Yesterday I spent a good forty-five minutes coming up with a new course to ruck. I wrote down directions for said plan on phone. I brought said phone with me on ruck. Unfortunately, I put the phone in the ruck which was too difficult to get back out while moving so I went on memory for the first half of the morning. I should probably mention that I have a terrible memory.
On the way to the Mighty Jungle AO, I passed The Count and Little Finger rucking in from Cobblestone for a little extra good livin’. When I arrived at the AO, Sweet C was just arriving on foot from his house — an admirable standard. 9 Lives joined us today too which meant no one could complain about aches and pains since nothing could be comparable to having a recent appendectomy.
At a little past 6 AM we got underway, I thought to entertain the crowd with a fine music selection courtesy of Spotify which kept the band merry until we immediately started out with an uphill climb followed by a bridge crossing at 77, followed by a shuffle across Statesville Rd, followed by a march along Stumptown with no sidewalk or shoulder. Well, no one said rucking was easy!
We cut into the first Monteith entrance and were moving along on course, even making the correct turn on Parcell. But I was not familiar with the neighborhood and things went awry when we got to the end of that street. Looking at the directions now, if we had just gone right instead of left on Bankside, we would have seen the sidewalk on the opposite side of the road that meandered through a meadow before emptying by the pool where Sharknado used to kick off. But I blew it and made the call to go left instead which put us on Stateville Rd. To further muck things up, I opted to go north on Statesville making the start of the trek across 77 seem like child’s play. Seriously, do drivers not have enought common sense to give pedestrians a little buffer? For some cars, I could have leaned my hips to the left and brushed their side window. I figure they were some liberals who saw our ruck sacks and assumed we were NRA members.
We turned into The Hamptons for a temporary reprieve from close calls with automobiles and followed the main road until it ended. It took about that long for the other guys to convince me we had no options for a loop that would have us back at the church by 7 AM. So we finally accepted our fate — a U-turn back to Statesville Rd and then a march south on Statesville all the way back to Stumptown where Gnarly Goat made the call to cut through the Chevy lot before crossing the highway and cutting into the back entrance of the church parking lot.
Despite a wrong turn, we still mananged to get back to Mighty Jungle in time for the regular bootcamp. Gnarly Goat opted to stick around for the workout, but we picked up Omaha who decided he’d rather walk than run with Tagless. We promised him we’d make it back for #coffeeteria and set off. Truthfully, I wanted to get moving again before the pax had time to reflect on my screw up and decide to call it quits before I mucked it up again!
This time we went down Stumptown toward Grand Oak. Sweet C was not planning to do the second loop given some family commitments, but stuck with us enroute to his house. We marched down to the circle and entered Wynfield on Hugh Torrance. That’s where mistake #2 happened, but this time I’m blaming it on dumb neighborhoods and their lack of imagination for street names.
The plan was to take a right on Chaddsley at the Wilderness pain clock, but when I mentioned the street name, Sweet C pointed to the street at the bttom of Travolta hill which was named Chaddsley. That didn’t seem right, but I knew I had a bad memory and the street sign matched my directions so we followed it. Wrong move, Blackbeard. Turns out McAuley couldn’t come up with enough names for their roads so they used “Chaddsley” three times — even though none of them join. How dumb is that? Thanks to poor neighborhood planning, we were lost again although this time I had remembered to keep my phone close at hand so we were able to find our way back on course. Several streets laters (and after parting ways with Sweet C who turned toward home), we were in Birkdale.
By now, Omaha was realizing that we were probably not getting back in time to be first in line at Waterbean. He asked if we could turn around and head back early. I told him it just so happened we were at our farthest point in the loop so yes — we would “turn around” and head back although we were going to do it along the golf path. We followed the path for two holes before cutting through the woods (complaints of no path to follow despite being 20 yards from path to street) and arriving at the back entrance of Birkdale where it dumps on to North Cross Lane.
Now that everyone was back in familiar territory, we made quick work of returning to MIghty Jungle via Stumptown. When we were at the back side of the church, Little Finger and The Count parted ways to head home leaving five to return to the parking lot just as the bootcampers were pulling away. Five turned to two as Holiday, 9-Lives and Omaha decided 7.77 miles was good enough. Titan and YHC circled the parking lot to round out out our excursion with 8 miles even.
All told, I’m guessing each man got somewhere between 5 and 10 miles today. Great work! We may not be training for a major GoRuck event, but we are embracing the secondary concept that GoRuck encourages which is to grab a bunch of friends and go out for a walk. 9 Lives joined us sans ruck as he continues to recover from surgery. I opted to add a couple bricks to go along with my plate bringing my sack to roughly 40#. And that’s the idea — adjust your weight for your fitness level and enjoy an opportunity to chat with the guys while burning a few calories. I sure hope others will consider joining us in the future — we seem to be settling on Tuesdays and Saturdays starting from various locations. The more the merrier!