The bearing on my compass pointed straight into a wall of thick, thorn-studded brush. With no clear way around it, I unslung my Daniel Defense DDM4, using it to beat a path through the brush. I took a deep breath, reminded myself that I’d paid for this “experience” and plunged into the thicket in search of our five navigation objectives.
The experience in question was The Gun Run, Team Land Nav Edition, a “Run and Gun” or Centerfire Biathlon event that combined eight shooting stages with running and land navigation, over a course that took my partner and I on an almost 12-mile journey through the Sandhills Game Lands and Dewitt’s Sporting Clays, near Ellerbe, North Carolina.
Match Director Ellis Domenech first participated in a Run and Gun event in 2018, which was based on the original Centerfire Biathlon match in Pecos, Texas, first held in 2002. Domenech subsequently launched his first match in 2019, centering the events and stage design on his military experience.
“I approach stage design from my military background, not from a competitive shooting background, since I had none prior to starting this,” Domenech said. “Nearly every stage starts with a concept rooted in tactics or expected marksmanship abilities and then is developed into the layout, targets, movement and hit count.”
My experience with firearms began in the Boy Scouts, but without military service or a background in hunting, my interest eventually faded. I grew bored of standing in indoor shooting bays, slowly punching holes in paper targets. I’d considered trying out Three-Gun or IPSC-style competitions, but was always intimidated—by the complex rules, and by videos of sponsored shooters tearing through courses with tricked-out guns at what seemed like superhuman speed.
An “algorithmic accident” during some random web browsing exposed me to the concept of Centerfire Biathlon, and I was immediately intrigued. As an avid trail runner, the running part was right in my wheelhouse, and the refreshing lack of rigid rules and sponsors—beyond safety rules—appealed to me.
This ethos runs through Domenech’s events and draws a broad set of participants. You’re just as likely to be running alongside active-duty military from nearby Fort Bragg as you are to encounter a father-daughter team, or a couple of “mature gentlemen” like my teammate and I who are both approaching 50. Gear configurations are similarly diverse. Many competitors carry AR-platform rifles and a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, but you might come across a team decked out in 1980s-era East German camo and era-appropriate firearms, or someone in full Vietnam GI gear. Much like the trail running scene, there’s a sense that most competitors are out to beat themselves, creating an easy camaraderie rather than cutthroat competition.
While firearms and gear configurations are wide open, everyone must carry all their gear and ammo through the entire course, with water being the only allowable “resupply” item. The loosely defined gear requirements mirror the ethos of the shooting stages, as competitors don’t know how many stages they’ll face—or their layouts and objectives—until they arrive at each one, where they are given a briefing. Minimum round counts are provided in advance, but beyond that data point, competitors must judge how much ammo to carry, as well as their preferred rifle and pistol platforms, calibers and optics.
Unlike The Tactical Games, which have a strong CrossFit focus, or Three-Gun where the focus is on marksmanship, the Run and Gun format tries to balance general fitness in the guise of moving over longer distances with marksmanship ability. Courses are typically designed so an excellent runner who is a poor marksman will finish in the middle of the pack, just as an exceptional shooter who can’t run will be equally “mid,” as my teenager would say.
Our team opted for a typical firearms setup, with my Daniel Defense DDM4 complementing my teammate’s LWRC piston AR, both chambered in 5.56 mm NATO. For pistols, I carried a Shadow Systems DR920, which is essentially a “jazzed up” Glock G17 Gen 3, while my teammate carried the smaller Glock G19, both of which stayed secure in Safariland ALS retention holsters. Retention holsters are a nearly mandatory item due to the physical nature of the course and thick brush, which, judging by the stories, has claimed more than a few handguns.
Carrying firearms with interchangeable magazines was a good choice, as we ran low on 9 mm in a later stage and I could quickly toss my teammate a 24-round “stendo” to complete a stage. Similarly on rifles, the ability to exchange 30-round PMAGs allowed us to carry a couple shared “backup” rifle magazines, and we ultimately tripled the minimum round counts, yet still ran out of pistol ammo on the last stage.
Many competitors run pistol red dots. We were no exception, as I’ve found the dot revolutionized my pistol shooting, especially with aging eyes. This was my first competition running a Trijicon RCR, which performed flawlessly. For rifle optics, most competitors who aren’t running irons fall into either the LPVO (Low Power Variable Optic) or “dot-plus-magnifier” camp. We’re in the latter, with my teammate running a decidedly “Gucci” EOTech setup, and my budget-friendly Holosun dot and 3X magnifier helping hit steel targets out to the longest distances of this event at about 240 meters.
One of the compelling aspects of Run and Gun is that it puts your gear and skills to the ultimate test. While focused sessions at an indoor range are great, crawling under barbed wire will quickly validate whether your gear is squared away, and you may need a few more sessions stretching and working on flexibility before the next run.
Simple tasks, like running with a rifle and backpack, aren’t typical training activities for those of us that live in a city or suburbs. A poorly adjusted sling, a strap that rubs the wrong way or the task of running with a rifle is barely noticeable walking to and from your vehicle, but become significant issues in mile six of an 11-mile run in Carolina heat and humidity.
Similarly, unfamiliar tasks like weak-hand shooting, odd positions behind a barrier or with a simulated injury, and swapping rifles with a teammate or encountering unfamiliar platforms ranging from shotguns to AKs as part of a stage help hone skills and problem-solving abilities.
The Land Nav edition of Gun Run adds another dimension, with a 1:50,000-scale map of the area provided to each team. As each team begins at their appointed start time, MGRS coordinates are provided and teams must navigate to the provided point, which is typically a tree or structure with a pink band and “clacker” attached, which creates a unique “stamp” on a provided card to confirm the team located the nav point. Tools of the trade are a magnetic compass, protractor, pencil and the ability to follow a bearing and keep an effective pace count.
While this might sound relatively easy, at 1:50,000 scale, a large pencil dot might cover a 100-meter area, making locating the correct tree rather difficult in dense scrub and forest, even if you manage to execute your compass work and pacing perfectly. Hills, creeks, swamps and other obstacles challenged many of the teams, with several skipping the harder points in exchange for an hour penalty for each missed point.
Shooting stages each have a par time, during which the stage must successfully be completed, or no points are awarded. There’s no partial score, so the combined effects of physical stress from running, time pressure and occasionally complex multi-step stages make for a significant added challenge.
Each stage starts with confirmation of an unloaded rifle, followed by a stage brief that explains the course of fire. Some stages are conceptually simple, like Stage 5, where the first shooter would run to a position and engage a steel target at about 150 meters with four hits. The second shooter would run to the next position once the shooting starts, simulating a bounding maneuver.
Despite the seeming simplicity, muzzle discipline is critical since you’re moving behind your teammate with a loaded rifle, waiting behind “cover” until shooting starts. Communication between shooters requires a surprising amount of focus.
Some stages incorporate a physical task in addition to shooting. Stage 6 required the first shooter to engage four pistol targets from four different positions standing behind a trench at about 20 meters. The second shooter could then enter the trench, and engage the same four targets from four positions in the trench, which the first shooter had to follow crawling through the trench with a 50-pound pack and dummy rifle, finishing the stage after moving the burden through the trench and engaging the final target with his pistol.
Several stages incorporated rifle, pistol and a physical element, with Stage 4 requiring one shooter to run with an ammo can about 30 meters to engage a series of pistol targets while their teammate engaged a series of plates with rifle and pistol. The first shooter then joined their teammate to dispatch a series of metal cube targets within the allotted time of 180 seconds.
If these stages sound a bit complex, that’s part of the intent. Coming into a stage after running for several minutes, digesting multi-step stage instructions and the pressure of the clock create an entirely different challenge than running drills at the range. Not knowing anything about a stage also ramps up the pressure and keeps things exciting from match to match. After a half-dozen Gun Run competitions, I’m a significantly better and more confident shooter, and arguably have increased my ability to deal with stressful and uncomfortable situations in all aspects of life.
During this match, our team passed five of the eight stages and located all the navigation points, a significant improvement from our first Gun Run where we passed a single stage out of six. This steady improvement dovetails with Domenech’s number one suggestion for anyone considering these types of events—and it perfectly mirrors my experience: “Just do it. Stop making excuses, shoot a competition, any competition. It will make you better.”
