Absolutely. For the half-mile sprint, it’s the first thing that you do. I was young. It was like a half mile. It’s not that bad. I’ve never run before in my heavy boots and uniform. I took off completely, just did a fullout sprint. Not even a quarter way through, I was gassed. This is not what I was expecting.
I still did pretty well on that portion. I forget what the time was. Maybe I got somewhere in the three-minute mark for a half a mile. It’s not what I was thinking that it was going to be. I was young, dumb. I was just like, “I could do this. I don’t get tired.” I just took off.
That set the stage for the rest of the other two events that were coming, because my body was gassed. You get a couple of minutes of rest between the events, but when I got to the ammo cans, overhead presses, my legs were jello. They were jello. My heart rate wasn’t going down. I can feel my heart just coming out of my chest.
Then when I got to what we call the maneuver under fire, which is the portion I told you about where you do the zigzags and pick up a buddy and all that, they call that a maneuver under fire. When I got to that portion, I was out. I was just running on fumes at that point. That was my first experience. At that point, I got to practice this.
I saw other people do well. I saw other older people do well, which was surprising. I did some studying. I worked with myself and figuring out what I was doing wrong. Eventually, I figured out that just like a CrossFit exercise or a functional fitness test, you have to pace yourself.
If you don’t pace yourself, you’re going to eventually end up getting a worse score than if you pace yourself. Now when I do the half-mile sprint, I start at 70 percent, and I keep at 70 percent. Then towards the end, when I’m at my last quarter portion of the half mile, I will give all I have, which is still maybe the same speed.
I maintain that speed, which gives me a much better time. I was able to get like two minutes and 15 seconds on my half-mile sprint, which is much better than I was at my first time doing that.
Same thing with every single other event, it’s just if you pace yourself, you end up getting a much better score, which is what older people are doing because they understood their bodies better. They also didn’t want to get injured. They’re like, “I’m just going to go get this one step at a time, not try to go all out to impress anyone.”
When you don’t try to impress anyone, just focusing on what you got to do to get done and get a better score, you’d figure out that pacing yourself in situations like that works a lot better.