Selection 022: Bellbrook, OH, 2021
Ben and Dan arrive at Selection. Both had experience at GORUCK events, having completed Toughs, Heavies, a Star Course, and, in Dan’s case, Team Assessment earlier that year.
Both were out by the 24-hour mark.
The next four years brought life changes for both men. Both had two kids, which brought shifts in schedules, commitments, priorities. Ben tried another Selection, this time in Jax Beach, but left with something he’d tried to get rid of since that day in 2021: the sense of unfinished business.
This feeling stuck with both men, ate at them, even with all the change. They never forgot the pain.
Both refocused themselves. They changed their routines, handed over programming duties to someone who knew more than them (coincidentally, or perhaps not, both were coached by expert Joe Baker). They spent years working to change their outcome. This is how you make your own luck: hard work, when no one’s watching. Sweat, blood, and mud, just like the real thing.
The hard work in the shadows is how you conquer the world’s toughest endurance event. Both men committed themselves years ago and recommitted over and over until they became versions of themselves that were greater than the two men who went home early on that day in 2021.
Those silent commitments paid off on September 20, 2025 in Jax Beach. 47.5 hours in, muddy, bloody, and surrounded by cadre, there was no quit. No inner voices asking "Can I do this?" They'd dominated since the beginning and proven to everyone (and especially themselves) that their countless daily sacrifices over the years had been worth it, that they'd earned it not just over the 48 hours, but over the four years since that day in Bellbrook, Ohio. They'd earned the title "Selection Finisher."
Click here to read about the experience straight from Dan.
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