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I’m coming to the realization that I may need to rewrite one of the best articles I’ve written. Nearly a year and a half ago I wrote an article on rucking inspired by Michael Easter’s book The Comfort Crisis. I’m not the only one who has done this, if you look up rucking on YouTube you’ll find dozens of people who cite Easter’s book as they talk about the benefits of rucking. But in the last week or two I’ve realized that I, along with most other nobodys on the internet who have promoted rucking, made a mistake by presenting rucking as a better alternative to running, presenting running as a dangerous and a waste of time. These things are not true, comparing rucking and running is like comparing apples and oranges, running is a lot less dangerous than sitting on your rear end all day and it certainly isn’t a waste of time.
There are a few things that woke me up to this. One was a video I listened to where a guy argued that rucking isn’t a good idea. I wasn’t fully convinced by his arguments and he failed to suggest a better alternative for people wanting to exercise but he did say some things that are worth thinking about. The most important was his characterization of a lot of the rucking focused podcast episodes you’ll find, he claims they are all just marketing. If you get Jason McCarthy on a podcast he will eventually say that he believes rucking will one day be bigger than running. But Jason McCarthy is the founder of Goruck, if rucking becomes bigger than running he is going to be rich.
When you realize that you are being marketed to you have to increase your skepticism. The guy in the anti-rucking video claims the statistics people often cite to promote rucking are cherry-picked data highlighted by Goruck, over time I’ve become a bit skeptical of some of the claims people make about rucking. But the data he presents to counter Goruck’s statistics seem cherry-picked as well so it is up to you to decide whose cherries taste better.
You shouldn’t throw away someone’s arguments just because you think they are trying to sell you something. Even though it might be marketing I agree with McCarthy’s claims that rucking should become more popular because if you asked someone who is 100 pounds overweight to run a mile they wouldn’t be able to do it, but if you asked them to put on a 15 pound backpack and walk a mile they probably could and that experience would give them confidence and inspiration to start improving their life.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, the term marketing is not synonymous with lying, but back to our wider topic, if we say an obese person should ruck instead of run we shouldn’t also say a fit person can’t run.
Another thing that caused me to stat softening my stance on running was being exposed, via YouTube, to ultra-running which is running distances greater than a marathon of 26.2 miles. This video was probably the first ultra-running video that filled me with awe as I watched two people casually spend a day running over sixty miles sightseeing through an Oregon town and the mountains around it. Since then I’ve become fascinated with that style of adventure, the ability to cover that much ground on foot and see all that stuff in one day seems like a superpower but it is something real people can do.
Since seeing that video I’ve watched several more ultra-running videos. The casual forty to fifty mile rim to rim to rim trip in the Grand Canyon is a popular run for these people. It is also fun to watch someone go for an FKT (fastest known time) on a trail. Then there are the 200+ mile races which you can find countless well shot documentaries featuring people struggling through. Of course all of these adventures are hard, but like any worthwhile hard thing they are rewarding and I found myself wanting to be able to do something similar.
But I had a problem, I had bought into the rucking narrative so deeply that I could never picture myself running. People get hurt running they say, running destroys your heart they say, running is stupid they say. I had the mindset of someone in a cult.
But as I consumed more of this ultra-running content my mind began to open as I realized these people weren’t getting hurt that often, they were perfectly healthy, and what they were doing certainly wasn’t stupid. There is no good reason for a relatively fit person not to run.
One of the arguments I’ve seen others use (and been tempted to use myself) to dissuade people from running is, “Most people use bad form when they run which causes them to get hurt, therefore people shouldn’t run.” I’m embarrassed to say that I once found this sort of argument convincing, let’s apply it somewhere else. If we see someone at a weight rack benching with poor form do we tell them never to step foot in a gym again because they are going to hurt themselves? No, we teach them proper form. So we should teach people to run with proper form as well.
As I began to open my mind more to running I decided I needed to reexamine the thing that led me down the rucking rabbit hole. Michael Easter does not seem like the type of person who would discourage a person from doing a good thing. What did he actually have to say about running and rucking?
The general thesis of the rucking section of The Comfort Crisis is that humans are “born to carry” (page 234) and spending more time carrying things is something that is beneficial. Easter’s reasoning behind the “born to carry” claim stems from hunter gatherer times. Back then humans would have to carry the animals they killed back to camp to feed their tribe, often times these loads would exceed fifty pounds. Easter even observes that humans are the only species on the Earth capable of carrying things efficiently.
But where did the “born to carry” phrase come from? It was a play on “Born to Run”, the nickname of a famous paper written by anthropologist Dan Lieberman. Lieberman’s paper (which Easter cites and explains in his book) argues that humans are born to run because back during hunter gatherer times humans would chase the animals they hunted until the animals were exhausted. Lieberman observed that humans are the only species on earth capable of running extreme distances.
So are we born to run or, are we born to carry? Rucking evangelists would tell you that we are born to carry, and marathoners will likely tell us we are born to run. But really we are born to do both so we should do both. Michael Easter never told us we should only ruck. The first sentence in the paragraph after Easter coins the term “born to carry” reads, “Unlike running, most of us never reengineered carrying back into our days.” (page 234) Easter didn’t spend a lot of time talking about the importance of running in the modern day because he assumed we were already doing it (or knew we should be). A chapter on running would have been boring and wouldn’t have fit in with the story he was telling.
Rucking and running are two different things, they are not interchangeable so you should be doing both (assuming you are at a weight where you can safely run). I won’t tell you how much of each activity you should be doing because I don’t really know. My gut tells me that you should run at least the same distance that you ruck, or maybe even do each thing for equal amounts of time. If you’re good at one thing but not the other you should probably put more focus on the thing you struggle with. I could probably ruck ten miles without much of a problem but I haven’t run for more than ten minutes for years so I know what I need to work on.
We were born to run and to carry, we should be doing both and we should strive to get good at both. Improving your strength and endurance through getting good at these activities will help you in every other area of your life, so go outside and get moving.