"Do you suppose they will choose to make war against lean, solid dogs rather than against fat and tender sheep?"
This little $4 Esbit stove has been a huge winner for me. Dating back to the 1940s, it uses technology and design so simple and un-screw-up-able that I consider it honorarily Russian. And though it's as just a survival stove, if you add a coffee can to screen it from the wind and contain the... Continue Reading →
Xenophon of Athens was a philosopher but no soft-handed coffeehouse bloviator. A student of Socrates, in 401 BC Xenophon enlisted in a mercenary army setting out to topple the sovereign of the Persian Empire. After their commander was killed, the fighting philosopher held the routed army together and led them into the Caucusus Mountains on... Continue Reading →
I met The Jolly Irishman minutes into my first GORUCK event, at kissing distance. We were all told to pair up: one person would bear walk across the beach and tow the other, who lay supine and clutched him around the neck. I ended up as a “top” with Irish as my “bottom.” Not having... 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 →
“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 →
Feeling fat, looking fat, and being fat are three separate things. You can “feel fat” without looking or being fat. I’ll hazard a guess that it's mostly emotional, but even when you’re not being particularly neurotic, you can feel fatter or leaner depending on the fit of your clothes and your posture. You can also look... Continue Reading →
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 →
Part 6 of our series "Tao of the Lazy Badass" and part 7 of our retrospective series, "Twenty Years of Pavel Tsatsouline." (Follow the links to find all previous installments.) In our last post, we talked about “fragmenting the load,” a fancy way of saying that you should chop up your workload into small, easy... Continue Reading →
Did Hemingway invigorate himself to run with the bulls in Pamplona by blowtorching his lungs doing Crossfit? Hell no. Papa knew how to pace himself. Part 5 in our series “Tao of the Lazy Badass.” Find the first four installments here, here, here, and here. You already know the First Law of the Lazy Badass:... 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 →