u/3one5

Years ago, I heard about the GORUCK 50-mile Star Course. At the time, if I remember correctly, it was only offered in D.C. I told my girlfriend that I'd love to do a 50-mile ruck one of these days. She responded with, "The weather is supposed to be nice this weekend." Well, I had to impress the girl — which meant I was going. I picked a route and set off at 7 PM that Friday night. It wasn't pretty, folks. I had blisters popping in my shoes. Blisters forming under blisters. I was in SAD shape by the end of those 50 miles.

Not long after that, they started offering Star Courses in other cities, and I didn't just want to do one — I wanted to win one. So I went looking for solutions to my foot problem and started experimenting. I don't recall exactly where I found it, but someone suggested wearing toe socks inside thin merino wool socks. I gave it a shot on a 30-mile ruck leading up to the Denver Star Course, and my feet were fantastic afterward. If you're planning an endurance ruck, give this a try!

BTW - The girlfriend eventually married me, apparently it worked!

My partner for the 2018 Denver Star Course.

Appearing to be homeless helps when moving through Denver in the middle of the night :)

These super long rucks probably take a stronger mind than body. There is a constant internal conversation with the body checking in to ensure everything is working properly.

Pack weight started at around 45lbs with dual water bladders. I wanted enough water in my pack to make it through the entire event without stopping. The only time I ever stopped was to pee and take pictures of the various way points. Probably one of my greatest rucking related accomplishments.

I brought this up in another post and it generated a few questions.

I have a couple MAPS programs that I wanted to be able to track progress on. Originally I was going to use Strong Lifts and enter it all in manually but that's a huge pain in the ass beings that work outs tend to shift and change as you move along. I decided it would just be easier to use Claude to write my own app. It's not currently published and I definitely don't want to step on the toes of the Mind Pump team. However, I would be willing to help them get something out if they wanted to do that.

The app is currently setup with no Mind Pump programs in it. To use the app you have to enter a Claude API key because the app uses Claude to analyze the program PDF when you upload it. Once your programs are uploaded you can use the app to track your workout history, progress, etc. The biggest downside is the Claude backend requirement to analyze the PDF and extract the program from it. In my playing around with a Claude end user account, it costs somewhere around $0.15 to analyze and import the PDF. It's a pretty small cost but to release the app as a commercial product there would need to be some kind of subscription cost and some way to limit the number of PDF's that could be uploaded. I can see where someone screwing around with the app could drive massive backend costs.