A’ight, so my brother and I ran the GORUCK Star Course 50-Miler in D.C. over the weekend. Team Sloth, @teamslothgoruck on Instagram. Here’s the rough timeline of relevant stuff, with miscellaneous asides thrown in when relevant, way more memes than are in any way necessary, and a random blurble of semi-related stuff at the end. Steve’s stuff is again in sky blue.
Team Sloth (my brother and I) have run ultras for the past couple years. We’ve never been exceptionally good at it, with Don’s primary strength being, well, strength, and mine being the fact that I’m basically nocturnal, by the standards of ultrarunners. In general, we’re too slow to be top-level ultrarunners. Before ultrarunning, we did GORUCK events, but we’re also too weak to be top-level GRTs. If only there were an event that were half-way in-between…
You may recall that last year we ran the Star Course in Philadelphia. This past weekend, there was also one in DC. As that’s even closer to home than Philly, we ran it.
In terms of gear, I basically used what I did last time in Philly with a few minor changes. (There we go, got that link out of the way.) I switched from kludgy toggle-loop-contraptions and tied-off paracord sheath to a pair of side-release clips, one top and one bottom, to hold the sloth on my ruck in conjunction with the PT belt. I also added a magnetic keeper for my hydration tube (now encased in a neoprene insulating sleeve, but that was an everyday change, not for this event specifically) to the sternum strap, and a GORUCK simple pocket and water-bottle holder to the back MOLLE, underneath the sloth. Basically, the 10L Bullet Ruck worked well; these were just tweaks to make things more accessible, easy to set up, etc. Okay.
Route planning: In addition to the astronav tool from Philly, I built a second version with several improvements, AstroNav2019 AKA Silfurberg. In the end, the only part that I ended up using during the event was the part that let me click a button to copy the text I needed for the instagram posts. The other possibly-useful part I added was a metric showing how inefficient (when compared with a straight-line course) a given set of google directions was; although this would’ve been really useful in Philly, it wasn’t necessary here due to all of the locations either being sufficiently far afield that there was basically a straight-line route, or close enough in to the city center that the street grid didn’t allow any shortcuts.
(The most recent version is here: http://astronav2019.drunkenrobotlabs.org/; the OG version from Philly is here: http://astronav.drunkenrobotlabs.org/.)
Other than that, gear loadout was pretty similar to Philly, albeit with less cold-weather gear due to being warmer.
A week prior to the event, we ran UROC 100k. This left me a tiny bit sub-par, but nothing terrible. If we were trying to have the absolute fastest time possible, we shouldn’t have done this.
Also, the week leading up to the race was hectic/busy due to unexpected family stuff.
Alright, enough excuses before even saying how we did. On to the event.
As we get to the check-in table and, well, check in, a guy comes up in a “Sloth Hiking Team” t-shirt – it turns out that we are not the only sloth-themed team here tonight!
A picture is taken of our two teams standing together, which I don’t have. Steve and I show the volunteers our weight plates and try to sleep. We briefly discuss those aboveforementioned “expectations” and reflect on the futility of “scoping out” the competition in a non-adversarial event. (I mean, it’s a race, but there’s essentially no interaction between teams in a competitive sense, so… I guess if we think another team is super-fast we might make slightly riskier decisions, because the expected utility of a negative-EV decision could swing positive under those circumstances? [I.e., if we can expect to lose by 10 minutes if we do nothing, then doing something that gives us a 10% chance at shaving off 20 minutes is a smart play, even if it has a 90% chance of losing us half an hour.])
We headed up to DC a couple hours early and parked across the river in Arlington to grab dinner and finalize our packs. Our crew (i.e., our dad) drove us to the start point just before the pre-meeting at 7:30. At Philly there were give or take a hundred people and stuff didn’t start happening until about 8:45; for this one, there were close to 500 people (for the 50 miler, plus some more for the marathon and half) and there was far more organization than the two dudes standing in a parking lot we’d dealt with before. Anyway, team leader meeting at 7:30. Nothing crazy, just describing how the evening would go and the stuff that everyone should’ve already known from reading the packet sent out in advance of the race. Main difference between here and Philly: We got the waypoints at ~8 and were allowed to set out as soon as we got cadre approval of our route after the 8:30 pep rally.
We still end up going through the list of “competitive disqualifications” – if a team has too many people on it, if they’re wearing heavy boots, if they’re in long pants, if they’ve got way too much crap on their rucks (says the dudes who had sloths strapped to their packs…), if they’re too big-looking so that they’ll tire quickly, too frail-looking to stand up to the weight… And right about the time I realize that the smallest person I wrote off for being “too big” is actually smaller than the largest person I wrote off for being too small, we manage to shake that nonsense shit out of our heads for good.
Do we think we’re set up, prepped, and positioned to do well? Yeah. Do we have anywhere near enough information to be able to say anything beyond that? No. We’ve planned our run, we’ll run our plan, and see what happens.
While waiting for all of this, we try to avoid putting too much thought into scoping out the other teams to find our real competition. However, I’m terrible at avoiding that sort of stuff, so I start coming up with rules of who to not worry about. If they’ve got what appears to be a fairly full ruck, not a concern. If they’re wearing boots (instead of running shoes), not a concern. If there are more than two people, not a concern. At this point, I’m not seeing anyone who concerns me.
Anyway, get the route. It’s mostly the same as last year’s, which I already had entered into the websites, so I just needed to copy that and update a couple waypoints. Ideal route is ~46 miles, but we’re warned that two of the waypoints are closed until 6am. Figure we’ll deal with that later and, after the pep rally, get cadre signoff on the autogenerated route; set out at 8:39 (I think).
We have the TL brief, get our hit lists – pretty much the same as last year’s with one subtraction, two additions – and plug the waypoints into Astronav. Figure out our route, then meet back up for the safety brief and moto-sesh. We’re, I think, third in line for Cadre JC to check off our routes, and we manage to get out of the park at about 2039 or so. As we leave, we see another pair of runners heading out – taller than us, wearing matching shirts like us, and – here’s the “oh, shit” kicker – wearing Ultimate Direction packs.
It’s right at this point that both Don and I independently spot a team that worries us. They appear similar to us in terms of background, as they’re kitted out as ultrarunners, but they also appear in solidly better shape than we are. Mental note made.
They checked with us to confirm that once a cadre had checked off on our route we could book it, and yeah, we could. We hit the Exorcist Steps first, while they went straight for the canal towpath, which gave Steve and me a chance to confer and confirm that we both had the same impression of them.
Only…
Seriously though, they turned out to be the Balance Gym team that won it last year. And this year. And shaved, like, two-and-a-half-hours off of their winning time from last year.
Yeah…
(Note that since the times displayed are when the pictures were posted, some of them might be a little bit off. F’rinstance, we barely broke stride to snap the picture at Waypoint 18 – Thomas Circle, wheeled around to sprint to ENDEX at the gym, and then posted our last two pictures once we were on the roof.)
Waypoint 01/19 (2019-05-17, 20:44:19 EST): Georgetown Waterfront Park, #georgetown
Um, we started here? Not much to say. Sloths on the rucks got a few looks, but not that much attention, all things considered. Special bonus points go to the guy in the ranger panties and Tom Selleck-stache who was smoking a big ol’ stinking stogie and drinking a beer during the TL brief. (And no, he was not one of the Cadre…)
Waypoint 02/19 (20:50:28 EST): The Exorcist Steps, #ExorcistSteps
Exorcist Stairs, first waypoint down. At least the instructions specifically said to take the photo at the bottom of the stairs. We did sprints up these at Light 002, and while they’re no murder switchbacks, we’d still be like
Getting down to the towpath along the C&O Canal from here, we run alongside Canal Road for a bit – a few miles of some of the iffiest terrain of the night (which is to say, really not that bad at all), a sloping, overgrown shoulder, sometimes behind a guard rail. We don’t get hit, manage to surprise our dad driving by (he didn’t realize we might get the waypoints early and thus get a jump on the 2100 nominal).
We set out from there to a waypoint a couple miles out along the C&O canal. First couple miles, we go along Canal Road, which was tricky as it had no sidewalks and we were running along a weed-covered slope with traffic approaching from behind. Luckily, we didn’t get hit, and made it to the C&O canal.
Cut down onto the canal towpath and keep on trucking.
Waypoint 03/19 (22:27:41 EST): Lockhouse 11, #Lockhouse11
It took us a moment to figure this one out – apparently there was an explicit “Lockhouse 11” sign, about three inches square, on the opposite side of the canal. The confusing part was that the hit list said that the lockhouses might be inhabited, and… well, it’s hard to tell from these pictures, but trust us – even in a city like DC, there was no way this place could possibly’ve been inhabited for more than $1,000 per month, including utilities. At least one other team got a bit confused by this, too, it sounded like.
Tough to find anything actually saying that it was #11.
Keep going. I greet every animal I cross paths with while running, and there were enough frogs out to give a french chef a raging hardon, so that was a lot of greetings.
We keep on keeping on, and see lights at about mile 15. We’ve passed a couple of walkers, a biker, and some guys doing some night fishing and/or frog gigging, so it’s not certain that they’re the ultrarunners we’d identified at the start, but they totally were. Exchanged hails-and-wells-met and kept on keeping on, them like
and us bein’ all like
(I’m the taller one who was grinning, of course.)
At about mile 15 (one mile out from our destination waypoint), we pass two guys coming back. Greetings exchanged and we keep on going. It was the two guys we noticed and were concerned about earlier. If they came out-and-back along the towpath, we’re pretty well hosed, as that means they’re at least two miles ahead. If they took the shortcut along a less-safe road, they might be at a comparable distance to us and we may still be in the running. However, if they took the long route, it also means we could regain a couple miles with the shortcut, which might just keep us in contention.
It was pretty cool seeing the canal towpath at night – we went over some more rustic sections than JFK covers, saw tons of frogs, enjoyed the cool breeze. ‘Twas nice.
Waypoint 04/19 (2019-05-18, 00:20:59 EST): Swain’s Lock (C&O Canal Lock 21), #SwainsLock
Boom! Hit the furthest-out waypoint, find the water fountain and refill our stuff. Break out snacks. We’re hitting way fewer waypoints at the start than in Philly, but this is the (well, close to the) optimal route, and it’s nice to have more frequent things in the back half of a race, be they waypoints, aid stations, or just interesting changes in scenery.
We see a car with its lights on and assume that it’s the crew vehicle for either the ultrarunners or someone on the towpath behind us. Head up out of the parking lot, see our dad’s car, decide whether to wake him or not – Cadre get out of the car with its lights on, tell us, dang, that was fast, guys, and start setting out the aid station stuff (water, bags of oranges, bananas, etc.) We mention we passed another team heading back along the towpath, so they were here probably at least twenty minutes ago.
Cadre apparently never saw ’em.
Refill our water bottles, head towards the other side of the parking lot and the driveway that heads up to the road that’s nearly a straight shot to the next waypoint. Notice that our crew is there; we don’t need anything but he pops out of the car to say hi. Right before we leave some guys climb out of an SUV and ask if we’re with GORUCK (as if there were any question); it’s the cadre there to set up an aid station. They completely missed the first guys to come through, but we verify that the road we’re heading to is allowed (it’s strongly discouraged for safety reasons but not strictly banned, so, it’s allowed) and I grab a couple oranges and we head out.
We confirm again with Cadre that we’re allowed to take River Road back. He says that we shouldn’t take it.
Cadre clarifies that it’s a main-ish road, no sidewalk or shoulder (it kinda-sorta has both, and where it doesn’t it has at least a good bike lane, and where it doesn’t, then, well… eh), so it’s dangerous. “Dangerous”? We’re Team Sloth.
Okay, then. He has to discourage us, but yes, we are allowed to travel along it. Excellent!
(And yes, I know there’s a typo in that GIF, but it came premade; I didn’t have the source clip.)
(I was trying to think of a “Death Waiver” joke here, but seriously, even though we knew to do it safely, hats off to the Cadre for keeping safety the priority. That said, I did find it tangentially amusing that if you search the GORUCK FAQ for “death waiver”, you find two results. Note that the result addressing minors doing a GORUCK event is the one that says their parents or legal guardians need to sign a regular-not-a-“death”-why-would-you-even-say-that-like-that waiver. The one right above it is bam, “death waiver”.)
Turns out that River Road is far safer than they let on; the vast majority of it has a sidewalk, and the rest has a good-sized shoulder. Couple that with the fact that we set out on it at a quarter past midnight and we have no problems whatsoever.
As we’re rucking along, we pass a number of groups headed the opposite direction. Exchange obligatory greetings and keep going.
As we head back along River Road, we start to get worried about how long it’s been since we set out from Swain’s Lock, and how few – read, no – GRTs we’ve seen. After… maybe two or three miles, we pass a big group, and then a few more small bunches for the next few miles after that. One group has a Bluetooth speaker dangling from their ruck, playing something sufficiently moto sufficiently softly so’s not to lead to… issues. (It’s about two in the morning, and we’re going through neighborhoods where the houses cost more than I made in my twenties. Like, all of the twenties.)
But the music?
Well, that’s intentionally (read: hopefully humorously) harsh, but we don’t run with music. If we chat, we chat; if we’re hurting or down to the wire, it’s all business: “Next tree?” // “Next tree.” // “Retrieving water, keep going.” Stuff like that. (Or, you know, more in-depth stuff – this race, we discussed Edward Abbey’s views on environmentalism w.r.t. modern “green” developments, and at UROC last weekend, we had an in-depth discussion on (IIRC) the possible research avenues into the effects of NDRI (norepinephrine / dopamine reuptake inhibitors) medications given recent research into extreme sports [bouldering, specifically] and dopamine levels.)
Around when we hit the DC border, we stop at a 7-11 to use the restroom and refuel. I’m starting to drag a bit, even though we haven’t yet hit the marathon point. Grab a half-gallon of gatorade and keep going.
We walk (up hills), jog (flats), maybe even run a bit (down hills), gradually making our way back into the city. We stop at a 7/11, use the facilities, restock on drinks and donuts, figure we’re probably the third-weirdest thing that guy’s seen tonight, and keep on keepin’ on.
(This is completely unrelated, but it was, like, the tenth or eleventh result when I searched giphy for “donuts”.
I eat many donuts during this stretch, as I did in Philly.
(Seriously, tons of sugar, starch, a bit of fat, salt – during a heavy endurance event like this, they are exactly what my body needs. I am being totally healthy by fueling appropriately.)
Hit Wisconsin St., take a right, headed south towards the National Cathedral.
Waypoint 05/19 (03:25:20 EST): Washington National Cathedral, #NationalCathedral
Not much to say here, I guess? We sorta knew or at least recognized the phrase “rose window” from Notre Dame (team picture to be taken in front of it), and managed to figure it out with smartphones. We are… selectively cultured. Shift around hydration and snacks, chew some gum, and get going again.
At this point it’s just about 3:30am and we take a minute to reevaluate our route. If we follow the initial route, the shortest one, we’ll hit one of the closed-until-6 waypoints between 4 and 5, which seems sub-optimal given how much time we lost in Philly due to places being closed. Instead, we draw a new route that omits the time-limited spots and the very end, and set out.
Ooh, as we head back through Georgetown, we pass what looks like a late night… beer truck? Like a food truck but just with a bunch of kegs and taps in the back. Also a bunch of mentally altered young adults hanging off of it and climbing on top of it. One young lady murmured something about “there’s, like, a big child… inside me” as she hauled herself up on top. We figured that on a scale of 1 to
she was about at a
BONUS WAYPOINT (03:55:29 EST): NEW PARTY MEMBER UNLOCKED!
We then pass a toy store that’s advertising the world’s largest, happiest sloth. I think we’ve got a larger sloth at home, but he does certainly look quite happy.
Unfortunately, this store wouldn’t open for another almost six hours, and by that point we were well stuck into the real-life version Escape from D.C. (which was to Escape from L.A. as Escape from L.A. was to Escape from New York, which is to say from bad to worse), so the World† Largest Happiest Sloth will have to wait for another day.
If the store had been open, would we have been able to resist the temptation to go in and buy it? I like to think so.
If we’d known just how the final times were going to shake out? OH HELL YES THAT SLOTH WOULD HAVE BEEN IN EVERY PICTURE FROM HERE ON OUT.
(Just so we’re clear, I’m saying that if:
- The store had been open, and
- We’d known that we’d end up finishing 2+ hours before third place,
– Then we would 100%, totally, absolutely have gone in, bought that bad boy, and run the remaining 5-6 hours taking turns buddy-carrying him.)
Waypoint 06/19 (04:04:39 EST): C&O Canal Mile Marker 0, #MilePost0
This was in a really weird, out-of-the-way place. Like, what looked like a vacant lot next to a boathouse? But we found it! On to university.
Waypoint 07/19 (04:18:22 EST): George Washington at University Yard, #universityyard
Photo, a minute or two of route-planning because we were now in the “hittin’ wit’ a quickness” phase of our waypoint-visitations, and then back moving.
Waypoint 08/19 (04:36:02 EST): World War II Memorial, #WW2Memorial
We did our best to uncover at the memorials, the somber ones, at least. (Lincoln’s and Jefferson’s were more celebrations of their lives, although we weren’t tearing around, shouting, power-sliding, etc. there regardless. But here, WIMS, Titanic, etc., yeah. Hats off.)
Waypoint 09/19 (04:42:33 EST): Washington Monument, #WashingtonMonument
Um… we saw a mouse? I mean, we did see a mouse, but I’m kinda struggling to figure out anything cool and/or funny for every single waypoint.
Ah! Steve reminded me. We also paused for a minute and decided that we’d try to get to WIMS a bit early, possibly having to wait, but keeping to the optimal routing order, rather than hitting a few extra waypoints before 0600 and avoiding the possibility of waiting, but adding a few more miles.
Adding miles is bad. We figured that “possible rest and fewer miles” >> “no rest and more miles”.
At this point we have to make a call. It’s between 4:30 and 5, and we can either keep with our current route, which will check a bunch of places off the list but won’t have us getting to the WIMS memorial (that opens at 6am) until 7am, or we can just check off one more waypoint, be at WIMS when it opens at 6, and then continue onward. They both look like they’ll give us roughly the same finishing time, and as going to WIMS and waiting for 6am gives us a bit of a break, that seems like a good idea.
Waypoint 10/19 (05:12:57 EST): Lincoln Memorial, #LincolnMemorial
We’re coming up the Mall along the Reflecting Pool when we see the steps of the Lincoln Memorial absolutely covered in people. We jog up, preparing to be severely disappointed in our fellow GRTs for lounging about en masse, and run smack into the – what we only now realize / remember – the graduation / high school formal / whatever night crowd. Hundreds of students in slightly relaxed formal wear, just… chilling on the steps, showing up in twos and threes and groups and single-file streams. Kinda eerie.
Next up, we’ll head for the Women’s Memorial – it doesn’t open until 0600, so we figure if it’s open early, great; otherwise, we’ll take a minute to rest, recoup, and get ready to hit the last leg hard.
Head across the bridge to WIMS at Arlington Cemetery. As we approach, around 5:30, we notice something – there aren’t any gates in our way, and there aren’t any signs specifically saying that WIMS is closed. The cemetery doesn’t open until 6am, and is blocked off, but the memorial isn’t, so we don’t need to wait.
Waypoint 11/19 (05:35:06 EST): Women In Military Service For America Memorial, #WomensMemorial
Turns out that neither this nor Hains Point are actually closed overnight. Arlington National Cemetery and the museum proper are closed, but the sidewalks up to the memorial are open. So we snap the picture early and head back across the bridge.
Keep on trucking, heading for the next couple memorials/monuments.
Waypoint 12/19 (06:00:15 EST): Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, #FDRMemorial
Of course I had to pet the dog.
Waypoint 13/19 (06:10:07 EST): Thomas Jefferson Memorial, #ThomasJeffersonMemorial
After a brief moment of panic that the dome may have been blocked off due to construction, we made it inside on the other side. Also picked up some gum that had been discarded on the front steps and threw it away inside.
Gum!?
Head towards Hains Point, the other place that was closed at night. Although I can’t say for certain, as we didn’t get there until between 6 and 7, it definitely doesn’t look like there was any way to close it at night. We probably could’ve gone there early, too.
At this point, I’m really starting to drag (that is, walking or at best shuffling, instead of jogging), so Don offers to carry my weight plate for a while. Normally I’d say no, but as we were competing, it’s a team event, and we had a better idea of what the field in general and our competition in particular looked like, I agreed.
Waypoint 14/19 (06:41:49 EST): Hains Point Picnic Area, #HainsPoint
Was kinda hoping that there’d be some random SEAL Team PT people down here – I know they meet at Hains Point for DC workouts sometime; I couldn’t remember if they had run options from here on Saturdays, though, and if so, when exactly.
That’s on the southern tip of an island, and the only bridges are at the north end, so we turn around and head back. Bridge, across to DC, down to the Titanic Memorial.
Waypoint 15/19 (07:26:23 EST): Titanic Memorial, #titanicmemorial
We roll into the Titanic Memorial, uncover, take our picture, and Steve takes a second to verify the directions for the final stretch. I double-check on Instagram that our previous waypoints posted and were acknowledged, and see that @goruckstarcourse commented on our previous post that “You guys are doing great!”
Then it occurs to me to wonder why, after ten hours, they choose now to start commenting with words of encouragement…
Regardless, we head towards the Supreme Court at a right goodly clip. Rather booking it, at least… relatively speaking. From what we’ve seen, DC is, like, basically 50% cops which would normally make our rampant – but totally safe and we looked both ways twice so four looks total per person and there was no traffic and we used crosswalks whenever we could and… – jaywalking somewhat more suspect, but most of the cops out this morning seemed to be blocking roads for some “Bike DC” bicycling / outdoor festival thing, so we were luckily able to roar through intersection after intersection heading towards our last few waypoints and endex like
Between that and us looking like this
(only sweatier, wearing sloth rashguards, rucksacks, sloths on the rucksacks, and – oh yeah – I was chanting “Pain don’t hurt, suff’ring is a-choice,” over and over again -)
We didn’t have any problem with people or cars getting in our way. Made good time, we did.
From there, head up to the mall and hang a right. Feeling rough, but we’re so close to finishing. Under 6 miles, so I keep moving as quickly as possible (which isn’t all that quickly).
As we’re looping around the capitol, my phone battery dies. Balls. Well, I’ve got a battery in my pack, but I was hoping to not have to deal with that, and had managed to coax it along longer than I’d expected already. Don gives me his phone to navigate while mine recharges enough to use.
Waypoint 16/19 (07:59:13 EST): Supreme Court of the United States, #SCOTUS
After River Road, this was literally the first time we saw another GRT (there was a team of two off to the other side of the plaza; they weren’t looking our way and we had places to go, waypoints to hit, and given the security guards we didn’t want to bellow “HEY, WEIRDOS!”). With 400+ GRTs out and about, and – we assumed – most of them following roughly the same canal-and-then-DC order we were (given the 6AM opening times), we really thought we’d see more of the other teams. Heck, we saw tons more in Philly.
After that, apart from one more pair off in the distance (we assumed that they were fellow GRTs doing the Star Course, but they were on the move and not at a waypoint, so they coulda just been regular ol’ weirdos), we didn’t see anybody else until endex.
Shockingly, this is the first time that I see other ruckers since River Rd. In Philly we passed other groups fairly frequently, even though there were far fewer of us, but here, we haven’t seen any for hours. As far as I can tell, we make it to the flagpole, get our picture, and depart without them noticing us, as they appear to be resting on the far side of the plaza.
Anyways, we snapped our picture and wheeled around the building to head for the –
From here, we set out at a run. 2.8 miles to go, and we’ve got a shot at finishing in under 12 hours from when we set out, at 8:39 (unless one of us gets injured, at this point we could walk it in before 9am, but that’s not the point). Long straightaway along Constitution, then up onto Pennsylvania, then cutting around the White House grounds to get to the tourist-y side.
Right. Along the way we photobombed a presumably-visiting family. So, to the middle-aged guy who took a picture of his wife and two daughters posing on a trio of those electric scooters, a picture that has two hunched-over and hustlin’ dudes literally streaming sweat onto the sidewalk, grimacing and/or chanting to ourselves, each with one a’ these bad boys strapped to their rucks:
(with, of course, PT belts and flashers. And oh yeah, I’d gutted mine.)… to that dude, yeah, that was us.
Waypoint 17/19 (08:24:51 EST): The White House, #TheWhiteHouse
Lots of security, obviously, but thankfully there’s enough GORUCK stuff gone on in DC that a couple of weirdos in “Tactical Sloth” rashguards carrying 20# steel plates in rucksacks – which also had more sloths strapped to them – didn’t raise too much of a side-eye. That said, there’d been a time or two before this when Steve had sworn at his phone a bit (even a bit of sweat makes the touchscreen super tetchy and we both had plenty of sweat), and I suggested that – especially here, and especially while his phone was hooked up to a USB power pack, i.e. a gray plastic brick – he might want to be cool.
(We also make sure to refer to “remaining waypoints”, “check-in statuses”, and the like in this area of DC, rather than loudly asking “How we doin’ on the hit list?”)
0.6 to the last intermediate waypoint. Start running north. Ever so slight uphill part of the way. Fuck that noise, but whatever.
Waypoint 18/19 (08:38:28 EST): Thomas Circle Park, #thomascircle
Quicknotimetostopwe’llpostthiswhenwegettothegymwhichislessthanaquartermileawayfromwherewetookthispicturesoobviouslyit’stimefor-
At this point, it’s basically a half-block to the endex point.
Waypoint 19/19 ENDEX (08:39:29 EST): Thomas Circle Balance Gym (Top Floor/Roof), #balancegym
We get to the gym, I take my weight plate back, we set out up the stairs. We need to get to the roof, the 5th floor.
Make sure to enter the roof together.
The ultrarunners from the beginning are sitting in plastic adirondack chairs drinking beer. Figures.
Congratulations, final photo taken, final photo posted.
Check with them: did anybody finish in the middle? Nope, we’re second place. They finished in 10:02; our official time was 11:34, which was an hour faster than their winning time at the DC star course last year, but, well, they got better.
Sit around for a while chatting, refueling, etc. Grab a quick shower. Somewhere in here I think I lost my finisher patch, as I haven’t seen it since and can’t find it, but whatever. I still have my Philly one, from when we won, and I don’t really care about them anyway as it’s the experience that matters.
Something I hadn’t noticed before (I mean, even glancing at other people’s patches when they showed up online) was that each city’s Star Course has its own patch with a distinctive skyline:
I like that. Nice touch. Anyways!
The Cadre & co. had coolers full of beer and water, coffee – from Dunkin’ Donuts (!!!), none of this Krispy Kreme Krap – and pizza coming later, after we’d ended up leaving. I grabbed water, donuts, coffee, water, donuts, water – you get the idea. Steve was like
(Well, he really just had one.) Then we both resumed our donut-and-water feast while kicking back with our shoes off relaxing, like
We hung around for a bit, took some photos, chatted with the GORUCK people there, the volunteers, and the Balance Gym team. Our dad had parked in the alley below and came up to meet us. Gotta say, it was damn nice to have an endex location with a shower. We could have curled up and slept for a long while there after showering off, but we needed to get back to Charlottesville, and the tracker for GORUCK couldn’t tell when the next team might show up, so as much as we’d’ve liked to stick around, we had to get going.
Want to wait around for third place, as the cadre wants to hand out gift certificates and get a picture of all the winners together, but eventually we get tired of waiting and head out. The third place team finally finishes shortly before 11am, nearly two and a half hours after us (and nearly 4 hours after the winners).
Oh yeah, we got second place. Cool! The Balance Gym team absolutely crushed it, though. Since Saturday Steve and I’ve gone over what we did, and while there are a few things we could’ve improved, we still couldn’t’ve beat the first place team. We were, um, absolutely not joking when we said that they were like us, only better in every way at this event. Just as a random example, on my way to the showers, I jumped on the pull-up bars for a quick set of 10. On their way out, one of the Balance Gym guys ducked out onto one of the training floors to do 500 rows for time.
We tip our hats to thee, Balance Gym Team. We are proud to be the Ender to your Bean.
(Since we were about an hour and a half behind them? And a bit over two hours ahead of the third place team? And everyone who finished the Star Course Saturday is stone-cold awesome? I mean…
(Ignore the look of shame on their faces. Seriously, dudes, on the off chance you see this – congrats again!)
And of course since half of the streets in DC were closed, and since Google Maps, despite its supposed real-time updating, dropped more balls that morning than a fifth-grade field trip to the Playboy Mansion, it took us like an hour – literally a goddamn hour, including driving in literal fuckin’ circles because there were bicyclists on the on-ramps the morning after gorram GRADUATION in a COLLEGE CITY FFS!!! – to get out of the city onto the interstate.
Trying to get out of DC was a shitshow in and of itself, due to some Bike DC event going on that caused random, unmapped road closures.
Once we were on the interstate we promptly went
Now, on to the other random stuff, AKA the value-add because most of the above (in terms of screen-inches) is just scraped off of our Instagram feed.
What boots do you wear for X?
Someone pointed out on one of the Facebook posts after the event that none of the top three teams were wearing boots. I’ll get back to that. But if you wear boots, especially leather boots, for the love of God break them in. Even if they’re advertised as “no break-in time” like the MACV-1s (and not having worn or handled MACV-1s I can’t speak to them specifically, but I generally assume that everything involving leather requires break-in time regardless of what the advertising says. I even assume that completely synthetic stuff like Cordura requires a bit of break-in.
Of course, I did wear a brand-new pair of Trek Ascent Insulateds for a double-marathon in Richmond last November, but then again, I freely admit that if I’d run into any complications it would’ve been 100% my fault.), just… your first time wearing them should not be a fifty-mile overnight ruck. Even if the boots themselves are 100% good-to-go, you’ll need to make sure that your feet are used to them. How the lacing will shift alongside your feet during the race, how sweat or water will affect your socks and feet… basically –
That said, as was mentioned in the AAR for Philly, this is a foot race more than it is a ruck. Boots (and here I very well could be talking out of my ass, because I don’t have extensive personal experience with the boot side of this equation, but I think the first principles are relatively sound) are good for:
- Protecting your feet from debris like sharp metal edges, jagged rocks, falling or shifting objects, etc.
- Protecting your ankles when moving across rough, uneven, shifting, unstable, etc. terrain. Ground that you can’t, or at least really shouldn’t ever even consider running across.
- Provide extra cushioning for when you’re moving under a heavy load.
For the Star Course, however, the course is predominantly on roads, either gravel or paved; sidewalks; and maybe some trails. While you might end up on some thornier terrain (figuratively and literally) – Steve and I went cross-country for a few stretches in Philly, and we spent a few miles in DC right at the start on the sloping shoulder of a road before we hit the C&O canal towpath – you don’t need that much protection. You’re no more likely to step on a nail or have a heavy rock fall into your feet on the Star Course than on your everyday walkabouts. And if you roll your ankle on flat, even ground… boots won’t save you from bad form or structural instability. You can’t exercise your way out of poor nutrition; you can’t engineer your way out of weak fundamentals.
As for the cushioning… as an absolute upper limit, you’ll be carrying 13.3 (repeating, of course) percent of your bodyweight. (Sure, you’ll have some water, maybe some calories, the pack itself, clothes, etc., but just considering the “official” weight requirement.) That’s not a whole lot. As one of the first-place Balance Gym guys said, that’s just a weekend of beer and burritos. Anyways, if you have good running form, you shouldn’t be heel striking much anyways, absorbing the impact with your muscles, so the cushioning isn’t much of an issue.
Basically, since you’re going to be running, and you don’t need heavy-duty protection for your feet or ankles, go for what you’d wear running, i.e. running shoes. (Specifically trail running shoes, because you will probably be going on trails / potentially cross-county, and so racing slicks are a bold choice.)
If you aren’t going to be running it, though – because you’ll be going seriously off-road through rough country, because you’ll be humping a fifty-plus pound pack, or just because you don’t plan on running it – then boots will do ya fine.
Weren’t you wearing –
Yes, yes I was wearing Vibram Five-Fingers. The same pair of Trek Ascent Insulateds that I mentioned a few paragraphs above. It’s totally possible to do Star Courses, Grindstone, whatever, while wearing VFFs. Toe-shoes. That said, I’ll hereby officially “recommend” against it, operating under the theory that if you don’t already wear VFFs for stuff like that, then it’s a long and outside-the-scope-of-whatever-this-is process to get to the point of wearing them for stuff like this, and if you do already wear them for stuff like this, you’ll (quite rightly) disregard whatever I say here on the subject because you’ve got more’n enough first-hand info to make up your own mind, like an adult, rather than relying on some random dude on the internet.
How do you train for Star Course? AKA Since it wasn’t a fluke and since the team that beat us was basically just like us only better that’s, like, two and a half or three data points…
Run. Run a lot. Run until a marathon isn’t your longest race or even your weekly “long run” – run until a marathon is your “warm-up” distance.
Team Sloth doesn’t ruck – I think I put in two one-hour ruck runs before Philly (Steve may have done a few more), one twelve-hour trail run with Steve to check out how the rucks wore over a longer period of time and set our expectations for pace. Because of our race schedule, I was only able to get one, one-hour ruck run in between Philly and DC, two weeks before the event. Steve might have gotten a few more in for Philly, but I think his prep was comparable.
But we run ultramarathons (so far this year – Bel Monte 50-Miler, Promise Land 50k++, and UROC 100k) and from chatting at endex, so do the first-place Balance Gym guys. Only they do multi-day stage races, truly mountainous hundred milers, stuff like that. (Remember when I joked that we had them pegged as “like us, only better“? Yeah.)
So while I can’t compare training plans, and I’ve made literally no effort to collect any sort of additional data, from my incredibly limited personal experience – it seems that if you get in the habit of running distances that would be considered “a decent drive”, you’ll be well prepared to be competitive at a Star Course.
(Now, when GORUCK decides to introduce the Star Course Navigator Heavy++, where the weight requirements are 40/50#, the distance is doubled, and the waypoints necessitate actual cross-country movement, well…
Although actually, that gives me an idea – right now, with all of the weight requirements being individual [I mean, yeah, you can cross-load if needed, but the point is that the total weight requirement scales with the number of team members] you’re basically strictly penalized [competitively speaking] for having more than two people on your team.
What if each team had a fixed amount of weight, that they could divvy up however they wanted? So, like, if it were 100#, you could have a team of 5 and each person gets a standard 20#. If you wanted to do it as a pair, sure, but now you’re each carrying an average of 50#.)
Didn’t you say that Philly was 50% route-planning?
Yes. And I still think it was. But there were several things different here – DC vs. Philly, 2018 vs. 2019, and us vs. the field.
- DC vs. Philly: In Philly, there were like a hundred participants, thirty-odd teams, IIRC, with two cadre. DC had maybe four, four and half times that many people, and three cadre. That means that in DC, they handed out the waypoint lists ahead of time, after the initial TL meeting. So there was plenty of extra time to plan the route before heading out.
- 2018 vs. 2019: A two-parter. First, the DC course was substantially the same as the previous year’s. (I think they dropped one waypoint and added two-three new ones.) So, if you did your research or did the Star Course last year, you would have had plenty of info to figure out the optimal route. Additionally, even in just the… seven months ish from Philly, there have been a number of routing apps released that provide walking instructions. AstroNav is still awesome, and Steve’s still adding features – it’s still state-of-the-art – but it’s not as far ahead of the off-the-shelf solutions anymore.
- Us vs. the field: Now, in terms of overall success as measured by finishing time, route-planning is as important as ever. But in terms of our personal performance as measured by placing second, it was much less of a differentiating factor. The one time we crossed paths with the Balance Gym team, they were right at about 17 miles elapsed, as were crossing 15 miles. They more or less kept that same ratio to us throughout the rest of the event, maybe picking up a bit in the back half. Depending on how you figure mileage, they ended up running a 1.4 mile longer route. Third place was 4 miles longer. So, even if each of the first three teams had run the exact same route, the order would have been the same.
Bottom line? If you screw up your route and have to go four or five miles out of your way, then it’s highly unlikely you’re going to be able to make up for that with foot speed (unless of course you’re like the Balance Gym team here, and shatter the overall event record by, like, almost two hours). Even if you figure out the 100% optimal, shortest-of-shortcut route, though, you’ll likely only have a couple-mile edge, on average, at this point.
Based on a sample size of, like, one-and-a-half and my own completely unscientific intuition, of course.
Takeaways?
- All the same stuff from Philly.
- Merge and improve AstroNav. Most of the stuff in the new version isn’t necessary. Backport the stuff that was helpful and discard the rest.
- Train more. I’m not in anywhere near good enough shape for this sort of stuff; we’re competitive at these events despite my shape, not because of it.
- Spend an extra minute checking out whether places are actually closed when we’re told they’re closed. Because of how much distance it added in Philly we didn’t really question the closures in DC; in the end, they were far less impactful (i.e., not at all enforced) and we could’ve saved 2 or 3 miles. Not enough to get us into first place, but I’m lazy and my goal with star courses is to finish them in the shortest distance possible.
Lessons Learned AKA “Inefficiencies” Because While We Didn’t Really Screw Anything Up Even If We Had Done All of These Things Better We Still Wouldn’t Have Beaten the Balance Gym Team:
(Prefacing this with how, even if we had done all of this stuff 100% right and/or better, if we had eliminated every single imperfection from out execution, we still would have been in second place. Which, you know, sorta makes it easier. If we’d been beaten by, like, two minutes, well… ouch.)
First, there are a few minor improvements to the route planning software (Astronav), but that’s sorta Drunken Robot Labs internal. Tech-wise, though, we ran into a few difficulties with our phones – sweat making it hard to unlock / operate the touchscreens, for example. Steve’s phone – our primary for navigation and Instagram – also went dead as we were heading for the Supreme Court. We could’ve & should’ve either made sure that my phone had everything identical ready to go to swap out, or paid closer attention to our charge during the event. Ideally both.
The other bit where we could’ve potentially cut down on some mileage / time had to do with the opening times for two of the waypoints (the Women’s Memorial and Hains Point). They were both listed as opening at 6AM, and we organized our route accordingly – it turned out, though, that neither of them are really “closed”, so we could have proceeded along the mathematically-optimal route, shaving maybe another mile or two off of our total. But since, short of on-the-ground intel / recon the night before there was no real way of knowing that – unlike the bridge to Camden in Philly – it’s sort of iffy to call this one a “mistake”.
And then of course there were the usual bits where we had to slow down to figure out directions, refuel, retrieve and/or stow data, etc. Sure, we could’ve just gone faster, but that’s… not really a strategy or a planning type of thing.
But overall, for seriouses? We’re pretty happy with how we did. We’ve got some tweaks to make for Philly, but it was a fun time, a good workout, and (for me, at least) the first time seeing some of those places in DC.
Don Norum 
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