I hate failure. Of people, of gear, of anything. But I’m grateful to the world when enemies show themselves sooner than never and action is the answer to war’s summons and love’s call and I can imagine no worse fate than to sit idly by and spectate my own life.
And somehow we’re in manufacturing and we build…Sandbags?
And not just Sandbags we build the toughest gear on the planet and we do it all right here in America. And we prove it and that started with me and Java hitting the road with new gear and the will to abuse it beyond failure. Java never suffered to keep promises and then it got even easier as you found our Events and I was like hello meet our Sandbags and you don’t know it yet but this is a match made in heaven.
You’ll see.
Kling, you’re up first like usual and we gotta start somewhere so here’s your 20 lber don’t pretend it’s heavy.
Oops too late.
Java’s like come on how about some real stress. Hard times make hard people harder kind of deal.
And we know hard people and this is where you come in. Since forever you’ve asked not for less weight but for more strength, as a team. And you find it and we find more weight and we have a lot of different options when it comes to Sandbags.
I’ve talked a lot about zippers as weak points on the rucks, and we use the best for every piece of gear we build. But for the sandbags the zippers are not the weak points, the handles are.
We’ve strength tested the point where the handles meet the Sandbag at over 300 lbs. But that’s a static strength test. So here’s the deal. Under the strain of weight, Sandbags have to be picked up and carried and that’s active stress. Which means you have grab the handles and subject them to your will and I haven’t yet shown you anything yet to demonstrate that they won’t rip or tear or come undone or you name some way of describing failure.
Easy enough. Hey class you can only carry the Sandbags by the handles and they loved it and GORUCK Nation I love you.
But this is what failure looks like. Garrett’s class brought one back that was mutilated and I was like hey what happened? And Garrett smiled and said you told me to abuse them beyond failure so I had the class drag ’em on concrete for a mile. Then his smile got bigger and couldn’t betray humility for a million dollars because it would have to exist to be betrayed as he showed me where they failed. Not the people, the sandbags of course. Yup that’ll do it thanks bro now we can definitively tell people not to drag ’em for a mile on concrete because if they do, the bags will fail. I kept it to myself that the handles are still fully intact.
So here’s the disclaimer: don’t drag ’em for a mile on concrete or else they’ll fail. There we said it.
And Rubin’s like yup thanks for the disclaimer I can get over it and make love not war.
So maybe I’m the easy one but my name isn’t Bert and at the end of my classes two 30 racks show up on top of the abused Sandbag and damn if that’s been abused it looks brand new and I’ll take a cold one too thank you very much.
But our work is not done and everything and everybody has a breaking point. Our job at Selection is to find yours and make you quit, your job is to not break despite the stress. It’s unlike any of our other events, all of which are about building teams.
So hour 47 there’s Spengler I guess it was roster number whatever at that time and he didn’t quit yet and his current fate involves the 120 lb. Sandbag. Grab it by the handles fun fun.
It’s important to maintain noise discipline, so if you breathe too hard we’ll issue you a sensitive item called a snorkel and it will help you keep quiet as you drag 120 or more like 150 wet lbs across the beach until we get tired from watching.
Stand up, get it on your shoulders.
This is what failure looks like.
Mercy is for some other life and if you don’t get it on your shoulders you’ll be performance dropped from GORUCK Selection.
So of course he did it and I really wanted to tell him great job, man, we’ve all been rooting hard for you and you only got 50 more minutes to go and then I’ll buy ya as many beers and steaks as you can handle. And by the way your dad’s awesome I was just hangin’ with him he’s at the Team House now waitin’ for ya so make it fast.
But of course I said none of that and instead silently exited as Cadre Rick came in nice and fresh.
The most stressful moments in life happen when you feel utterly alone. But every time you face the world, every time you overcome and every time you don’t, you get stronger and next time gets easier. The most important part is to show up and if I didn’t completely understand whatever desire it is to push past new limits, I just wouldn’t fit in around here.
Enter Selection alumni, who came down to Florida in the hopes of welcoming more into their very small family.
And they got one.
Some things in life are worth all the pain you can endure.
And Kling’s like yup don’t forget I got one of these too ha ha.
After ocean and sand and sun and 100’s more like 1,000’s of miles at our Events and more sand and more ocean and Spengler and then someone got another good idea and we had long forgotten about the gear until someone said hey where’s that 120 lber at and that’s when I was thinking this is why we don’t have nice things.
But welcome to GORUCK luxury class, Xander, and good on you Webb for starting him young.
And after all that and the promise of infinitely more, tough is beautiful ask Monster he’ll tell you. Even if it’s sitting idly by and maybe I’m talking about Monster or maybe I’m talking about Sandbags or maybe I’m talking about you or maybe just maybe take your pick.
But I’m definitely talking about Kling. Nobody’s forgotten you or your 20 lb Sandbag old friend and man that looked pretty heavy way back when I mean not that heavy compared to Spengler’s 120 lber but still heavy and and you can have it just smile for the camera and answer me one question:
Do you think it’ll hold up?