"Do you suppose they will choose to make war against lean, solid dogs rather than against fat and tender sheep?"
Today’s game was to test out rain gear on a 3-mile ruck romp with Lean Solid Girl and our team weight, the Canadian Brick Bag (CBB), a sturdy canvas antique loaded with 35# of bricks. The rule was that the bag had to be carried in one hand at all times, by either one of... Continue Reading →
Photo by Lean Solid Girl Find part 1 of my misadventure here. When you're rucking with a group and you lag behind like a boat anchor, worse than the physical burning of sucking wind in white-hot lungs is the embarrassment of being the weak sister. No one says anything, of course, and probably few people are even thinking anything,... 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 don't even buy them anymore, I swear. They're breeding and multiplying. After experimenting a lot, I have arrived at some hard-won conclusions about boots for rucking. Great for flat roads and short to medium distances, but nothing hairier than that. As reported earlier, I rejected GORUCK’s own house brand of boots, the MACV-1. Though... 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 →
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 →
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 →
I have lots of surplus packs, but there are two that I love and cherish. For big jobs, I have a version of the legendary Swedish LK-35. For everything else, I carry the nimble, gorgeous Swedish M39, the "Moose Sack." Like in Switzerland, Sweden's neutrality is very much an armed neutrality. Even though Sweden did... Continue Reading →