BCt Day9

These post are from letters that Jason has mailed to me. Sometimes his writing is hard for me to read so bare with me if some of the terms aren't right. I hope that you enjoy as much as I do.

BCT Day9
September 21,2010

We had our first "real" PT session today. It was actually a pretty tough workout. Part of the workout was called climbing drills. Climbing drills are a variety of exercises using a pull-up bar. Most of my workouts before I shipped to BCT centered on Push-ups and sit-ups, which are two of the three components of the APFT (PT Test). So, the pull-up exercises were tough. If you are reading this and preparing for BCT, work on pull-ups!!!
After PT and breakfast, we marched out to the team development course(TDC). We had the same load in our ruck packs as the march last week, but this one was shorter. The TDC was cool. We were split up into teams of 8-10 and had to complete obstacles using limited supplies and teamwork. For example, we had to get our team and a 55 gallon drum of "fuel" across a "destroyed bridge" using only a couple of 6-8ft boards. It was really more of a mental puzzle than a physical. The hardest part was trying to come up with a plan to complete the obstacle using only the supplies we had. Our team completed 2 out of 4 obstacles, which was in line with all the other teams. We had problems with everyone wanting to be the boss at first, but eventually worked better together. This was actually the goal of the TDC, to get us to use teamwork.
Once we marched back from TDC, we got a refresher on land navigation and got packed and got packed for tomorrow's march and course. I think the DS told us the march would be about 4k which is only about 2.5 miles. Our rack sack will be little heavier to since we are staying in the field over night. I'm not looking forward to the march, but I think the course will be fun.