My Rucking Journey – Origins

Back in January, my girlfriend and I decided to vacation the beautiful Medellin, Colombia. Leaving the dreary days of Midwestern grey behind us for the city of eternal Spring. The trip was amazing, even after an accident that changed my life forever.

During the pandemic I was introduced to bouldering, a version of sport climbing without ropes in which it’s just you against the rock (or route if indoors). One of my goals for 2023 is to improve my climbing skills and technique while losing ~30 lbs of fat. Therefore, continuing to train even in the lush jungle cities of Colombia was a must. We found this amazing indoor gym called El Muro Escalada Deportiva, which was effectively a house with all the first floor rooms converted into bouldering routes. Colorful holds were carefully placed against white ceilings and walls while the floor was lightly padded to cushion your landing. After an all-to short warmup session, I started working on a route that crossed over a doorway, slipped, and my right foot slammed into a hold while my knee was locked. Imagine landing on a golf ball from 4 feet in the air… it was not a good feeling. However, since climbing shoes are very tight, I didn’t notice the extent of the issue and continued climbing until the pain became unbearable. After taking off the shoe, I knew things were worse than I expected. We took an cab back to our place and I iced and hobbled around the rest of the trip.

When we got back to the States, I decided to see a podiatrist who confirmed for me that I had a plantar plate tear. “You’ll need to tape, rest, and wait for this to heal. There’s no PT for an injury like this… it just takes time.” So I continued my rehab plan day-after-day for 3 months, seeing slow but steady progress. Somewhere between month 2 and 3 I came to the realization that this pain might just be with me forever and that thought scared me. To never be able to do so many of the things I love without pain put me in a constant state of worry and for about a week, I felt like a prisoner in my own mind.

Begins of a Callused Mind

I don’t know how or why Can’t Hurt Me from David Goggins bubbled up on my suggested reading list, but I can assure that it saved me. David Goggins; former US Navy SEAL and ultra runner told a story, his story… of a beaten down boy with no future prospects who pulled himself up from nothing to achieve some of the most unbelievable things I’d ever heard. After hearing about his experience in Hell Week, I was determined to remove every excuse. I got into my car, drove to gym, and put in 20 miles on the spin bike. The more I absorbed of his life and the the sweat rolled off of me. For the next 2 weeks I listened to Can’t Hurt Me and Never Finished on repeat at the gym while telling myself out loud “If a man can run a marathon on broken legs, I can overcome a torn foot muscle.” My climbing training was also reaching new heights with 45 pound weighted pull-ups and hour-long hang board sessions. For every little thing my injury told me I could not do, I would find 2 things I could do and put in the time to perfect them.

Enter Rucking

After 3 weeks, I could basically recite Goggins verbatim and decided to see if the algorithm Gods would whip me up a new source of inspiration… and oh did they ever. The next destination on my audiobook journey was The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. It was here that the concept of rucking first entered my world and reshaped it forever.

“Carrying is the driving force behind why we became apex predators.”

– The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter

When you think about the flow of daily events for the prehistoric human, rucking, or carrying loads over long distances makes a lot of evolutionary and biological sense. A human would track down an animal over many miles, kill their prey and then carry it back home to be cooked and shared with others. This was the story of our lives for millions of years. There are a great many lessons in Easter’s book and I won’t spoil the surprises. Just know that his book in combination with the tales of mental toughness from David Goggins pushed me into a place I’d never been before. Beyond excuses.

It seemed like fate that I purchased a weight vest for climbing training in 2022 and never used it. It was at the house collecting dust while the revelation of lifetime began taking root in my mind. I started with 25 pounds and walked until my foot hurt, realizing that I’d burned 600 calories in 1.5 hour from just strolling around the park. The best part was the low impact on my recovering foot and joints combined with a serious full body workout. Eventually I made it up to ~40 pounds while rucking for nearly 2 hours and began incorporating daily cycling sessions for 2 a-days. By no longer viewing these activities as daily chores, but rather, normal parts of my day as they have been since antiquity (biking excluded lol), exercise became the end rather than the means to an end.

There is much more to say… but I’ll leave that for another day.