I text my good friend James Vreeland a life long resident of the Detroit area, GRT, and Selection finisher. (His story is right here.) I let him know that GORUCK America was headed to Detroit to show the Michigan GRT’s some love. They greeted us with a welcome party starting with a warm up at New Species Crossfit. I was a little disappointed that we were not meeting at a local Pub. Anyway, we head across the street to an abandoned golf course with teams of four. Each team had a tire, two kettle bells, two medicine balls, a GORUCK sandbag, and a Ruck carrying the teams water. Deane Aikins made a bad ass team weight a yellow concrete Crayon named Chesty in honor of my beloved Chesty Puller. James switched it up with either the last place or first place team carrying the team weight, just to make the suck more widespread. (thank you Deane it made me hungry).

We kicked off the round robin at the first stage with 10 mins of tire flip burpees and one minute of rest. After almost dying and wondering if Vreeland is really that good of a friend, we gather our gear and head to the next station. 10 minutes of Russian kettle bell swings by two members of the team while the others assume the front leaning rest position, switching places when they tap out. After that it was off to the medicine ball station with the round consisting of over the shoulder medicine ball tosses. After 10 long minutes of that dumb shit, we head to the next station. Sitting side by side we do sandbag passes, once again 10 minutes, then move on to the final station. Flutter kicks on the 4th count tucking knees to chest. All this time criss-crossing the 9 hole course. I learned later we did a 5K during this WOD walking from station to station.

We finished that and I was stoked, off to beer and pancakes. I soon realized that we had to go back and gather all the gear we used and bring it back to New Species. We went back to each station and did the workout in reverse. Gathering up the gear and bringing it back with us. It was a solid workout with a solid group of people. We headed over to The Hills City Grill for some pancakes and whatever else the health oriented people ate. What I see is some of the happiest and nicest people I have ever met. Everyone is stoked and worked hard during this workout. There are three local gyms everyone goes to and everyone gets along. We will be talking about them in future posts.

 

We want to thank New Species Crossfit and all the Michigan GRT’s for all your support. We also want to extend a special thanks to James Vreeland for all the hard work he put into this and nailing exactly what GORUCK America is about, community.

 

Christopher Goad

AKA

Bomber