Training the Best

The staple of every Marine Corps physical conditioning program is not the run, it is the hump.

Take everything you need to survive in the field for four days or so, cram it into a pack, and let's go! We do five here at TBS; 6,8,10,12, and 15 miles in length. I have always done well, but that's kind of a given when your inseam is 34"

The hardest one was actually the 8 miler, we did that one after FEX II, which was two very long days of digging, assaulting, and getting rained on. Wet and muddy gear weighs twice as much as normal. It was not fun.

Today was our 15 miler, it is supposed to be the "culminating" physical conditioning event. They use that word a lot here; culminating. Oh well.

So we loaded all of our packs up at 0450 this morning and headed out on buses to Chancellorsville, the site of a major Civil War battle. It was kinda cool seeing the battlefield, but honestly it was mostly gravel roads and trees. We did piss off some of the locals, we had to shut down a section of road for a time while our column of 243 lieutenants and all the support assets necessary for that column passed by.

It was also cool seeing the civilians and their different reactions. Kids are the greatest, they just stare with their wide eyes, amazed by what they see. Some people cheer and honk, some just ignore us. We almost always do our humps on base, the people there have seen it all before and probably done it several times themselves. It was fun to do the hump off base.

So how do you do a hump? We hike for 3- 3.5 miles and then take a ten minute break, load back up and do it again until we get there. Your body progressively gets more broken down, your shoulders hurt more with every mile, your feet become more sore, your knees feel more weak. I was feeling pretty good this morning, but in the first two miles something was going wrong. My left foot was developing a hot spot, the precursor to a blister. This is a bad feeling when you have 13 miles to go. Fortunately I got the situation corrected with a sock change and removing one of the two inserts in my left boot. I felt later like my right hip was hurting from my leg being a little longer on that side, but then I discovered that both hips hurt. Good to go.

We pressed on and the miles just breezed by. As silly as that sounds, the miles can go quickly when your peers are engaged and you can talk and joke around. Unfortunately today, most of the people around me were not in the mood to talk. I felt pretty damn good until about mile 10. Then the pain set in.

My knees started to hurt, my hamstrings started to feel weak, my shoulders started to throb more, my neck tightened up, and stabbing pains began to shoot through my feet. Now this was not a sudden onset, just a gradual progression which came to a head around mile ten. The feet are the one thing that seem to come on quickly, you're good and then all of the sudden you're not. The strange thing about my feet is that I almost never get blisters, but my toes feel like all of the skin has been peeled off of them. It sucks the most when you head uphill; that was torture.

On top of all this, it was a warm day today and we began the last three miles at 1100. My boots and clothes were completely soaked. Good shit.

We only lost two people today, and both of them were men. We have some of the toughest women you will ever meet here. One of them is only 5' tall, 100lbs soaking wet, but she humps the same load we do and makes every hump. I've never felt like I couldn't make it, this was actually the easiest 15miler I've ever done. It is just an exercise in pain management.

The best part was that after this was all over, we had to take an hour long exam on defensive operations. That kind of exertion really does a number on your ability to comprehend and think critically. I'm sure that's why they chose to give us the exam at that time, to see how we would do. In reality, the hump is a means to get you there, your mission is not over once you get there, you still have to fight.

Time to eat and take a shower, this will feel soooo good.