During the pandemic, I was introduced to the concept of “rucking” by a few of the guys in my men’s workout group. What is rucking? According to GORUCK, the company that popularized the activity, “Rucking is walking with weight on your back and turns an everyday walk into a full-body workout.”

When I first started, our weekend rucks were usually three or four miles. Over time, they evolved into much longer routes that included exercises along the way, using the ruck itself as weight for curls, deadlifts, overhead presses, and more.

My very first ruck was a cheap Amazon purchase that lasted only about six months once it started getting tossed around during workouts. That’s when I decided to invest in a GORUCK.

Jason McCarthy, founder and CEO of GORUCK, designed his rucks to be military‑grade and built to last a lifetime. McCarthy served in the Special Forces before starting the company, and in addition to making rucksacks, he launched ruck events to introduce civilians to the activity and give former and current military members a way to reconnect with that lifestyle. Some events were simple organized rucks; others were simulations modeled after Special Forces selection for Navy SEALs or Green Berets, led by members of the Special Forces community.

As I became more involved in rucking and the workouts, several of my buddies started attending these events. I was intrigued and eventually signed up for a GORUCK Basic. Based on what I was already doing with my group, I figured it would be manageable. The Basic is about 5–6 hours and 7–10 miles of rucking, with a series of physical challenges mixed in – some individual, some team‑based.

One challenge split us into two teams of ten. We had to load all our sandbags, about 320 pounds total, onto a flipped picnic table and race. We did three rounds, each one harder than the last. In the second round, we placed the lightest person on the table; in the third, the heaviest.

Another challenge required us to use a carabiner (a required piece of gear) to link all our sandbags together into what resembled a sandbag anaconda. We formed a human tunnel and took turns crawling through it, dragging the “snake” behind us until we reached the bottom of a hill.

It was a challenging few hours, at least I thought so, until I experienced the GORUCK Fort Bragg Tough 10th Anniversary.