Great AAR! FWIW, I did my 1st GRC (Light in Philadelphia) a few weeks back and posted this AAR in our event's FB page. Sharing it here FYI:
Supplies: - I had a GR Echo, which was fine for a Light but I think given more weight and gear for a Tough, I’ll need a GR0 or GR1. If the event was 2x as long (i.e. a Tough) I will need to take more food/fuel since I had 2 gel shots left and that was it - not much of a reserve for me or any other teammates. - I drank 3L of water in 6 hours, so for 8 - 12 hours I need more water. Thank goodness there was beer at the end to rehydrate! ;-) - I will bring more salt tablets and magnesium pills - while I did not use much I ended up giving out a bunch to other folks. - The straps we used to help with the pole were great - I need to add that to my ruck next event as a handy tool for whatever needs doing (could have even been to carry wounded, etc.). - The GR weight bag for the team weight was nice - had easy grab handles and so on. Worked well. - The big water jug was also helpful; a good thing to ensure someone on the team brings in a future event.
PT & Physical Stuff: - I need to practice flutter kicks and donkey kicks - I was disappointed how hard those ended up being. - When we took a short break on the NJ side of the bridge, I should have used the time to change into dry socks. My feet felt it later, and if your feet aren’t good then very little else is. - I thought folks were collectively pretty awesome when it came to helping folks out with their rucks or getting them back in the game / hydrated / recovered so we could finish as a team. - Things as basic as counting out PT reps became challenging towards the end of the event by the big flag mural. Not sure how to solve that - need to increase my mental focus in those situations.
Leadership, Coordination, and Recon: - I was disappointed when I had my turn as team lead that I did not spend more up-front time (1) explaining the objective and how we were to achieve it and (2) making sure everyone understood what we were doing. As an example, we ended up on a bad spot in a gas station parking lot where the sidewalk was torn up. If that way looked viable, I could have sent someone to recon it before we went to all that trouble and had to turn around. - I think I would probably also recon the start area and general vicinity a few days in advance just to get some better sense of sidewalks, landmarks, etc. since I was not too familiar with that part of the city. This seems like valuable local knowledge. - I also think when I was not a team leader, I could have better spoken up the few times when I had no clue WTF was happening / what our goal was / what our time limit was. I was thinking everyone else has some idea what is happening - so just follow the person in front of me, but that’s not always a good assumption to make, especially as the team got more and more smoked as the event progressed. - I think it would have benefitted us to spend 5 mins up front coming up with some agreed ways to communicate & coordinate. For example, in advance of every street crossing call out two lines and form up in a more compact grouping so as to more easily make the 10-second crossings. And have some agreed approach to coordinating & confirming next objective / how to get there / time involved. We got better and better as the event progressed, but I think we could have avoided some pain/frustration.