest of the team, where we munched on some food and drank more water. The chance to rest was nice but did not last very long. We had a new mission: Establish a communications linkup with the extract platform on top of the mountain. In this case, the mountain was the top of the parking garage, which was about 8 stories up (I think). So in true mountain-climber fashion, we had to bear crawl up the stairs. In the end it wasn't so bad, but my waterlogged gloves made a "squish squish squish" sound every time I put my hand down. We form up again at the top of the parking garage and wait for instructions. It is still dark out but downtown San Diego looks beautiful at night with no traffic. The buildings look very sparkly from all the lights. Anyway, we get formed up in a circle and do some squad pushups. If you're not familiar, squad pushups require the person in front of you to put their feet on your shoulders while you do the same to the person behind you. It makes the exercise stupid hard and is a stupid exercise for stupid people. We still had our packs on (as we always did) so it was nearly impossible to get the 10 we were required to do to before moving on. Im sure that Mike didn't approve of our form, but he let us go after enough attempts. We had to peel out of there and down the stairs to make it back to our log. My partner's legs and mine were pretty smoked by this point so going down stairs fast became quite a chore. However, we managed to make it and keep up with the group. Once we got back down off the garage, we were informed that a few of our team were wounded and had to be moved back down, so 4 brave guys got to run back up there and fireman carry the "wounded" team mates back down the stairs. After that, all was well and we got our log back and moved on. I was dreading moving again, as I was under the assumption that we were still a ways away from the USS Midway.

Turns out that we were only 3 blocks away! As soon as we turned the corner we could all see the harbor, which raised our spirits tremendously. We moved out at a faster pace to our rally point, where we were informed by Mike that we had made the time hack and were going to get a small reward. We all cheered and became super excited! And of course, the best part was unceremoniously dumping that fucking log into the ocean. BYE BYE FUCKO!! After that, Mike gave us a little pep speech and told us that we would be getting a 15 minute break to refill water, eat, or do whatever we needed to do. That felt really, really good. I took this opportunity to take off my waterlogged boots (I really should've worn running shoes, as these boots had water in them the entire time) and change my socks. I also filled up my hydration bladder at the local fountain. One girl had brought pizza slices in her pack, which was about as strange a thing as you could see at this time of night, and I'm very surprised her pizza didn't get squished into a mushy mess. I didn't have any but apparently it was very enjoyable. Some people are still shivering from the cold, but I feel pretty warm all over at this point, with the exception being my feet and hands. The break was sorely needed by all of us, except for Matt Francev whom I mentioned earlier, who talked about the second challenge he was going to do that day. Yes, Matt was going to do back-to-back challenges. Fucker is nuts. After a little more talking and resting, Mike gives us our next objective: Spanish Landing, about 4.5 miles away. We put our rucks back and form up in columns of two, ready to move on to the next objective.



The first thing I see as we move out is the skyline to the east. Skyscrapers obscure most of it but you can just make out some faint blue peeking out. I think, “Damn, how long have we been at this?”, and just around the moment I see a clock mounted on one of the piers to my left: 6:15. Turns out that we've been at this for about 5 hours now. It certainly felt like less, but time flies, I guess. We continue to move out and the mood is light. We pass the Star of India. We pass the airport. We do incline pushups on a low wall. “Find a pole” is Mike's way of telling us to elevate our feet and knock out pushups. I guess our pace was a little too leisurely so we ended up hearing this quite a bit on our push to the next objective. Oops, somebody left a glove behind. Mike informs us that this is not acceptable, so we lunge for 100m. I just happen to be carrying the coupon at the time so I am stuck lunging with close to 90lbs of extra gear. Ouch. Lunges are finished. We are informed that further movement under ruck is going to be done as an indian run. Double ouch. Folks in the back take off and move to the front, taking the heavy coupon and slightly-less-heavy coin bag from the people they just replaced. We keep moving. And moving. And moving. We move past the coast guard station. It feels nice just to sprint across intersections rather than having to hoist up that log. We keep moving. Spanish Landing comes into view. Just a little beach in the distance. Our columns of two need to make way on the narrow sidewalk for pedestrians and cyclicsts, both of whom seem out in force today.


Okay this is getting too long to write. Here's some high points:
-Made it to spanish landing. Got wet and sandy. Did got dragged across the beach.
-Went from there to Ocean Beach, 4.5 miles away. Made it under 1.5 hours.
-Got went and sandy there. Ocean waves nearly pulled a few of us out as we did flutter kicks
-Rucked a little way to a ball park. Cracked open the coupon and drank beers. Felt great! Plus we got to wash off (mostly) and change socks. Got a sweet 15 minute break
-Next objective was something like 7 miles away, back at Balboa park. One of the people following us accidentally hit a biker with her elbows, so we made jokes about lethal elbows for the duration of the ruck. Mike tells us to flare our elbows as we indian run, so we do
-Trek under a bridge and find a homeless camp
-Create a field-expedient litter and carry every member of the team. I think we covered a little over a mile in litter carriage
-Break crawl up a church's field
-Finish back at Balboa park
Total: 21 miles, 14.5 hours