This event opened a lot of doors for me for what was possible. After completing this, I set my eyes on new things. The next thing was to run an ultra marathon. 

I used to not think that it was possible for me to run an ultra marathon. I believed that ultra marathon was something that only mutants could do. You had to have some special endurance gene to be able to run that kind of distance nonstop. 

Well, I rucked at least 65 miles during the course of this event. I also had 40 pounds on my back or more for a majority of it. I also didn’t sleep for two days. 

What is running for 12 hours going to feel like compared to this? 

A few years later, I signed up for my first ultra marathon. It was a 50 miler in Pekin, IL. 

I knew it wasn’t going to be a cake walk. Running 50 miles is still hard to do. I was essentially going to be running from sun up to sun down. 

I didn’t have any master plan in running this ultra. I went to it alone. I didn’t have a support crew or anyone to help me out. I basically loaded out a duffel bag full of food and meal replacement powder and decided to go for it. 

It would have been easy to overthink this event and not sign up for it at all. There’s hundreds of blog posts on what people do to plan for an ultra marathon but I decided that I was going to just go with my intuition for it. I would listen to the advice of some friends that had run races like this and not go into any rabbit holes on it. 

Eliminating the overwhelm of planning is often the best way we learn. If I made a mistake over the course of this event, so be it. At least I would learn a little more of what it means to run an ultra marathon. 

The 50 mile ultra beat me in ways that I wasn’t expecting. The most challenging part was keeping pace with the time that I wanted to have. 

I ran the first 35 miles of my race as fast as the last 15 miles. The last 15 miles I was barely running. I was essentially fast hiking up and down the hills. 

I didn’t eat enough throughout the course of this race. Even though I ate the food that came available to me, I should have brought food that was a little denser in calories. Throughout a 50 mile ultra, you’re going to burn about 7,000 calories so fueling is essential. 

I was eating meal replacement powder and drinking swigs of some salt water concoction for electrolytes that I made at home. Was my plan bad? Yes. Was it better than no plan? Maybe. I was winging it during this event but if I didn’t have that badge of honor of finishing the GoRuck HTL, I don’t think that I would have showed up to this 50 mile ultra marathon. 

When you finish something that is hard and I mean, really hard. It changes you. It gives you a memory of what you can endure. I think all of us can endure more than we believe we can. 

Doing this event is one of my fondest memories. I hope to grow more memories like these as my life goes on. 

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After the Tough, we followed the same plan that we did finishing the Heavy. We made it back to the hotel. Jason and Harrison took a nap and I couldn’t sleep as usual. 

I opted to go out and get a real breakfast and sat down at a diner nearby. I ordered the biggest skillet I could get my hands on. The breakfast place was only a 5 minute walk away but I ended up taking an Uber. 

Why would I waste extra energy? I had plenty of energy to give later on. 

It was about 10:00am and I had seen the sun go down and come up twice since I last had slept. It’s strange when you don’t sleep. The body feels off. A mini alarm goes off telling you that something is not right. 

It’s not natural to see multiple day cycles in a row without sleeping but I had to do it. I would rather push through than nap. I was certain if I fell asleep I wouldn’t be able to wake up. I couldn’t risk it. 

Cadre Doug told me, “I’ll see you in a few hours.” And he was right. 

There was no way we weren’t going to show up to the Light after doing the Heavy and the Tough. Something would have to be wrong with us for us to quit at this point. 

Our Light class had a lot of people in it. I would say it was about 50 or 60 people. 

The perk of doing a Light event is it’s supposed to be an entry level event for people starting to get into rucking. There’s not a lot of PT and you mostly ruck. The weight requirement is 10 pounds lighter for a Light event than it is for the Heavy and Tough. That extra weight makes a huge difference for your morale. 

Chad and Doug had the group gather up and we mostly rucked up and down the Lakefront path in the city. There wasn’t a whole lot more to do than that if we are getting a lot of rucking in a six hour span. 

After we rucked back to the start point, I thought that we had did it. We were finished and the event was going to be over. I was going to get the coveted orange HTL patch. 

We all circled up at a playground that was near the start point. Chad had an announcement to make to everyone. 

“We have six people in this group that did both the Heavy and the Tough. Will you step forward. Before earning your patch, you have to do one more thing, you have to do 110 eight count body builders.” 

An eight count body builder is similar to a burpee. You do a full push up, move your legs in and out then jump up from a squat position. 

Everyone gathered around us. We were allowed to do the eight counts in sets so we opted to do sets of 6 sets of 15. On the last set, we would do 20 finish. 

Chad afterwards told us we did every rep and every set with perfect form. One last challenge, one more thing. When you’re relentless, you will not let anything get in your way. 

After we finished the high counts, Chad had us do the tunnel of love. The tunnel of love is where you basically go into an arched pushup position and low crawl under each other.

Chad came to the end, showing the orange patch, “do you want this? Go ahead and take it.” 

All of us didn’t think he meant that literally and we kept going. He had intended for us to actually take it but we just kept going for more. All of us wanted to have it given to us and earned instead of taking it. 

Then he stopped us and gave us all the patch. 

I teared up and gave Harrison and Jason a hug. We did it. We completed something we worked so hard to get to. 

It was one of the most proud moments of my life. I gave my 100% and I know that I gave my 100%. No one can take that away from me. 

There’s a greater sense of satisfaction when you give something your all and finish it. 

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The most difficult part about completing a GoRuck HTL is showing up to the Tough event. You finish a grueling 24 hour event and get the luxury of a 4 hour break until the Tough starts. During those 3-4 hours, you find comfort. 

The level of comfort that you feel after doing a heavy is nice. The bed feels great, the sheets are soft and cool. Every ounce of your being wants to stay in bed. 

The real challenge is getting out of bed. Isn’t that an analogy for life. After we do something that we perceive as hard, we think “I deserve a break.” 

It’s the mentality to have a cheat meal because you worked out once. It’s finding comfort after the discomfort. Our threshold for discomfort is constantly changing. Anytime we find something that is uncomfortable, we seek to find that comfort. When we find that comfort, our threshold for discomfort resets and sometimes dips below where it should. If you are comfortable all the time, any little amount of discomfort will make you uncomfortable. 

We left the hotel and took an Uber back to the start point at Soldier Field. I was hobbling along in the worst physical shape I’ve ever been in but all I could do was smile. 

Why was I here? Why was I doing this? It felt ridiculous to be here. I was in terrible shape. All the muscles in my legs still felt like jello. I did it. I showed up. I made it to this event. 

The Tough class was a lot larger than the heavy class. We had about 40 people show up. Even though our bodies weren’t fresh, we still had about 34 other people who had fresh bodies. 

Mike, Ayn, Teresa, Harrison, Jason and I were the only ones left from the Heavy. 

The Tough event is a little different than the Heavy. In a Heavy, you carry a lot of weight. In a Tough, you do more PT and rucking. Rucking speeds are typically faster, time hacks are faster and the team is prompted to move. 

There won’t be as many breaks during this event like a Heavy. It was okay though. All I had to do was make it until the sun rises. 

The mentality became to make it to the next point. 

Compartmentalization is a critical mental skill to have when doing something hard. You cannot think about the totality of what you have to do. You have to break it down, one piece at a time. If you do not break it down one piece at a time, your mind will become overwhelmed by it. Honestly, what’s the point of thinking about the entire thing? What good does it do you? The only thing you can focus on is what is right in front of you. There’s nothing else to focus on but the present moment. You don’t know how you’re going to feel in a couple hours. What you do know is how you feel right now. 

Our first stop was a ruck to the baseball fields in Lincoln Park near North Avenue beach. Chad had us do wind sprints back and forth on the field along with PT. 

This was brutal considering what kind of condition I was in. I was not in shape to do explosive workouts but I had to dig deep to keep moving. 

My mind was burnt out. I was struggling and falling behind the group. One guy offered to carry my ruck for me for a little bit and that helped me so much. 

I cannot remember the guys name but he saved me during this event. Without him, I’m not sure if I would have finished. 

I was having some dark thoughts during this time. There were parts of me that were thinking that I should roll my ankle and injure myself on purpose. If I was injured, at least I can walk away with dignity and wouldn’t feel like I quit. 

It’s sick what kind of thoughts the ego will create to protect itself. Why? Why would that make me feel better? 

The truth is that it wouldn’t. The ego is often a lie that we tell ourselves to make us think that we are more than what we are. The trap the ego loves to put us in is one built on the unknown. 

If I did get injured, even if it was self inflicted, the ego would have told me, “you could have finished this event if you didn’t get injured.” 

It loves to leave things open ended. It loves when we quit without giving our 100%. If we do not give our 100%, it can tell us that we didn’t give it our all and we could have done it if we had. 

The frightening part about giving a 100% is that it makes us vulnerable. It shows us who we really are. When you give 100%, you either find out if you are good enough or if you are not. 

If you’re not, it really hurts. It makes you feel like a failure. But at least you didn’t allow your soul to be eaten away at the lies you told yourself. 

The guy who carried my ruck for 20 minutes allowed me to mentally get myself together. After that, I let those thoughts pass through me. If I was going to get injured during this event, it would be for real. It wouldn’t be from my own doing. There was no way that I was going to stop now. I was going to keep going no matter what happened to me. 

I ended up making it through the event. The sun came up and I realized that I was going to succeed. 

I got another congratulatory handshake from Cadre Doug and he said, “I’ll see you in a few hours.” 

Indeed he would see me. I can taste the finish. I’m going to get to the end of this.

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We took an Uber to Soldier Field, meeting on the side right outside the Field Museum. 

There was around 30 people at this event which would be considered a medium sized class. We met our Cadre, Chad, who was tan with a black beard and his hair slicked back like the Fonz. Chad came off as a little bit of a bad boy as he was smoking a swisher when we arrived. 

We had a special guest at this event as another Cadre. It was Cadre Doug from the Heavy we did out in Portland last year. 

Our team weight was a sight to behold. We called it the “Ark of the Covenant.” The weight ensured that we could never drop the flag and was a perfect representation of 9/11. We were honoring those that fell in 9/11. 

Part of a GoRuck event is carrying an American Flag with the team. If the flag touches the ground, the event is basically over. Every GoRuck event I have been to, the Cadre will tell you that they gave up too much for that flag. If it touches the ground, they will make everyone do PT until we all quit. 

Chad gathered all of us and told us to get our team weight and rucks together. We were to form two lines and move the weight into Soldier Field. 

In a GoRuck event, usually you expect the unexpected but I did not expect us to have access to go into Soldier Field. The field is owned by the city and somehow we had private access to get inside. 

After we got all of our gear inside, we lined up. We had a feeling of what was about to happen. The only reason that they would bring us inside this stadium would be to do stairs. Why else would they bring us inside? 

Cadre Chad spoke to us about the importance of 9/11 as an event. A lot of people were heroes on this day. All of us before this event were asked to bring a story about someone who died on 9/11. When I was reading through many of the stories, you begin to realize what heroism is. Heroism is putting the safety and needs of others above your own. A lot of people on 9/11 were heroes and we didn’t want their stories to be forgotten. 

How did people get out of the World Trade Center after the planes hit? They had to use the stairs. 

Chad told us that we were going to climb 110 flights of stairs. That was how many flights of stairs the World Trade Center was and we were going to do this in memory of those who had fallen. 

We split off into about five groups of six to climb the stairs. The stadium steps at Soldier Field are steep. It felt especially steep carrying a 40 pound ruck on your back. 

We weren’t going to run up the stairs or do it for a dedicated time. The only catch was that we had to keep going. The Cadre didn’t want us to take any significant pauses during our climb. 

That’s the beauty of a GoRuck event is that since this event is already slated to be 24 hours, we have a lot of time to utilize. Climbing this many flights of stairs will probably take about an hour. 

Since you are not allowed to wear a watch or check the time during a GoRuck event, you will begin to lose track of time. There’s two sides to that coin. When you’re feeling beat and broken, not knowing what time it is in the middle of the night makes it feeling like there’s no end. 

But when you don’t know what time it is, it can move faster as well. That feeling of seeing the sunrise in the morning lets you know that you are half way done and it’s encouraging to keep moving forward. 

About half way through the stair climb, my legs started to feel shaky on the way down the stairs. I always felt like walking down the stairs is harder than walking up them. When you go downstairs, you have to catch yourself from the gravity with every step you take. When you go up the stairs, it’s strongest muscles in your body engaged to propel you upward. 

I looked over to another group and saw a guy puking. That’s a bad sign. We’re barely an hour into this event and this guy is struggling. You can usually tell who is going to make it within the first hour of an event like this. The people that come unprepared stand out right away. 

I felt bad for the guy but doing an event like a GoRuck Heavy requires more than just being in shape. You have to be built to carry things. I love running as an exercise but if I only did running in training for a GoRuck, I would not have succeeded. 

We finished the stairs as the sun was setting. Chad had us roll out back to where we met up to start the event. He told us it was time to do the PT test. Luckily, it didn’t seem like there would be a 5-mile run this time. 

The Army PT Test looks like this: 

• 42 Pushups in 2 minutes

• 53 Sit-ups in 2 minutes

• 12 mile ruck march under 3.5 hours. 

The GoRuck Heavy I did last year had a 5 mile run under 40 minutes added but we were not going to do that this year. I was grateful because the 12 mile ruck march was going to be hard enough. 

After the pushups and sit-ups, we were to do the 12 mile ruck march. Chad gave us the option to go individually or as a team. If we went as a team, we had to stick together. After seeing a few people struggle and drop out at the stairs, we opted to go individually instead. The consequences of not finishing as a group could be far worse. 

What we decided to do was break into small groups. Harrison, Jason and I would ruck together. Others followed suit. 

The objective was to ruck to the end of Navy Pier and back two times. It was about 3 miles one way or 6 miles round trip. 

We began rucking and talked about random things. A lot of the conversation topics end up being about different GoRuck events or anything else personal in life. 

We approached Navy Pier and it was fenced off. We couldn’t go to the end of it so we did our best and went as far as we could. With it being fenced off saved us about 1/2 mile on each lap. 

Cadre Doug made an appearance in a red corvette waiting for us at the end of by the pier. There’s an honor system in GoRuck with some of these events but if you are caught breaking the honor system, the consequences are dire. Doug was there to make sure that no one was cheating the event. I’m sure some people would try. 

It’s strange to me why some people would cheat an event like this. You’re signing up for this event to push yourself and prove something to yourself. The only thing you get for finishing this event is a velcro patch. There’s no price money. I guess some people would cheat so they could have the bragging rights that they finished the event. Doing that would not only make them a cheater, it would also make them a liar. 

On our way back to the start point after our first lap, my groin muscle on my right leg started to feel weird. It felt there was something inside it that was going to go off. Then it hit me. I was cramping. 

I paused for a second to see if it would go away but we couldn’t afford to lose that much time. I kept going. 

When we kept going, I was overcompensating to my other leg and that caused my other leg to cramp. 

I thought to myself, “at least the cramps are symmetrical now.” 

The cramps didn’t stop. They slowly went down each muscle in my leg. It felt like I was slowly blowing out tires. 

Eventually, all my leg muscles were cramping. I couldn’t stop. The only thing that was in the way was pain. If pain was the only thing that was stopping me, I was going to push through it. I was physically able to move so I did. 

The pain from the cramps went away but actual cramps themselves didn’t. My legs were locked up. They started to feel like muscles do after a hard workout. 

Mentally I couldn’t allow myself to get rattled. The first thoughts that pop into your head after a situation like this is that you’re only about 1/8th of the way through this event and you’re already cramping. 

How am I going to make it through this? Can I? 

Our mind has a way of thinking of things in a linear way. I was thinking that if I feel this way 1/8th of the way through this event, then how am I going to feel half way through? It’s going to be 4x worse!

Often this isn’t what reality is though. I shifted my focus into just finishing the ruck march and I fought on. 

We eventually finished the 12 mile ruck march with about 30 minutes to spare. Since we finished early, that meant we had a 30 minute break to wait for everyone else. 

I needed this break. It was time for me to recoup, eat some food and take some electrolytes. 

While the cramps went away, my legs felt significantly weakened. My calves felt like jello no matter how hard I flexed them but the strange part was that there was no pain. 

After everyone in the group finished their ruck march, we carried on. It was time for the real event. This was only the beginning. 

Our first stop was to ruck to Ohio Street beach. Anyone who’s done a GoRuck event knows what this means. It means the “Welcome Party.”

The Welcome Party in GoRuck is a piece of it where you do a lot of PT and you typically get wet. All the events I’ve done in Chicago, the Cadres love taking us to Ohio Street beach. 

We rucked towards the beach which is about 2 miles and we had a time hack of 40 minutes. This shouldn’t be too difficult considering we do not have any traffic lights to cross. 

Normally 2 miles in 40 minutes would be easy but when you take into account that everyone is wearing about 40 pounds of weight plus our team weight, the challenge isn’t so easy. 

Rucking in cities for time takes some strategy. You may have to cross a street before you intend so you don’t have to worry about crossing later. Every second counts and losing 30 seconds at a traffic light can derail you from making your time. 

After we arrive at the beach, Chad has us gather up into a horizontal row. We all lock arms and march into the water until we are waist deep. 

Chad has us pull forward a little bit and we begin to do pushups in the water. 

You never know when the pushups will end but you do know they won’t go on forever. The battle in the mind between perception and reality is always on. None of the workouts last forever but you think it will. 

Without a concept of where the end is our brain can easily go into panic mode. The panic sets in when we keep something open ended. The way to train for this mentally is to learn to be okay with there never being an end. You have to be okay going until you can’t anymore. When you can’t anymore, you dig a little deeper and keep going. There is a point where you won’t be able to go, no matter how dig you deep. That point is usually way past where we expect it to be. 

Doing PT in the water isn’t more challenging than on dry land but it’s annoying. The purpose of the water is to make you uncomfortable. Being soaked is definitely a way to make you uncomfortable. 

Water is leaking out of your shoes, your clothes don’t feel right and everything you’re wearing rubs up against you the wrong way. 

Water is annoying but it’s a factor when doing a GoRuck event. The entire point of this was to be uncomfortable.

After the welcome party, Chad had us line up and asked for a couple people to volunteer to be a team leader. We were going to start a new objective and this was to get to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial downtown which was about 1.5 miles away. 

Before we left, Chad had a fun surprise for us. A few extra sandbags for our team to carry. One of the sandbags to fill up was almost 100 pounds in size. We had one big guy in our group named Mike who ended up carrying the 100 pound sandbag during this first go. 

Mike was a mountain of a man. He had to be around 6’3” and weighed about 230 pounds. He looked like an NFL linebacker. Mike was also intending to do the full HTL for this event along with his girlfriend Ayn. 

Ayn was a smaller woman in her late 30s/early 40s. She was a talker. It’s interesting seeing how some people interact. Mike was a quiet stoic guy and his girlfriend wouldn’t stop talking throughout the entire event. 

We headed off to the Memorial with a time hack of 25 minutes. 

Chad started his watch and we headed off. The route we were taking would have to be one that crossed a lot of streets so we had to be careful and turn our headlamps on. 

We have heard stories of people doing these events and getting hit by cars so we never mess with safety. We never disobey a crosswalk. Disobeying a crosswalk is a sure way to get what GoRuck calls “coupons” added to your team. 

A coupon is adding an extra weight to your team. The Cadre’s typically bring a few extra weights or sandbags with them to the event for such an occasion. If your team has enough coupons added, you may be stuck carrying more weight than your team can handle and you will be slowed down. 

We made it to the Memorial in the knick of time. About 1 minute to spare. Chad gave us a break during this time and we took a moment to share some of the stories we brought along with us. This was a powerful moment. 

I chose a story about a man named Rick Rescorla. He was responsible for saving over 2,700 lives by evacuating the tower and singing songs to the people evacuating to keep them calm. 

Rick was in the South Tower and when the first plane struck the North Tower, he was ordered by Port Authority to stay put. 

He told them to piss off and started to evacuate everyone. He was last seen on the 10th floor heading back up to look for stragglers and his body was never found. 

Listening to some of these stories reminds you of the heroism that exists in humanity. Most people don’t choose to be a hero, it’s a part of them. Many people risked their own lives to save the lives of others during 9/11. Many of them paid the price for it. They died heroes. 

Part of what makes us human is heroism. There aren’t a lot of other animals that would risk their own lives to save another that is not their own kin. Humans are special in that way. We should value all of our lives as much as the next life. 

After telling our stories we gathered our things and began to move along. There would be a lot more rucking ahead of us. 

The Sun Rises

There’s nothing like seeing the sunrise in a GoRuck event. The sun gives you a glimmer of hope. It’s a reminder that time is moving on. 

Our team was starting to work well together. We knew when someone was gassed from carrying weight. We weren’t afraid to speak up when we were struggling and we trusted each other. 

Carrying the weight was hard but we knew we all had each others backs. After rucking around the entire city we had rucked about well over a total of 35 miles at this point. 

We knew the event was coming to a close but we had a final stop to make. We rucked to a fire station in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago. Chad told the firefighters why we were here and what we were doing. The firefighters decided to give us an old fashioned hose down. 

It wasn’t like we got firehose full strength. We stood out there and it was like a fountain spraying on us. It was wonderful to get the dirt and salt from my sweat off of me. 

After hanging around there for a while, we started to run short on time. Chad didn’t realize that we were so far away from the start point and told us to get to the start point as fast as possible with any means necessary. 

We still had the Ark of the Covenant weight with us. The only option we had to take was the CTA. We had to take the redline to the Roosevelt stop to get back to Soldier Field. 

As we were waiting on the platform, the train approached. The conductor of the train told us that we could not take our weight on the train. 

The train was at a stand still. People on the train started chanting for us, “let them on. Let them on.” 

The conductor gave in and let us on and we were off to the Roosevelt stop. 

We made it back to the start point with about an hour to go before the event was over. 

We went back to the start point and Chad and Doug decided to give us one last challenge. We were to do crab walks and bear crawls. The catch was we had to do them with a partner. 

This ended up being comical. Some of use were grabbing our partner the wrong way and we ended up doing these goofy looking bear crawls. It was the end of the event, we were having a good time. 

Eventually the time in the event was over. Chad and Doug lined us all up and gave us the congratulations hand shake of finishing the event. 

Stage one was over. We finished the Heavy but we were only 1/2 way to achieving our goal. 

Now it was time to get back to the hotel and recuperate. 

We all made it back to the hotel room. Harrison and Jason took a nap. I’m not much of a napper. I was afraid that if I fell asleep, I wouldn’t be able to wake back up. 

I opened the fridge and we had that rotisserie chicken meat and the cold baked potatoes in the fridge. 

I didn’t bring any silverware or plates with me so I ended up eating the baked potato like an apple and washed it down with some water. 

Even though it was plain, eating real food tasted so good. There’s no good reminder about how food is supposed to be sustenance than doing something physically excruciating. Food is fuel and when you’re deprived of it, it feels like magic when you do have it. 

My body started to feel better. I stayed in the hotel room, showered and stretched out. 

Harrison told me before his nap to wake him up at 8pm no matter what. He said to not allow him to sleep longer than that and I held him to it. 

At 8pm, we started to get ready. I brought an extra change of shoes but I thought to myself, “what’s the point? They’re going to get wet again.” 

I knew the inevitable. I was walking back into arena after destroying myself for 24 hours. If I could do this, what else was possible?

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I was anxious when it came to the day of the event. I made sure to sleep in and get as much sleep as I possibly could because I was not going to sleep much over the next few days. I ate a big breakfast and lunch before leaving. I had to eat as many calories as possible that worked well for me. I knew that food was likely going to be taken away during the Heavy and I had to prepare for that. 

The Heavy event was to start at Soldier Field at 5pm on Friday. I took the train down from where I was living in the suburb, Geneva, with two rucksacks. One was going to be for the Heavy and one was going to be for the Tough. 

I wanted to have a second ruck completely dry and ready to go for the Tough so I wouldn’t have to even think about what I needed to pack for the Tough. I didn’t have a second weight for the Tough though so I opted to go the old school GoRuck way and duct tape bricks together. 

Most GoRuckers now use rucking plates now for their events but before plates were commonly used, people used bricks. You would go to the hardware store, buy six bricks (if you were over 150 lbs) and duct tape the crap out of them to make one solid weight. I actually enjoyed this part of preparing for the GoRuck events. It was like a ritual to duct tape bricks together. I would get colored duct tape and make different patterns within my bricks. 

For this Tough, I didn’t go with any fancy colors of the bricks. I decided to make this set of bricks a dedication to my father who had passed away from cancer on my 18th birthday. I took a photo I had of him, put it into a card sleeve and taped it to the bricks. I knew that no matter how tired I was from doing the Heavy, if I saw that photo of him on the bricks that there wouldn’t be anything stopping me from moving forward. The only thing that would possibly stop me was if there was something medically wrong with me. 

After taking the train to downtown Chicago, I took an Uber to the Essex Hotel where Harrison and his friend Jason were staying. Jason was a friend of Harrison’s from Pittsburgh that did several GoRuck events with Harrison was in graduate school in Pennsylvania. Jason had attempted to do the HTL the last few years but got sick after doing the Heavy. This year was going to be different. We were all in this together. 

In the duffel bag I brought had some food supplies for in between events. I brought six baked potatoes, two rotisserie chickens and some avocados. The idea behind this was to have a balance of carbs, protein and fats for us to fuel ourselves after the Heavy. Baked potatoes are pretty easy on the stomach so I figured this was the best route to go for carbs. We loaded up the hotel refrigerator, set our stuff aside and prepped for the event. 

I taped my feet almost like I had a sock on the bottom of it. I made sure to get the heals, forefoot, sides of feet and in between toes that would cause issues. It seemed excessive but I figured I could always take the tape off if I felt it caused problems. It’s easier to take something off during a break than it is to put something methodically on. 

After taping my feet, I opted again for the Darn Tough wool socks and laced up my Salomon XA Pro 3D shoes. These shoes have been amazing in rucking events. They have great stability without being heavy like boots. They’re kind of a hybrid hiking and running shoe which is what I like about them and the treads are just right in their depth. 

I weighed my ruck and it was 38 pounds including water. Without water it was right at 30 lbs. It looks like I have just the right amount of stuff with me. I wasn’t planning to bring that much food with me. Just a few bars and electrolytes. 

Jason has tried to complete the HTL twice but has failed both times as his body gave out after finishing the heavy. 

Harrison and I tried to do this last year in Portland, Oregon but after the blisters on my feet took me out of the next event, he dropped out with me.

He didn’t tell me this but I knew that had I not quit, he wouldn’t have quit. That’s the power of a team event like this. If you’re doing an event like this with someone, you’re going to go as far as the people you’re doing it with go. Doing something like this teaches you the meaning behind, “faster alone, further together.”

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About a week after recovering from the Heavy and getting back home to Chicago, I was thinking about when I’m going to give the next event a try. I was convinced that if I didn’t get blisters on the bottoms of my feet, I would have been able to do the HTL. This gave me a direct problem to solve. How do I not get blisters on the bottoms of my feet? 

This taught me a lesson about how to overcome challenges in life. When you have a challenge that may seem difficult or even impossible, identity what the problem is that’s in the way. My problem was my feet. My body was able to go but I had to do something to solve the problem of getting horrific blisters on my feet again. 

How do I solve this problem? At first, I thought that I had to toughen up my feet. I started to do rucks barefoot on the sidewalks around my apartment complex. 

I tested out numerous types of ways to cover up the skin on your foot to make sure that there is a layer between your foot and the friction that hits it. I did a couple test runs with moleskin on the bottoms of my feet but it kept inevitably falling off. If it couldn’t last during an hour run, there’s no way that it was going to last during any GoRuck event. 

Eventually I found something called Leukotape. It’s a tape with a zinc oxide adhesive that gets stickier with friction. Maybe this was the magic thing that I was looking for to cover my feet. 

I found a few YouTube videos of people demonstrating how they taped up their feet before doing intense hikes and runs. I tried the same method on my feet and it was like magic. The tape didn’t roll off or move during the entire run. Whether or not this would protect me from blisters after being on my feet for 24+ hours was unknown but I did know one thing- this stuff wasn’t going to fall off.

Training

Now it was time to figure out what I was going to do for training. 

The job I was working at the time was in Operations for a Medical Device company. My role was mainly on my feet checking in the kits that would return from hospitals after being used. I was constantly lifting 20-40 pound totes throughout the work day. 

Training outside of work was not easy with my job. I was consistently working from 7am-5pm most days and had about a 45 minute commute one way. This meant, I was away from home from about 6:15am to almost 5:45pm every day. I had to figure out something to make sure I didn’t miss out on one of my dreams. 

How would I figure out how to make training work without burning myself out? I started to rethink what it means to burnout. I think that burnout comes from when a part of your life is taking away from another part of your life that you find is important. 

If you miss out on achieving your dreams because you work too many hours at a job, you’ll eventually become resentful of that job. When you’re making sacrifices that do not feel are voluntary, eventually those sacrifices come back in the form of resentment. 

I knew that if I gave up and allowed myself to get out of shape (or just maintain) while working this job, I would become resentful and I would not allow that to happen. 

I put every option on the table that was possible to make this training work, no matter how crazy it sounded. 

• Wake up at 4:30am to train. 

• Train immediately after work. 

• Train on my lunch break (I get an hour lunch). 

• Do two a days or even three a days if I have too. 

• Wear my rucksack & weight to work while working. 

Wait, what? Wear my rucksack to work while working? This idea seemed crazy to me. What would my coworkers think of me? What would my bosses think of me? Do I want to be stigmatized as the weird guy at work that wears a rucksack all day? If my job performance suffers, people are going to start blaming it on me wearing a rucksack all day. 

It was worth a shot though. If I wore my rucksack to work, that would give me at least 4x more time of wearing my rucksack than outside of work if I wore it just half the day. I estimated that I walked about 6-7 miles a day in my job.

If I was going to accomplish this task of doing the HTL, I had to make it a part of my lifestyle. This isn’t a hobby. It can’t be a hobby because a hobby is something you do when you feel like it. It has to become something more than that. 

The challenge of doing an endurance event isn’t the event itself, it’s the training for it. The event is a test of what you did during your training. If you do not prepare, you’re unlikely to perform well. The harder the event becomes, the long the commitment you have to have in your training. 

The event we were targeting was the GoRuck HTL in Chicago. It was another 9/11 event. About 3-4 months before the event, I started to wear my rucksack with a 20 pound plate in it to work every day. I would keep both my 20 and 30 pound plates in my car from this day forward so I would always have the option in how much weight I wanted to carry. I figured to start light on a daily basis then move up weight in a couple weeks after 20 pounds felt okay. That’s exactly what I did. 

I definitely sweated at the office a little more. My range of motion picking up totes was definitely a little restricted but I don’t think that my job performance suffered in any way so no one at the office said anything. Initially, everyone asked me, “what’s up with the backpack?” 

I told them that I was training for an endurance event and wanted to get used to wearing it for a while. After that, no one really said anything about it. Although my boss would every now and then would sing the Dorah the Explorer song Backpack, Backpack making fun of me a little bit but it didn’t bother me. It’s the price to pay for attempting to do something great. 

After training became a part of my lifestyle, this became my workout schedule throughout the week: Monday

• Upper Body lifting & run a few miles

Tuesday

• Lower Body lifting and a few miles of running

Wednesday

• Yoga class. More of a rest day

Thursday

• Upper Body lifting with a running a few miles

Friday

• Lower Body lifting with running a few miles

Saturday

• Long ruck or long run day. The purpose of today was to be on my feet for a while

Sunday

• Day off or go to an evening yoga class. 

I’ve never minded my schedule being completely filled up with things. I like to keep busy and training was a great way to keep my mind off of other stressors in life. 

Would this be enough training? I wasn’t entirely sure. There are a lot of training programs out there but it’s hard because you have to build a program that works for you. The best program is the one that you can do to 100%, not the one that you can do 50% of. If you’re consistent, you have to trust in the process that every day you are getting a little better each day.

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When GoRuck started, a special group of people decided that they were going to do all three events back-to-back-to-back. This would be doing the GoRuck Heavy (24 hrs), the GoRuck Tough (12 hrs) and the GoRuck Light (6 hrs). Each of these events would be performed on the same event weekend. Between each event is about a 3 hour break to recuperate and get everything together. 

Eventually, GoRuck started to make special patches for people who would complete all three events in one go. It became the coveted HCL patch. The “C” stood for “challenge” as it what the Tough was originally called. Throughout this book, the event will be referred to as the HTL instead of the HCL for consistency purposes. 

Harrison moved to Portland, Oregon. He asked me if I wanted to attempt to do an HTL with him for the 9/11 event that was going on. I have an uncle that lives in Portland so I thought of it as a great opportunity to see family and have another attempt to challenge in my endurance. 

Neither of us had done a GoRuck Heavy before. We were diving straight into the deep end trying to do the HTL on our first Heavy attempt. We had no idea what we were in for.

Portland Heavy

We had Cadre Mickey again for the Heavy and Cadre Doug. There were two Cadre Doug’s in GoRuck so Doug was called “Asian Doug.” Doug was a pretty laid back guy but I came to learn if you made him mad, he would basically punish you by saying things like, “sorry, you failed, you have to do this now. I don’t want to do this to you but you failed the challenge.” 

The event started off with Mickey leading us. Right away he wanted us to do the Army PT test. One big distinction we found out right away about doing a Heavy was that we had to do the Army PT test. The Army PT test was this: 

• 55 pushups in 2 minutes

• 65 situps in 2 minutes

• 12 mile ruck march in 3.5 hours

• 5 mile run under 40 minutes

The worst part of this was doing the 5 mile run. We started the event on this bike path along the Columbia River. Mickey said that he placed some rocks last night where the turn around point for the run but someone must have kicked the rocks over. After a majority of us ran about 3 miles down, we realized we had run too far and ran back. Luckily, Mickey had mercy on us and understood that the rocks were kicked over.

Then we began the ruck march. I had never done a straight up ruck for this far before at this pace but I was going to give it my best. After about 6 miles into the ruck march, I started to feel my feet becoming hot on the bottoms. It was a strange sensation that I had never felt before. I had to keep going to keep up with the team so I walked through it. 

One lesson that I found out was that in a Heavy, you have to carry a lot more weight as a team than you would during a Tough. A Heavy is what it’s called and it’s heavy. If your team fails a time hack to get to a point, Cadre will add what they call coupons to the team which is usually a sandbag or some other weight that we find lying around on the side of the road. 

After rucking around Portland for the better part of 12 hours, we arrived at this park with a giant stair case. Since this event is in honor of 9/11, we were to climb the equivalent of a 110 flights of stairs for the World Trade Center. 

Before this event, we were asked to bring a homework assignment. Since this event was in honor of 9/11, we had to look someone up that passed away during 9/11 and tell their heroic story. I chose Welles Crowther.

Welles Crowther was known as “the man in the bandana.” He worked as a volunteer as a fire fighter when he was younger and was working in the World Trade Center at the time of the 9/11 attacks. When the first plane struck the South Tower, people were huddled and frightened. Welles appeared out of nowhere and calmly evacuated as many people as he could out of the building. It’s estimated that he saved 18 lives during the attack. 

We all sat around and shared some of our stories of the people that passed during 9/11 to remember them. This was an incredibly powerful moment and it knocks you back into reality of horrors and heroism that occurs in the world. 

We often get caught up in our own world and forget that at any moment our world could change in an instant. Would I be the hero like Welles Crowther in a situation like that? I would like to think so but the truth is, most of us do not know until a situation like that happens. 

Part of the reason I enjoy doing events like these is because it gives me an opportunity to see who I truly am in a controlled environment. When you’re pushed to your physical limits, how you respond to it shows you a lot about who you truly are during times of stress. 

After we did the stair climb we were coming to the second half of the event. The bottoms of my feet started to feel like they were on fire. I began to prefer doing a light jog to waling because jogging speed to alleviate the pain. Along with the pain was this sloshing feeling. I knew I had blisters on the bottoms of my feet that were horrific but I don’t think I quite knew how horrific they would be. The mistake that I made during this event was thinking that because I bought a nice pair of socks that I would miraculously be blister free. Before this event, I never had an issue with blisters so I didn’t think twice about it. I also have never been on my feet for this long before so my lesson was learned here. 

After hobbling for last few hours of the event, I eventually finished it. Cadre Mickey gave us a speech and reminded us that these patched are “never given but earned.”

Harrison and I drove back to one of the Heavy participants houses where we all dropped out things off in preparation for the HTL. I told Harrison that I couldn’t do the Tough event. My feet were messed up and I couldn’t imagine going out there again for another 12 hours.

When I gave the inclination of not doing the event, Harrison also decided not to do it. I felt bad because of it. I felt that if I was able to gut it out, that he would have gone back out there with me. 

We were in this event together. Which was what makes doing events like these so powerful. The strength of leaning on each other makes you want to push yourself further. I didn’t want to let Harrison down and I knew he didn’t want to let me down. If one of us was going to quit, it was going to be a real quit. It wasn’t going to be because we wanted to. 

My Uncle John picked me up from the house as I hobbled to the car. I was proud and heart broken at the same time. I wanted to do all three of the events but I didn’t see a path to doing it. Toe nails black and skin peeling off. I tried to clean my feet off and tape them up but the damage was done.  

I had never had blisters on the bottoms of my feet like that before. I always assumed that blisters formed between your toes and on the sides of your shoes. I never expected the bottoms of my feet to be the spot that would be torn up. 

I laid on the couch and I thought to myself, I don’t think I’m ever doing an event like that again. This was brutal and far worse than I ever imagined. Maybe I’m not cut out to do long events like this. I got my patch for doing the GoRuck Heavy and that’s something to be proud of but maybe doing the HTL is too much for me. 

Was it too much for me to do? I’m not a natural endurance athlete. Growing up, I played football. The idea of running more than a few miles at once seemed like an alien idea to me for most of my life. This event was going to be a cumulation of rucking 65 miles with about 35-40 lbs on my back. That also isn’t factoring carrying the team weights as they rotate around. 

How the hell was I going to train for something like this?

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“What’s a GoRuck?” 

It’s a question that I’ve been asked dozens of times. My usual response is that it’s an endurance event that involves rucking. The next question is, “what’s rucking?” Then I will explain that rucking is basically walking with weight in a backpack. 

In this over simplistic way to describe a GoRuck event, it’s so much more than that. The definition of a GoRuck event is “a challenging activity that's based on Special Forces training exercises and involves carrying a weighted rucksack. GORUCK events are often team-building events and can vary in difficulty and duration.”

What does that mean? It means, a lot of rucking. What is rucking you might ask? The term rucking is rooted in the military and it basically means carrying a backpack/rucksack with weight in it over a set distance.

My first GoRuck event came the following year after I did a Spartan Race with my friend, Harrison. The Spartan Races opened my mind up to what kinds of races and fitness events existed. The Spartan Race was miserable. It took place in the last week of October. It was cold, rainy, and miserable. I think the temperature during the event was about 45F. When I ran the event, I didn’t feel cold because I was keeping my body warm from running, doing burpees and holding myself upright in the slippery mud. I felt like a warrior running the event. When I finished the event, the adrenaline wore off and I sat shivering around a fire in wet clothes. 

The next day I woke up with road rash on my skin from low crawls under barbed wire. With raw skin and sore muscles, I didn’t feel bad. I felt alive.  

It was a different type of feeling than the normal one I was used to after a long run. I felt like I had done something that I didn’t know I was capable of doing. 

Several months later, Harrison sends me a text and tells me to do this event with him. It was called a “GoRuck Challenge.” 

The thumbnail of the event had people who looked dirty and covered in mud. They all had headlamps on during the event from it taking place at night. 

“This looks cool, it looks like a different take on doing something like a Spartan Race.” I thought to myself. 

I signed up for the event blindly without taking a deeper look into what it was about. A few days later, I decided to take a closer look at the event and my jaw dropped when I saw the different events they held. 

GoRuck Heavy: 

• 24 hours

• 35-40 miles

• 30 lbs in your ruck without water. (6 bricks suggested)

• 50% completion rate. 

GoRuck Challenge (Now called “Tough”): 

• 12 hours

• 15-20 miles

• 30 lbs in your ruck without water.  (6 bricks suggested)

• 90% completion rate. 

GoRuck Light

• 6 hours

• 5-10 miles

• 20 lbs in your ruck without water (4 bricks suggested)

• 98% completion rate.

Wait, what? Six bricks in a backpack for 12 hours? 20 miles of rucking? What is rucking? What the hell did I get myself into?!

My jaw also dropped when I saw the price tag on the GoRuck rucksack. It was $300. I couldn’t fathom spending $300 on a rucksack. When I talked to Harrison about it, he told me that it was a necessity for this event. If I did buy this, I wouldn’t need to buy another backpack ever again. I splurged and ended up buying the 26L GoRuck GR1, a rucksack that has lasted me 10 years. 

My First GoRuck Challenge

When I showed up to that first GoRuck Challenge, I kept my mind empty of expectations. All I was going to do was show up and go with the flow. What I came quickly to find out about what makes GoRuck events unique is the team aspect of it. No one at the event is competing against each other. This event is not a race. Instead, it’s something a bunch of strangers endure together. 

Everyone at the event had to quickly learn how to work together. Quickly you learn the different strengths and weaknesses of everyone that is on your team. 

GoRuck events are led by a Cadre. A Cadre in GoRuck events is a current or former Special Forces member who leads the events by giving challenges and lessons throughout the event. A Cadre’s job is to both challenge the group and put pressure on them and teach everyone some lessons in leadership through that pressure. These events are often as mental as they are physical. When you’re in an exhaustive physical state, you tend to make irrational choices and decisions. Our bodies and brains go into survival mode when we feel an outside stressor. The outside stressors cause us to react selfishly, even if it’s not in the best interest of the team to complete their goals. 

I’ve come to learn the best way to get over this is to confront it. During a GoRuck event, you’re forced to confront all of these impulses and see the repercussions of it in real-time. This is part of the drive that keeps people coming back for more of these events. 

Our Cadre’s would be Mickey and Brian. Mickey was about a 6’1” Navy Seal who had a bunch of tattoos. Navy Seals are known for their love to take you in the water. Both of them were intense guys but I felt Brian was a special type of crazy. I’m not sure if we were lucky or unfortunate to have him lead my group for the second half of the event. 

We rucked a lot and rucked fast. He loved to do ruck runs throughout the city and make us randomly do PT everywhere. During one part of the event we carried our rucks over our heads and would do what he called, “up boat, down boat.” 

Basically when he said “up boat” we would lift our rucks over our heads while we were walking and on “down boat” we would set it down. 

Our group would get gaslit by him while we were rolling around in the coarse sand on the beach. 

“You should be thanking me. Usually, you have to pay for things like this. This is exfoliation. You can thank me later for this.” Brian would say to us. 

This event ended up being far more intense than I ever bargained for but I ended up making it through. I had never been on my feet for 12 hours at a time like this before or quite felt this beaten down before. During the event, Cadre Brian was the villain of his level of intensity but afterward, I had mad respect for him for pushing us to the limits. 

After I finished the event, there was a level of pride that I had in myself. I felt like I had earned something special. I did something that less than 1% of the population would even think about doing. 

During the event, I told myself that I would never do something like that again but after it was over, I wanted more. I became addicted. 

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