One of the major physical fitness challenges at AOCS was the dreaded Obstacle Course. Known as the O’Course. The O’Course included a series of obstacles to test your upper body strength, stamina, balance, and agility. It started out with a run through a set of tires laid flat on the ground. You ran on your toes, because a flat foot wouldn’t fit into the tire opening. Two barricades followed the tires, one 12 feet tall with a climbing rope, and an eight-feet tall barrier where you jump up and pull yourself over. You can see in the picture; it had been slammed into so many times; it developed a case of the leans. After you cleared the barriers, next came a sprint through the soft sand of Pensacola Beach, where for every two steps forward, you slipped one step back. The sand path leads toward an inclined beam. The inclined bean topped off at six feet off the ground. At the top, you leaped down into the soft sand obstacle and again sprinted toward a series of low set bars across your path about two feet off the ground. You flopped down on your belly and crawled through the sand under the bars. After crawling on your belly, you lead up to your feet and run towards the “Jacobs Ladder”. This ten-foot-tall obstacle had four bars set vertically two feet apart. With arms you pulled and pushed your legs to the top, then leaped into the sand again. Around a corner you came to a four-foot-high hurdle which you hopped overusing your arms you easily cleared. Now another 75-yard sprint in the soft sand.

By this time, you had lost your breath. Every movement now exhausts you, but there are still more obstacles. Next came the horizontal ladder, a series of horizontal bars set twelve feet off the ground. They set the bars at an incline, forcing you to pull yourself uphill while swinging. Now you drop and from the horizontal ladder and then came another sprint in the sand to log bridge. You ran across the log bridge while trying to maintain your balance on the narrow log path. If you feel off, go back and repeat the log obstacle. After a distance in the soft sand, another log obstacle awaited you. Then a sprint to the iron bar maze obstacle. A series of U-turns around the iron bar maze defined the iron bar obstacle. The secret here was grabbing the bars and pulling yourself through turns while running. The finish line awaited you coming out of the maze.

In 1966, we needed to complete the course in four minutes to qualify. I was doing over four minutes at first, well above the time needed to qualify. The O’Course took every bit of my energy and wiped me out. Running the “O” Course increased my strength, and I became smarter navigating the course and my times came down.

We all had to run the “O” Course again as part of Pre-Flight, because everyone had to qualify, including Naval Academy, NROTC and OCS graduates. I ran my best O’Course time of 3:34 and would have done better if there had not been a slower person in front of me. Since the AOCS students had been running the O’Course for the last 12 weeks, it was a breeze for us. All the AOCS graduates qualified on their first attempt and did not have to run the O’Course again. It meant more time off.

The O’Course

Crew 20