"Do you suppose they will choose to make war against lean, solid dogs rather than against fat and tender sheep?"
To prepare for the Seattle Star Course, I've been playing with topo maps, Google Maps, and Road Warrior, feeding them different scenarios, and here's what I've concluded:1) Plan with Road Warrior, but don't walk with it. As far as I can tell, Road Warrior is really designed for delivery drivers. It's great for driving on errands... Continue Reading →
Find parts 1 and 2 here and here. I only thought about quitting once, when I fell down a storm sewer. I’d climbed a truly evil hill of densely packed million-dollar crackerbox houses, past homeowners leaving to go to the beach. One of them actually wore a t-shirt saying something like “Rucking is fun!” I... Continue Reading →
Click here for Part I, "Soiled But Unsullied." GORUCK sometimes calls the Star Course their hardest event. I doubt that very much, but this was the toughest I've done. I expected that after my surprisingly grueling training hike, but I was still surprised by the added burden of route-finding and the premium put on strategy... Continue Reading →
“Amazing!” I thought. “If you piss yourself in black running tights, it just looks like sweat!” At least to the casual observer. I was hobbling at top speed through a raunchy part of the Mission district that could have been in a documentary called Dirty Harry’s San Francisco, and fully a quarter of the men there... Continue Reading →
"At GORUCK events, people's foot care is surprisingly poor," said the former ultra runner somewhere around Mile 20. I smarted at the comment, but I couldn't deny it: the inside of my own boot was slowly grating my little toe like parmesan. ... This was the first time I'd encountered a serious distance runner, though, and it became clear that that community was privy to an advanced science of foot health as foreign to the rest of us as architecture was to Visigoths and Huns.
To prep for the (in)famous Star Course, I tried a 42-mile ruck march. I'd read one man's AAR suggesting that in training you aim for 40 miles (64km) in something close to 10 hours, and on paper that sounded almost reasonable. It's only 15 minutes per mile, right? Heck, I've motored along at that speed... Continue Reading →
Final installment in my after-action report from the GORUCK D-Day Heavy Challenge. The faithful, indomitable, light, nimble "Moose Head" rucksack. I love this thing. Made in the 1930s, it was intended by the Swedes as a cheap mass-production item for hurriedly equipping a big army that Germany would choose not to tangle with. Eighty years... Continue Reading →
D-Day Heavy Challenge AAR, part 2 Leadership Cadre Clark. Think "muscular, tough-love Mr. Rogers with Marine Corps ideas about character building." During the whole event we only had 4 team leaders (TLs). I had the shortest, most intense (though not the hardest) tenure, during beach fun. As we approached the beach from the Conservatory of... Continue Reading →
It's always some heavily muscled personal trainer. My toughest moments at Goruck challenges are when I must fireman's carry a teammate, and it's never the vegetarian triathlete who works for a socially conscious startup. I always get the dense, hypertrophied Paleo stevedore-type who runs a gym. It's amazingly easy to fireman's carry someone, but it's... Continue Reading →
Goruck Heavy (May 31 - June 1) commemorating D-Day. San Francisco. Thirteen entered (eight men, five women), ten finished. These are the lessons I learned, first about individual performance (part 1), then about us as a team (part 2), then about my gear choices (part 3). Absolute Strength and Strength-Endurance Absolute strength is essentially one-rep... Continue Reading →