A bunch of Cadre with a ton of operational experience. A ton. And at this stage in the game they’re mathematicians of destruction. They count, and not fast enough, and it’s because you don’t go down up fast enough or you don’t put one leg in front of the other fast enough. The basics. We’re still at the easiest part of the entire Selection, the part you control. We count, that’s all. It’s very boring, like this entire post promises to be because easy isn’t that interesting and this is easy.

Every cool guy school I’ve ever been to starts with a PT test. Fail it and you take your still packed bags and you go home and you’re greeted with disgust by your unit or whomever sent you there and you’re that guy and you’ll never live it down and that’s how it works. And yes, people do fail in those schools, but not people serious about the school and we feel the same way about this PT test. Passing it should not be your primary goal, destroying it should be. The stressors don’t help so if you’re close to failure at home, don’t show up. I would write this more nicely if our collective frustration hadn’t boiled over long ago.

To put it more succinctly, if you don’t pass the PT test you haven’t even started Selection but you have wasted our time and your money. So pretty please with sugar on top, do everyone a favor and train for the PT test and pass it if you’re ever gonna show up at this event.

Back to easy boredom. Here’s how you do a push-up. Down up. Basically if you do them correctly we’ll count (back to that mathematician thing) if you don’t, we won’t.

The wind blows and the sound of the ocean hints at the pending destruction via the Welcome Party aka the Good-Bye Party. That’s Selection and I’d rather talk about it time now but let’s focus a little more time on boredom and more boredom let’s call it push-ups and sit-ups, the slayers of Selection candidates.

We all want the event to start, and we want you to pass the administrative portion. It makes for a greater challenge for us when there are more of you. And when you fail push-ups we feel like we cheated you of the opportunity to see what this is really like. Or that you cheated yourself, I guess.

Back to the mathematician thing. This is not a push-up it’s a weird looking worm or something and the Cadre would not add +1 to your count and it doesn’t matter how many 100 Mile races you’ve run or ultra endurance events you’ve conquered. If you can’t do enough push-ups, you fail and you go home.

More silence. More boredom. More counting your preparation in numbers that didn’t go up fast enough.

Like I said, boring. Do you think Kling was checking his phone during the Welcome Party. Nope, because that’s not boring at all, this is. But let’s talk about it some more.

You double time on up and you’re ready and you do your best. If you’ve given yourself a PT test a week for the last 4 months your best will be better. And that’s a fact.

The Cadre do smile though you won’t see it.

It’s no secret that I love AJ but I barely knew him at this point when he was 037. He looks ready, and calm to a level you can’t fake. Maybe it’s just his way, maybe it’s cause he trained specifically for the PT test. Maybe both. Either way, look like this when you’re standing there.

Still boring. Waves crash and wind blows. One by one they file up for 2 minutes of time with the mathematicians.

The hard part for me is that I know how hard some of the folks trained who failed this early on. They just didn’t train the right way and I hope they’re mad at me when they read this. Mad enough to do better next time, that is.

By Selection standards, a 5-Miler is a fun run. This is an endurance event, the hardest in the world, and if you’re uncomfortable with miles, if you’re “not a runner” or have some such excuse, you better figure out how to become one.

Drink water. In future Selections, we’ll allow you to run with water if you want to. Or maybe we’ll force you to.

The 12-Miler which will end in darkness and the start of the Bye-Bye Party. The faster you go the more rest you get when you get there. Of note is that this is still administrative, Selection still has not really started.

Good luck, ruck fast, some onlookers will hold the fort down for ya while you’re gone. It’s almost just as quiet but there’s a lot less stress in the air.

I hope this post has been thoroughly boring, and that this is the last time we really spend much time going over the destruction of you via the PT test. It claimed over half the class at 015. Meaning over half the class didn’t even start the Bye-Bye Party, which was a magnificent opus to pain and worth the price of admission if this is your kind of thing.

OK I can’t help it, here’s the deal. I hope this is the last time we talk about this because from now on you’re all gonna show up and pass this part, right? Step 1 to doing that is to train hard for these specific exercises. You know what’s coming and you know the standard. It’s like if a teacher gives you a few test questions before you take it, focus on those answers first and make sure you know them really, really well. If you don’t you get zero sympathy from us.

Next up: Part 3: Selection Begins. Finally. At the Bye-Bye Don’t Call it a Welcome Party