The Help We Need Part 1: All Eyes On England

This story was written by Matt “Ralph” Crossman, a freelance magazine writer and member of F3 Nation. Subscribe to his newsletter at https://mattcrossman.substack.com/. This is the first in a series about GTE-42: The Hills, the first international GrowRuck Training Event.

GUILDFORD, ENGLAND—Kieron “Prop” Urben is a barrel-chested, wry-smiling, bear hug of a man with tattoos all over and cheeks that turn red when he pushes himself. I knelt in front of him as his partner for the PT test in the opening minutes of GTE-42: The Hills, the first-ever international GrowRuck Training Event, held in Guildford, England, 20 miles southwest of London, and watched in awe as he ripped off 60 hand-release push-ups in 2 minutes, blowing past the standard of 42. Next he executed 30 sit-ups without pause…willed himself through 22 more to meet the standard…and added one more for good measure. 

That was a helluva display for anyone, even more so considering the circumstances: Prop decided to join this 15-hour sufferfest only a few hours before it began. Let’s forgive his reluctance to commit earlier. His wife, Catherine, was pregnant with their second son, Jacob, who was due the day before this GTE.

Young Jake showed himself to be a thoughtful lad by arriving a week early. In the time between the birth and the Saturday of GTE-42, Prop longed to sign up for the chance to prove to his wife and two boys that he can do hard things. But it’s one thing to make your wife and kids proud, it’s another to be a burden in doing so, and he wanted to make sure his commitments at home were met. Finally, with proper care arranged, and with Catherine’s blessing and encouragement, he clicked yes on the sign-up sheet—at 3:44 p.m., a scant 2 hours and 16 minutes before GTE-42 began.

He wondered as he did those push-ups and sit-ups whether that was the smartest decision he has ever made. He’s a veteran of endurance events (Tough Mudder, half marathon and duathlon), but he had not trained for the burden GTE would place on his upper body. In a lifetime playing rugby (Prop is a position in the sport), he has dislocated both of his shoulders and his knee, and his shoulders still bother him.

Doubt chased him as he signed up, shadowed him as he moved mile after mile, and whispered to him as the pain increased throughout the night.

Would his body hold up?

Could he finish?

Similar demons haunted all 39 men in the event. As in life, so in GTE: The only way to find out was to keep going, so that’s what they did through a night thick with nearly unbearable struggles, an unprecedented solution, and an unforgettable ending.

But that was all still many hours away. Right now, the PT test continued with a two-mile run—eight laps around a rugby pitch. On the adjacent sidewalk—or pavement as they call it over there—men wearing lederhosen and women in low-cut German barmaid outfits (one of whom was drinking wine straight out of a bottle) marched toward Oktoberfest, which was taking place nearby under a giant blue tent. That party provided the soundtrack of the PT test, with music alternating between traditional German folk songs, We Are The Champions by Queen and 99 Red Balloons by Nena.

The music drifted through a cold but clear night. As men turned onto the third leg of each lap, the constellation Cassiopeia bid them to dig deeper. As they turned left for the final leg, the Big Dipper asked them to do even more. Lap after lap they ran, hoping to beat the 19-minute standard. Every lad encouraged every mate, and every bloke told every chap to keep it up.

They sounded, frankly, a little jittery. In Band conversations and Zoom calls with GTE leaders beforehand, the men of F3 Southeast UK revealed this portion of the night worried them more than any other—or at least it prompted the most questions.

Would they measure up?

Would they be fast enough?

They need not have worried.

Brent “Yodel” Mathany, one of three “Cadre,” or leaders, of the event, recorded their times and said the pass-fail percentage was as high as he’s ever seen, a promising start to one of GTE’s most anticipated events in its history.

It was a beautiful night in a beautiful English city, and the men of GTE-42 were crushing it.

And then they arrived at the Guildford Fire Station, the firemen turned on their hoses, and their night turned black.

F3 Nation Inc. is a free men’s fitness and leadership organization with more than 4,000 outdoor workout locations across the world. The three Fs are fitness, fellowship and faith, and F3’s mission is to plant, grow and serve small workout groups for men for the invigoration of male community leadership.

GTE is F3’s flagship leadership training exercise. The highlight of the Friday through Sunday festivities is the Crucible Ruck, an overnight hike combining fitness and leadership training in which participants carry backpacks weighted with 30-pound plates plus food, water, gear, extra clothes, etc. They also must haul “implements of woe” for hours on end. In this case, the men lugged logs, sandbags, and water jugs across forests, alongside ancient rivers, through city streets and deep into country fields.

A GTE is always a huge test, both for the men who sign up for it and the region that hosts it. In this case, that test was amplified because it was the first GTE outside the United States.

Before the event, the GrowRuck Department planners wondered how F3 and GTE would translate in a non-American setting. I sat in on a half-dozen Zoom planning meetings with Brits and Americans, which left me a) cracking up at their dry humor b) impressed by their organizational skill and c) eager to see in sweaty, gloomy detail what they were made of.

The answer came five minutes into a punishing Friday morning workout led by Marcus “Homer” Wilcock, the region’s “1st F Q” (fitness leader) who loaded us with burpees, suicides, burpees, bear crawls, running, burpees, etc. as if he is still pissed about that whole revolution thing. No less an authority than F3 Nation CEO John “Slaughter” Lambert, who served as one of three Cadre for GTE-42, declared their collective fitness level high.

The F3 culture within F3 Southeast UK mirrored F3 culture in America. As Dustin “Italian Job” Jordan, F3’s Head of Communications, put it after a 30-minute post-workout “Circle of Trust” (COT) conversation about parenting: “We flew thousands of miles and attended a COT that was exactly like one back in America.”

Italian Job also served as one of two Trainers for the event. The Trainer Team utilizes schooling and shared suffering to engrain the lessons of virtuous leadership

At the Saturday morning “Kingbuilder” workout, the first mumblechatter I heard ended with, “that’s what she said.” The quantity and quality of ball-busting was like home, too. Homer, for example, might have told people one too many times about a 50-mile race that he and a handful of other F3 UK men ran, so now they rag him about it.

Even this made me think of the men of my region: Organizers had a hard time getting participants to sign the medical waivers, so they refused to give out the event t-shirts until the forms were filled out. That was a brilliant use of leverage. With t-shirts at stake, suddenly the line—or queue, as they say there—was a dozen men deep. “It’s the same guys, just with different accents,” Yodel said.

There were differences, too. The COT sounded familiar, as Italian Job said, but British men are, by and large, more reserved than American men. Through casual conversations with participants and support crew, I counted 11 countries of birth—England, of course, six more in Europe, the U.S., and three in Africa. In my suburban St. Louis region, we consider a beatdown diverse if someone comes from the other side of the Missouri River.

Only two participants—Americans who flew in for the event—had ever done a GTE. “Now we’re getting back to what rucking was six or eight years ago,” said Danny “Linus” Stokes, who runs the GrowRuck Department and served as lead Cadre for this event. “This one will be more pure.”

That purity gave the event power. You always remember your first, right? “This is the best example of what this program was invented for,” Slaughter said. “It’s going to do here what it does everywhere else. These guys are going to be on fire.”

That fire was sparked by bitter cold.

Check out next week’s newsletter for The help we need Part 2: The night turns black