2018 Rockcastle Run N Gun 5&10k, March 17-18

[Matt in TN]

And the final obstacle - just before Stage 5 (5k) or Stage 7 (10k). You can thank the evil genius of Dustin Downard of ASE Precision for this one:

ASE Precision Rifle Crawl:

Crawl under barbed wire up to a firing point, dragging a provided rifle drag bag with a provided Bushmaster ACR and magazine loaded with ONE ROUND of ammo behind you. Staying under the obstacle, pull the bag up to you, remove and load the rifle, and make one shot on target through the available port. Unload the rifle, replace it in the drag bag, and crawl back out the way you came in. All of this will be done on the run clock, completely separate from the shooting stage. Anyone who makes the single shot will be entered into a drawing for ASE Precision gear.

https://www.facebook.com/ASEPrecision/

 

[Matt in TN]

Reminder:  Match shirt orders must be in by March 5th to get one.  You have one more week to get your order in, and shirts will NOT be available for sale at the match.  The only way to get one is to order through Shredder Industries:  

https://www.shredderlife.com/shop/rockcastle-5k-and-10k-run-n-gun-official-match-shirt/

[Matt in TN]

More nerd stuff - here's a little more about our participants we have registered as of Friday. To give you an idea of scale we'll have 85 total competitors running the 5k, 78 total running the 10k, and 22 gluttons for punishment doing both in the 15k Challenge.

I'm amazed at how many we have going Combat Class, and surprised that more in the 10k are doing this than the 5k! And from my personal experience at other matches (I don't have data from ALL Run N Guns), this is by far the most women I've ever seen at one of these.

This is gonna kick ass!

[Matt in TN]

Prize details are rolling in! Yesterday's was from ASE Precision. They are providing certificates for their holsters so you can get exactly the model you need to fit your gear. We'll have 6 competition holster certificates and 3 EDC holster certificates for a total value of $807.00. In addition to that, Dustin Downard will have a full competition set (competition holster, 2 pistol mag carriers, and one rifle mag carrier) that will be randomly drawn for from all those that actually hit the target on his obstacle.

Did I mention Dustin was awarded the 2016 "Holster Making Champion" award from Knifekits.com? This dude is an artist with kydex -

https://www.knifekits.com/vcom/popups/hmoty_2016.htm

ASE Precision has a website that is about to launch. Enter your email address at http://aseprecision.com/ to be notified when it's live.

Edited March 6, 2018 by Matt in TN

[Matt in TN]

Prize table surprise: a competitor reached out to me yesterday who does BEAUTIFUL leatherwork and pledged an AR mag pouch with a certificate for a holster and a pistol mag pouch to fit your choice of weapon. It looks like George Johnson (https://www.facebook.com/george.johnsoniv.5) is your man if you want to have some leatherwork done - thanks George!

[Matt in TN]

More reminders for newbies:

You will need EYE and EAR PROTECTION for this match. Yes, running with glasses on sucks. Either deal with it, or take the extra time to take your glasses off when you run and put them on before you shoot. We just have too many opportunities for ricochets and plenty of loud noises to let this go. If you show up to a shooting stage without eye and ear protection you will not be allowed to shoot and receive a zero score for the stage.

You will also need a STOPWATCH of some sort. There's a good chance when you run up to a stage there will be someone shooting there already (and quite possibly a line of people waiting to shoot). At that point, the RO will tell you to start your wait time. Start your stopwatch, and let it run until it's your turn to move forward. During your wait time you are NOT allowed to sit, take off your gear, eat, drink, or do anything but just stand there exactly as you ran up - it's like a "timeout" and it should not give you any advantage over those who didn't have a wait time.

Photo credit:  Lisa Stennett

[Matt in TN]

Yesterday's prize package delivery was from TRU-SPEC. They sent six different prize certificates so you can choose the size and/or color you really want on these great products:

24-7 Series Grid Fleece Pullover
Circadian Backpack 
Trek Sling Pack 
24-7 Ascent Shorts & Drirelease T-Shirt
24-7 Series Tactical, Ascent, Delta, Vector or boot-Cut Pant (x2)

Thanks TRU-SPEC!  https://www.truspec.com/

[Matt in TN]

Today's prizes come from Samson Manufacturing - who donated two of their new SXS-LW handguards. I bought one of these for my daughter's little M4-gery last year and it went from a 1.5 MOA rifle to a sub-MOA rifle, all while getting lighter and cooler-looking to boot! 

Thanks Samson!  https://www.samson-mfg.com/

[Matt in TN]

OK - I just sent an email to all competitors with the final details and reminders. If you did NOT get an email but think you are registered and paid, check your spam folder. If you still can't find it message me and we'll see what happened.

[Matt in TN]

Yesterday out of the blue I had a 5th Special Forces Group Chaplain donate EIGHT certificates for a 4-day training course for Defensive Handgun, Shotgun, or Rifle from Front Sight Firearms Training for the prize table. These retail for $2,000 each, so that's SIXTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS worth of training that's up for grabs.

What a great surprise!  https://www.frontsight.com/

[Matt in TN]

Today Vortex Optics (http://www.vortexoptics.com/) delivered me FIVE Impact 850 rangefinders for the prize table. These can range a reflective target out to 850 yards, and correct for a true horizontal distance if you're ranging up or down at an angle.

This puts us at a mind-blowing grand total of over $25,000 in value up for grabs this weekend. There will be give-aways for everyone during registration, and four out of every ten people will take home a bigger prize.

I know we are all here to run and the match itself truly is the real prize. But I'm blown away by the generosity and support of not only the vendors but our fellow competitors as well!

[Matt in TN]

Last one (I think!). Last night waiting on my front porch was a package from Nosler for the prize table: Two 500 packs of their .223 70gr Ultra-High BC RDF Match Bullets, and two 250 packs of new .223 brass.

Thanks Nosler!  https://www.nosler.com/

[Matt in TN]

Everyone:

I am physically ill over this and I cannot express to you how sorry I am, but I found a fairly major error in the scores this afternoon. The short explanation is that my spreadsheet that calculates net run time did not take into account the wait times on Stage 6 and 7. This was 100% my error and the lovely ladies helping me do the scoring were not at fault at all.

While I was correcting this error I also improved the accuracy of the net run time calculations to include partial minutes instead of rounding off to the nearest whole minute. Some of the scores were close enough that this mattered.

Unfortunately, this changes three of the trophies I handed out yesterday. Logan Dudley was the true 1st Place Race Class winner and Greg Reynolds should have been
2nd Place Race Class. Trevor Saunders was the true 1st Place Combat Class.

Logan, Greg, and Trevor - I'll have new trophy glasses made and ship them to you if you'll email me your addresses.

Bryan Ray, Logan, and Greg - please keep the trophy glasses I already gave in error with my sincere apologies for the mistake.

Top Grunt and Top Amazon results did not change.  5k Results did not change.

Again, I can't express how sorry I am for this mistake and will do my best to be sure it (and the faulty scale SNAFU) never happens again. Please do look over your scores and don't hesitate to let me know if anything else doesn't look right.  "Stage 8" in Practiscore is your net run time in minutes (NOT "seconds" like it says). The other stages should be fairly self-explanatory.

5k Results are here:  https://practiscore.com/results/new/52965

10k Results are here:  https://practiscore.com/results/new/53116

[Matt in TN]

Enough bad news.  Here are the 15k results.  My ROs are highlighted in yellow because they deserve special recognition.  They had to run the 10k and then only had 15 minutes to reload and regear before running the 5k.  Everyone else got a couple meals, a shower, and a full night's rest before doing it again.

The people highlighted in green ran Combat Class, but in the 15k challenge there was no class provision so they had to go head to head against the Race Class folks but with 25%+ of their bodyweight on their backs.

But every single one of you are badasses to the extreme.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Matt in TN

[Matt in TN]

Here's one of the coolest match videos I've seen yet:

 

Edited March 20, 2018 by Matt in TN

[Matt in TN]

Pictures are up! Feel free to use these however you wish, but please give a photo credit to my wife, Lisa Stennett, as the photographer when you do. ESPECIALLY if you use them for commercial reasons.

More to come -

https://www.flickr.com/photos/lisastennett/albums

[gjohnsoniv]

Any other TGO members compete or was I the only one? (Except you, Matt)

[Matt in TN]

1 hour ago, gjohnsoniv said:

Any other TGO members compete or was I the only one? (Except you, Matt)

Hard to say - none that I KNOW of, but we didn't take names or anything.

 

[Matt in TN]

I had many people wanting to see how they did against people their own age, so I collected VOLUNTARY age data during registration and tried to think of a way to present it that would make sense.

There are two problems with this data: 18 out of the 81 people that ran did not give me their age so I left them out, and Combat Class is thrown together with Race Class in this data. But knowing all that - here's what I came up with. Knowing your own age and times/scores you should be able to figure out where you fell in this range.

Here's the 5k data summary.  10k is in the works.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Matt in TN

[Matt in TN]

Here's the 10k age data with the same caveats:  only 55 out of the 72 competitors gave me their ages (so the others are left out of this data) and Combat Class and Race Class are mixed together.

[Matt in TN]

I saw several of you frustrated on the course because you did not finish (DNF) a course of fire before your time was up. Here's some data to put that in perspective - you were not alone! I know it hurts to not finish, but from looking at these numbers I think the difficulty level was about right this year.

Even better - we had a very similar VTAC stage (but actually easier) last March and 62% of the people could not finish it. The Rifleman stage was almost identical with the exception of more visible targets this year (and MUCH better weather!). Last year we had 56% of people DNF that stage. No matter which way you cut it, we are seeing a HUGE improvement in both shooters and runners year over year.

[Matt in TN]

Since so many people had trouble with the slackline I asked the two time Combat Class winner this weekend to demonstrate his technique for getting him and his 50lbs of gear across the 40' span. There are several different ways to do this based on your own personal strengths and exactly what you're carrying, but this one worked very well.

 

[Matt in TN]

We had a bunch of people not fill out the gear data in the registration form, but here is a summary of the data we do have. The Rifle Manufacturer data is so cluttered it's useless - other than it's a list of various rifle manufacturers represented at the match. No surprise that the vast majority of competitors shot an AR-15 in 5.56x45.

The pistol data was better filled out. Again, no surprise that a Glock 9mm seems to be the pistol of choice. The Pistol Manufacturer graph is cluttered with too much data and hard to read, but I was a little surprised that the XDM beat out the G19 in the models carried, and the G17 wasn't nearly as dominant as I thought it would be.

[Matt in TN]

I'm not sure if everyone saw these guys, but we had three different young men shoot the 5k Saturday. These kids showed more fortitude, respect, and skill than I EVER had at their age. I really look forward to seeing what they'll do with our world as they get older and we hand things over to them.

Ben Trumble is 11 years old, Thomas Ray is 12, and Logan Carmical is 13.

Edited March 23, 2018 by Matt in TN

[Matt in TN]

I fully intended to do a "Ladies of Run N Gun" group picture at the event, but I got distracted and forgot so this collage will have to do. We had 4 awesome ladies shoot the 5k, 5 shoot the 10k, and 2 freaking AMAZONS shoot both in the 15k challenge.

Note to all the big beefy guys who really struggled with the slackline - every one of these ladies made it across.  :-)