Let me see if I can recap my first week BUDS Training for you. We started
day one off with BUDS grinder PT at 4:30AM. By 4:31 we were on our way to
the surf zone. At 4:31 and five seconds I found myself face down on
the pavement after having tripped on a curb in the parking lot between
the grinder and the surf zone in the darkness at a dead sprint. I shit
you not I went skidding and bouncing on the pavement, palms down,
about five feet. I hit so hard I even inverted the clasp on my belt. I
quickly got up, assessed the damage on the run, and made my way to the
surf. Luckily all I had was a dime sized abrasion on my palm...which
quickly grew to a nickel sized abrasion by the time Friday hit. I
think its getting infected, but all part of the joy. The ropes on the
O-course didn't help it out much. After a little bit of PT, which
apparently wasn't up to the standards of the instructor cadre, we were
brought down to the beach for surf torture, which has been renamed
"surf immersion" due to the sensitivity of the word "torture" when
talking about the activities of the US government these days.
"Shoulder to shoulder." "About face." "Link arms." "Forward march."
"Forward march." "Forward March." "Backs." Boom, we were down...the
first time was for 15 minutes in my estimation. We were called to our
feet and checked over by the corpsmen for hypothermia. All clear. Back
into the water...15 minutes again. It started to get cold. I quickly
went into my zone of not caring and just enjoying the moment looking
up at the stars lying on that legendary beach...finally there, finally
at BUD/S...this is what I trained for 2 years for, right? Fuck yeah.
Back in the water three more times for ten minutes each. We were
fucking cold. People were quitting left and right...falling down in
the sand and making fools of themselves for being too cold. 20 or so
DOR's on the first day. 56 DOR's by week's end, I counted the helmets
tonight. Most of them were on Monday, Tuesday, and today (Friday).
Monday was cold. We were wet all day. Tuesday was an early ocean swim,
which didn't please the people still cold from the day before. Most of
the top athletes we had dropped on this day for fear of being wet
again the entire day...which we were for the most part. Log PT was
tough, but after having your log PT session under my belt I knew it
was not going to be a problem. My smurf crew put out hard, but despite
this we were sent over for remediation under "Mini-Me", which is the
new Ole' Misery. Mini-Me turned out to be quite a task for my smurfs
to even get it up, but by the time we got that son of a bitch up over
our heads at extended arm carry it was a nice respite from the four
count lunges that the rest of the class was still doing. Jesus...fuck
those four count lunges. I passed the timed run, the 50m underwater
swim, the O-course, and both ocean swims with a comfortable
margin...but the real scorcher was the conditioning run we went on
yesterday to state beach park and back on soft sand. Our proctor
reminded me of Luke when he said "God help the people that don't keep
up on this run." Turns out that I'm more or less in the upper third of
the class when it comes to the timed runs on hard pack sand. On soft
sand though...well let's just say that there were only 12 secured from
the run while the rest of the 100 or so people got the living shit
beat out of them throughout the run, me being one of the secured.
Awesome week.

So week 2 done and over with. Feeling great and am in the swing of things. We've
got 75 guys left out of the original 205. We had more log PT, boats on
heads, rock portage, night rock portage, more boats on heads. My SMURF
crew can kick some ass on everything except for boats on heads. We're
getting crushed on these elephant walks...but we're doing well on the
boat drag races during the following remediation session, so at least
we're not the last ones getting secured from the beach. I passed drown
proofing this week no problem. They surf tortured the shit out of us
on Wednesday after the ocourse...probably for about 45 minutes. They
gave us these special pills that we swallowed the day before that
allows them to take our core temperatures immediately electronically
just by having a little scanning device nearby. They brought us down
to 91 degrees...that's stage 2 hypothermia. No big deal for me, I was
singing Bon Jovi and Red Hot Chili Peppers to myself thinking about
how great my life is. The guy to my left and the guy to my right quit
with less than 5 minutes left. Anyways, that's about it...doing well,
enjoying every moment, hell week in 9 days.

P.S. You have no idea how great it was to have your log and boat PT sessions under my belt prior to coming to BUD/S. I hit the ground god damn running when it came
time to those evolutions. Gave me all the confidence in the world.


"When the pain train comes to pick you up, get on, and don't get off
until it fucking stops."

Best... Ian

The guy who wrote this can be seen in the September Class video saying, "I feel like I've been f**king up all day long."  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59a7sA5j0RU