The article compares the competition with a ruck. Fourteen of those over three days with no scant rest between. It is an Iron Man for U.S. Army Rangers. It is not part of their usual training.
Fifty two-man Ranger teams start out.
The day is described, exhausting just reading it. Photos of men doing outrageous things like carrying a 135 LB cement ball on their shoulders and many other challenging if unproductive feats that all sound like fun one at time but strung together like that are more challenging than American Ninja, through frigid water, and through lots of mud, up walls, up ropes, swimming under walls, jumping through fires, shooting rifles, running through burning logs, from freezing to fire, heights to depths, slogging through one physical and mental challenge after another.
Day two begins with twenty-six teams cut.
The photographs look like tremendous fun while the words describe hell. The hell of being so torqued with competition that you drive your body through destruction to prove you're better than everyone else.
I am duly deeply impressed.
While this one photograph from the whole lot sticks out from the rest.
It gets me, pow, right in the heart.
This is what my older brother saw when he told me, "You throw like a girl."
Bastard! It made me want to throw the rock in my hand at him.
