GORUCK Team Assessment was offhandedly mentioned by Jason McCarthy (founder of GORUCK) during GORUCK Selection 020. It turns out GORUCK had already set up a Team Assessment page on their website which a few GRT found rather quickly. Registration for the 2019 event is now open.
Team Assessment is a 48+ Hour endurance event where you and your teammate will compete against other teams of two in a series of challenges outlined by the Cadre. One team will have the opportunity to win, if any still remain, and all teams that meet the standard will become official finishers. Physical demands will mimic those found in Special Forces Assessment and Selection.
From this we can tell that Team Assessment will be a 48+ hour event where teams of two will complete against the event and the other teams that show up. There will be potentially one winning team (assuming a team does finish), possibly additional teams that finish, and then teams that don’t finish. Hopefully your team will fall into the first two on that list.
For the first time ever GORUCK is splitting weight for the event based on gender rather than body weight. Men are expected to show up with a pack that weighs 45 lbs dry while women are expected to have a 30 lb dry pack. For those not familiar with “dry weight” that’s the weight of your pack without food or water.
GORUCK Team Assessment Phases
The Team Assessment event is broken up into five phases:
- Phase 1 Administrative
- Phase 2 PT Test
- Phase 3 Gateways
- Phase 4 Culminating Exercise
- Phase 5 Patches & Ruckoff
Clearly, phase 5 will be my favorite… but I guess you need to get through phases 1 through 4 first. Phase 1 and 2 have already been documented on GORUCK’s website and it will be exciting to see what Phase 3 and 4 contain.
Phase 1 Administrative
The admin phase is traditionally check in, confirm that you brought everyone on the packing list, and ensure your ruck weighs enough. Surprisingly… some people don’t make it through this phase at GORUCK Selection so here’s to hoping 100% of GORUCK Assessment participants make it past Phase 1.
Phase 2 PT Test
The PT test will mirror the PT test put on at GORUCK Selection. Failure means your team will be dropped.
- 2 minutes: minimum 55 push-ups.
- 2 minutes: minimum 65 sit-ups.
- 5-Mile Run: maximum time allotted is 40 minutes.
- 12-Mile Ruck Run: maximum time allotted is 3 hours 30 minutes.
At GORUCK Selection roughly 50% of the participants don’t pass the PT test in one form or another. At GORUCK Team Assessment if you don’t pass then not only do you not get to participate in the event but your teammate doesn’t either. With that on the line it will be interesting to see what the percentage pass rate is for the PT test here.
Phase 3 Gateways
Although there is no information on Phase 3 on GORUCK’s website a previous Selection finisher (James Vreeland) gave some insight on a Reddit post surrounding the gateways.
Not a Cadre Beatdown, but instead a series of evolutions that must be completed by certain time gates (eg: 2×80# sandbags need to make 4 loops of the course by 1900 for the team to continue)
Some go/no-go evolutions, some that award points based on performance. Top scoring team wins, multiple teams can finish (assuming they perform)
The first four words there give me some serious hope that more than one team will finish this event. This will not be GORUCK Selection just with a team of two instead of doing it alone. The gateways sound pretty cool… basically your team has to complete something in a timed manner and if you don’t then you’re out.
Phase 4 Culminating Exercise
I haven’t seen any information on what this will be but it’s definitely intriguing!
Phase 5 Patches & Ruckoff
We can only hope this will be the fun phase where you get to drink beer, eat food, and finally relax! One interesting part here is that the first place team (however that is determined) patch differs from the other teams that finished.
Will You Be There?
GORUCK Team Assessment has only recently been announced and the date has been set to May 16-18, 2019. According to Jason Team Assessment will take place at the same location as GORUCK Selection 020 which is Bellbrook, Ohio. If you don’t have anything going on between January and May (you’ll probably need time to train) then you should look into this. With all that being said… will you be there?
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