AKA Phil and Jed’s Excellent Adventure Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

A’ight, so my brother and I ran the GORUCK Star Course 50-Miler in Philly 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.

(And in case you’re thinking, “Hey, this intro looks a lot like this one, and even more like this one“, then spot on.)

After performing acceptably at the Philly Star Course last year, it was kinda inevitable that we’d do it again this year, especially after our poor performance in DC. Due to this being our 3rd Star Course, our preparation was a bit more relaxed than usual. For example, I wrote our navigational website AstroNav for Philly 2018, and then made a new version for DC, but I didn’t bother with a new one for Philly 2019 (I started on one, but only worked on it for a few hours before abandoning it). The 2018 version worked just fine, and the one minor feature I added to it ended up not even being necessary.

Right, who exactly are Phil and Jed? Well, Jed is this handsome devil:

*Which, of course, is in turn short for Jebediah Obadiah Zachariah Jedediah Springfield (a.k.a. Hans Sprungfeld).

And Phil is this ladies’… sloth, who puts the “gat (sic) her!” in Megatherium!

Now, most of our sloths are named after famous runners – Landy, Bannister, Kipchoge, and so on. Why are Phil and Jed named… Phil and Jed? “Phil” because about an hour and a half in, on the way to the Covered Bridge, we realized that the sloths on our packs didn’t have names. Steve chose “Phil” for “Philadelphia”, and I chose “Jed” solely to make the pun at the start of this AAR.

Wait, just how many sloths do you guys have?

Okay, enough with the randomness. Gear-wise, we made a few changes from the previous two Star Courses. This’ll focus on my stuff; Steve can add his if he wants.

After seeing the Balance Gym team’s stage-racing packs in DC in May, we (Steve) decided to look into some other options for rucks. Not because of any deficiencies in the Bullet Rucks we were using, but just to see if we could find something that wore closer to the race vests we’re used to. Unwilling to drop exorbitant amounts of money and lead time on the actual packs Balance Gym had (some European stage-racing company), we (Steve) ordered a sampling off of Amazon/REI and we tried them out.

We ended up going with the Dakine Men’s Heli Pack 12-Liter because it had a good balance of adjustability, durability, comfort, and –

Fine. We were testing out ruck plates in the various packs, and I happened to notice that the external shovel carry flap on the Dakine would make an almost literally perfect 4-point harness for carrying a sloth. After we’d confirmed that, the contest was over – there was no contest. Dakine x Sloth 4 Lyf.

Of course, the internal sleeve wasn’t designed for holding a ruck plate, and the first time I tried running with a plate loaded in there it bounced around something fierce and gave me wicked grinder reminder after only five or so miles.

Note to self:  Never ever ever again forget the ‘e’ and Google “grindr reminder”. Just… don’t.

So I rigged up some Kydex, cut-up yoga brick, and pipe insulation with 100-mph tape and got this monstrosity:

Which fit perfectly in the sleeve and put the weight up as high as it could possibly go, with a cut-out for Cadre inspection to boot. With a 1.5L hydration bladder, everything fit in the pack with enough space for some toe & hand warmers, space blanket, miscellaneous food, etc.

Since the Dakine pack doesn’t have any MOLLE, and the only outside pocket is the fleece-lined goggle pouch on top, I needed to figure out another way to store phone, papers, gum, etc. for easy access. After trying a couple of options, I ended up going with a Rite-in-the-Rain notebook pouch that hooked onto the sternum strap. (I originally had it on the waist strap, but keeping the waist strap tight enough to stop it from bouncing was… annoying to the state of my guts, so I switched it to the sternum strap right after Lincoln Financial Field.)

The pouch had phone, pens, hit list, gum, pills, a Clif bar, and a small Rite-in-the-Rain notebook. An extra thermal layer, pair of gloves, and knit cap were stuffed behind the sloth, who was also wearing a standard PT belt with two red LED flashers clipped on. (I took the gear shots after I’d gotten home and started unpacking, and I lost both of the flashers by the end of the course anyways.)

I stuffed an extra battery, charging cables for watch + phone, ranger beads, and my wallet into the zippered goggle pocket, and had some chapstick in my pocket.

Main change for this event was our gear. Although it’s a GORUCK event, you’re allowed to use any brand of backpack. For the first two courses, we used GORUCK bullet rucks (I used the mythical, long-out-of-production 5-liter model, while Don used the (I think) 10-liter), but a couple months ago while exploring other options I found a Dakine snowboarding pack that seemed to work just as well for carrying the weight but, more importantly, was absolutely perfect for carrying a sloth. We both ran with those for this event. Overall they were a bit less comfortable than the GORUCKs, mainly due to the straps being a bit thinner/less padded (I think), but not enough to really make a difference performance-wise. Not sure what I’ll use for future events.

Gear-prep-wise, I threw a bunch of stuff I might want in a duffel bag the night before, and swung by a convenience store on the way out of town for pop tarts, Gatorade, that sort of stuff. After your dozenth or so 50+ mile race, your gear-related nerves dissipate a fair amount, especially when it’s a race where you’re allowed to pop into a store during the event (assuming you can find one that’s open at 3AM).

Weather-wise, the forecast was for about 10C at the start, dropping to ~4C by 0300 and then coming back up with the sun, with a 5% chance of precipitation. (AKA, it ain’t gonna rain, but the weatherman thinks he saw a cloud on his way into work, so…)

So we both wore running shorts, sleeves, and our sloth rashguards. I had boot-length socks to help out my Five-Fingered feet, and a pair of gloves because my hands go all To Build a Fire if it gets below 50 degrees while I’m running.

Okay, so, our crew (dad) drove us up to Philly, we found the park, jumped out and verified with another couple of GRTs that we had the right place. Chatted a bit about the course, having run it last year, mentioned the bridge to Camden and the Fort Mifflin fustercluck as notable, and got out of there to get some food.

Anyway, the event. We met up in Charlottesville at our parents’ house and our crew (AKA our dad AKA Homes) drove us up. We left around 11:30, because traffic can be really unpredictable. Ended up getting to the start point a couple minutes after 1800, so, about two hours earlier than necessary and nearly 3 before the event started, but that wasn’t a problem. Scouted out the start point, chatted very briefly with one other team that had gotten there early. It came up that we’d run it last year, but we managed to extricate ourselves from the conversation before they asked how we’d done. Went and got burgers, drove back to the start point.

Incidentally, we realized that once again we’d accidentally shown up wearing ultramarathon clothes (I had Promise Land 50k++ shorts and a Grindstone hoodie on; Steve had a Seashore 50k shirt – at least it wasn’t like last year when we both had on our Grindstone hoodies…).

After a couple of phone calls from the car (checking in with family getting ready to follow us online and a work call [which, thankfully, happened before I was literally standing at the start point wearing my ruck {*cough* last year *cough*}]), we looked up a local burger joint nearby and went for a quick take-out dinner.

We came back and finished eating in the car, then grabbed our rucks and headed up the hill to get checked in. Cadre were there with a pickup truck next to three portajohns they’d rented for the event, and said that it was still early; they were in the meet ‘n greet ‘n hang out phase still. Wouldn’t start checking people in until eight fifteen or so. All right. We were about to head back to the car to finish prepping when a couple of other teams recognized us.

Headed up to the start point with burger in hand at 7:something to check in, but the cadre said we couldn’t check in for the event until 8 or 8:15. While we were there, someone recognized us from last year’s blog post (well, probably recognized Phil and Jed). I can’t remember the exact comment, but it’s always weird getting spotted in public.

We said hey back, briefly chatted, and headed back to the car. I remarked how weird it was to be recognized from a blog post, and Steve pointed out that, well…

Point taken. Still…

Headed back down to the car, packed our gear, then back to the start point at the designated time. (The start point was at the top of a small hill in a park, with the road at the bottom.) Do the usual covertly-scope-out-the-competition. Nobody as threatening as in DC, but there was at least one team that was kitted out more like runners than ruckers, which is never a good sign. Made a mental note.

We finished gearing up (since I’d been busy at work this week, I’d basically thrown everything I might need into a pair of Civvy Kit Bags that morning) and went back up to get formally checked in. Cadres Clark and Michael went around checking off ruck weights and getting everyone signed in, they went over their background and the outline of the event, and then we had a minute before they handed out the waypoints / hit list.

Cadre also said that, in their experience, 3 AM and 11 AM were the “witching hours”, when people were most likely to drop.

Incidentally, afterwards, Cadre were discussing the Selection underway that same weekend, and musing on how when they did fo’-realz Selection, there was none of this 6-9 months of intense training, perfect nutrition, etc. It was “grab some dirt, drink some water, and get moving!” all-of-a-sudden-it’s-SELECTION-TIME. They wondered at how many people had their bodies just giving out on them, and mused on the connection between mind/motivation and physical “””failure”””.

AKA, if it’s bad enough for you to drop, it should be bad enough for you to be calling for a medevac; and you’ll pass out before you die, and other such ‘motivational’ sayings. But really, approaching an event like this, you should never think of dropping as an option. Calling for medical assistance, be it an ambulance or your crew taking you someplace for first aid, sure. That’s always an option – this isn’t fething Hell Week, where you’re trying to prove to the Cadre that you’ll literally die before you’ll quit.

But dropping? Shit, man, pass your plate to a teammate, have your crew hit up an all-night CVS, splint that ankle and hop on some crutches. The hardest finish I ever had was a few years ago at an overnight loop race – my calves locked up and felt like they’d tear at any second, I was seeing double from lack of sleep, and I walked in the last eight miles or so unable to fully straighten either leg.

Sure, if you’re on a team, it can be tempting to think to yourself that you’re holding them back, that you’ll drop so that they can do better. Fuck that noise. That’s selfish. You wouldn’t leave a teammate behind if they were hurting; you don’t get to leave yourself behind if you’re hurting.

TL;DR – Cadre said some stuff about some times of the night/morning that has absolutely no relevance to anything anyone should ever think about so <insert Peanuts adult mwa-mwa-mwa-mwah noises>.

Changes From Last Year / DC Earlier This Year

• No Instagram: Instead of having each team posting to an Instagram account and tagging GORUCK Star Course, the procedure this year was to just text Cadre a picture of your team at each waypoint. We ended up doing the hashtags anyways, after Cadre responded to our first picture with (basically) “That’s a great picture of the two of you in the middle of the night with a barely visible hunk of wood in the background, but where exactly are you, again?” More about this at the end.
• Waypoint List: Last year, the lists were handed out right at the 2100 start time. In DC this year, they were handed out starting around 2045, and as soon as you had your route approved you could go. This year, the procedure was that you could look at the lists as soon as you got them, starting about ~10 minutes before the official start, but you couldn’t start mapping them until 2100. More about this, too, at the end.

(We were allowed to take pictures, though, so after photographing the hit list, we got our first/last waypoint picture out of the way.)

Cadre gave their usual pre-race brief (text us your pictures, text us if you drop, don’t break the law, actually, scratch that, if you get caught breaking the law, you’re out of the event, that sort of thing). A bit before 9, they handed out the list of waypoints, but we weren’t allowed to start developing our route. Right at 9, route-planning began.

When Cadre handed out the waypoints, we saw that it was more or less the same as last year’s. (When I have a moment, I’ll dig them out and scan in all of the info from last year and this year to put at the end of the post.) Took photos and sent them to our crew, and at the sound of 2100, we got to mapping. Steve had last year’s waypoints saved as a course in AstroNav, since we figured from what we’d seen in DC that it would be more or less a similar course. (And it ended up being something like -6/+3 compared to last year, IIRC.) It took us a few minutes to doublecheck all of the addresses and locations – we were the fourth team out, or so – but we got our course approved and headed out.

I had prepped a route in AstroNav that was last year’s course with the start point swapped for the new one, so we copied that and updated it with the changes. Most of the waypoints were repeats (I think 12 or 13 out of the 15). The biggest difference was one that was missing: last year one of the points was the USS NJ (I think) over in Camden, but this year they were all in PA. That removed the one complicating factor in route planning, as the bridge to Camden was the only part of the course last year that was closed at certain times. Everything this year was open 24/7, so we typed them all in, made sure they were correct, and hit go.

Astronav told us the route would be 53.3 miles, but part of that was due to Google Maps routing us the long way around the Philly airport. Last year we learned that there was a shortcut along some railroad tracks, so we knew we could cut probably 10 miles off of that. As we were showing our route to the cadre, someone came up and asked us about our route, because it was coming up as only 38 or so miles; I confirmed that if their program was using last year’s location for Fort Mifflin (which is the non-Fort Mifflin end of the railroad tracks), that distance sounded in the right ballpark. Cadre said our route looked reasonable and we were free.

As we were checking our course, though, one of the other teams came over to us and asked if we’d gotten 38 miles. 38 miles!?

Here’s the AstroNav route showing the 38-mile distance. Instead of using the address for Mifflin I had to use one of the businesses in the area as Google now properly (apart from the extra 10 miles) gives directions even when handed the address from last year.

Once that all got figured out, we were off!

We decided to do the course in more or less the reverse order from last year (the fuckup with the bridge to Jersey being closed notwithstanding) and began by heading north for the long out-and-back, leaving the closest waypoints (Benjamin Franklin at College Hall and the Rocky Steps) for the end.

Had to decide which direction to go; when you’re on foot and don’t need to worry about prohibited turns, one-way streets, and the like, and the course is a loop (like this one, but not like DC), you can run it in either direction and the distance will be the same. The first non-start-point waypoint in the recommended route was the farthest one, the covered bridge, and we’ve learned at this point that long, monotonous sections like that are far, far better to tackle early on, so we headed there first. Having complex directions and a bunch of waypoints later in the event leads to a more frantic ending, but it also gives you more stuff to think about and get distracted by instead of how tired you are, how much your feet hurt, and all that.

Our first stop was the Thomas Mill Bridge / Covered Bridge. I was a bit surprised at how quickly we hit it; but then, I’d been thinking of last year when that leg of the course started farther away, at College Hall. Plus, we were going faster this time around since it was right at the start. We get to the bridge and snap our pic, then wheel around and head back.

We weren’t quite the first team to set out; we passed two or three in the first couple minutes after leaving the start, but then it got quiet (that is, we didn’t see any other GRTs for a while; I don’t know if Philly is ever quiet). Usual mix of slowly running and hill-walking through industrial and residential areas. Talked about Magic and the upcoming (21 October) banned/restricted list update, bitched about work, the usual early-race fare. Dropped from the roads down onto a trail, then two miles and change to get to the Thomas Mill Covered Bridge at 10:48. Take our picture, send it in (although it doesn’t send for a little bit due to the bridge being in the middle of nowhere in a valley and so not having cell service), and head back.

Of course, since we were down in a valley…

We passed the first group about fifteen minutes / a mile on our way coming back from the turnaround. Hail and well met!, and we forced ourselves to jog a bit more than we otherwise would’ve for morale purposes. To buoy our spirits or to be a tiny bit more competitive… ?

Look, we were pulling for everyone to have a good time and finish. We were also pushing ourselves, trying to win it.

At 11:04, we pass the first group of other ruckers coming up the trail. Exchange the usual greetings. It’s comforting to know that 2 hours into the event, we’ve got a 30-minute lead on the second-place team, but we both realize the massive caveat that a team doing the route in the other direction could be far, far ahead of us, in terms of overall distance, and that due to the midsection of the course being the part that bounces around between urban spots like Old City Hall, Rittenhouse Square, and the like, a team could easily crush us decisively, or just be a bit ahead of us, and we wouldn’t know until we get to the end.

Of course, if another team were taking the opposite route, going to the Rocky Steps first and aiming to finish at the Covered Bridge, then we’d likely pass them midway in the middle of the city, where there’d be enough waypoints close enough together with enough possible, equal-distance routes in between them that we very well might miss each other. So, like in DC after we passed the Balance Gym team – nothing left to do but finish as quickly as possible, because only then would we have a clue how we stood.

Pass a fair number of other teams while making our way back along the trail. After passing us, one guy says to another on his team, “That’s a winning pace right there.” That is sorta the goal, and it worked out for us last year, but not so sure about this time. The overall field has gotten more competitive since Philly 2018, it seems, due to better mapping tools being available, and due to more people recognizing the need to run as much of the course as possible.

After passing a whole string of teams coming down the hill to the park trail, we jumped back on the main roads and made good time going back. I was pretty sure that we were heading back along the same roads we’d taken last year, but it wasn’t until I saw a sign for “Coffee & Pizza” that I realized it was indeed the same road we’d been on last year.

Pass the last team we see for a while at the top of the trail back up to the road. Pull out a bottle of gatorade and set out back along the way we came, heading for the Eastern State Penitentiary. About half way there, the route shifts from larger commercial roads to… let’s say less-affluent neighborhoods. Not at all concerned about safety; I’ve never had issues in “bad” neighborhoods before, and running, after midnight, with a large sloth strapped to your back, really doesn’t make you an appealing target for anyone wanting to start shit. You know the old guidelines: don’t pick a fight with the smallest guy in a gang, and don’t pick a fight with the craziest. I’m short (although way heavier than the 125# someone on Reddit later guessed me at when discussing the event; I don’t think I’ve weighed that since 6th grade), and looked pretty insane, so I was doubly safe. The general Philly stench of cigarette smoke and sewage was at least replaced with the gentle aroma of weed smoke and sewage, so that was a nice change.

We get back into the center of the city and hit up Eastern State Penitentiary. They were having some sort of Halloween themed overnight event (we’d passed a cemetery advertising their “Gravediggers’ Ball” on our way to the start point Friday evening), so we weren’t completely… no, probably still pretty weird.

After a while, eventually reach the Eastern State Penitentiary sometime between midnight and 1, I think (I could be wrong). I pull out a bag of jelly beans and my other bottle of gatorade; my stomach isn’t feeling great so I just stick with the gatorade for the moment. Overall I wasn’t in quite the condition I’d have preferred for this race, health-wise; I was still fighting a bit of hundo fever* from Grindstone two weeks before.

*Note: by “hundo fever”, I don’t mean “man, I’ve gotta go sign up for a 100-miler”. After at least the last three 100-milers, my entire body has been trashed enough that my immune system just goes on strike for a couple weeks and I pick up whatever annoying bug happens to be floating around. Luckily this time it was just coughing/sneezing/mild fever (although my temperature was back down to normal by the day of the Star Course), but I was still more drained than usual heading into the event.

Um… nothing much really happened here, I guess. We passed a lot of drunk people, people smoking, drunk people smoking? One guy out for the night with his friends had fallen and was on his back clutching his ankle, but someone in his group was already on a cell phone so… Yup, just kept keepin’ on, keepin’ on.

Random bit of trivia: We’re pretty sure that the Cadre were alternating phone duties through the night. In alphabetical order, these were the responses we got to our check-ins: “checked in” (1), “checked in!” (1), “excellent” (2), “gotcha” (1), “gotcha!” (2), “heyyo” (1), “awesome sloths!!!” (1), “keep on truckin!” (1), “lookin good” (1), “nice work” (1), “solid!” (1), “way to hustle crew!” (1), “woot woot!” (1).

Breaking it down, we have: “checked in / excellent / gotcha” at 7, and “heyyo / awesome sloths / keep on truckin / lookin good / nice work / solid / way to hustle crew / woot woot” at 8. When we mentioned this theory at Endex, the Cadre did not disabuse us of our notion, nor even disagree with it, but nor did they let on who was responsible for which tranche.

Anyway, head out for the next couple waypoints. I don’t remember the exact order, or what exactly they all were. After DC I was able to remember all of them and the order off the top of my head; not this time (and in order to not corrupt my stream-of-consciousness rambling, I’m intentionally not looking them up right now). Some of them are in really quick succession (under a half-mile). Fireman’s Hall Museum, City Hall, statue in Rittenhouse Square, Old City Hall (I think it was), Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

A relatively quick succession of waypoints here, since they were all pretty close to one another in the city proper.

After he told us to clear that side of the street, and pointed us around the corner to Old City Hall, the security guard mentioned that we were, like, the third or fourth group to come by that night.

We hurried over to the park with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and checked that waypoint off. SOP of covers off for memorials.

My stomach isn’t cooperating at this point, luckily not in a vacate-contents-immediately sort of way, but it’s definitely warning me against sending anything solid down the hatch so I continue to drink Gatorade and eventually stow away my jellybeans without opening them.

From there, we headed through the Italian Market section of Philly, towards the Rizzo mural. Nothing much to say here, other than Philadelphia is a very charming city that does not, repeat not at all smell like raw sewage the 80% of the time that it doesn’t smell like cheap, stale cigarette smoke.

As we were taking this picture, a guy came around the corner shouting “What kind of fuckin’ Type 2 fun is this!?” Now, we’d had some people react to us before, like a good ole boy in a jacked-up black pickup who shouted out that we were “cute as shit, yo!” (but in a nice way) before speeding off.

Anyways, we noticed the MOLLE on this dude’s familiar-looking shoulder straps, and sure enough, he was wearing a GORUCK ruck. A fellow GRT!

Or at least, familiar enough – and wearing a ruck – that when we said it was a GORUCK Star Course his reaction was not “What’s that?”, but rather “That was tonight!?”

We tried to convince him that there was still time for him to grab some weight and get to the start point to jump into the marathon or 12-miler in the morning, but we failed to convince him that there was still time for him to grab some weight and get to the start point to jump into the marathon or 12-miler in the morning.

As we’re taking our picture in front of the Frank Rizzo Mural at the Italian Market, I hear someone say something about GORUCK and I turn to see a guy wearing a GR1, looking far, far fresher than we are despite that point being around 20 miles into the course regardless of which direction you’re going. Turns out he wasn’t doing the event, he was just out at the bars with some friends and recognized us as enjoying some good old Type 2 fun. Don tries to encourage him to head over to Fairmount and try to get in on either the 26.2 or the 12-miler, to no avail (as far as we know).

Oh, well. We headed out towards Geno’s Steaks on our way in the direction of Lincoln Financial Field. We’d do a quick semi-out-and-back to hit Tony Luke’s on the way, right after Geno’s.

(By the way, that’s Genos, from the One-Punch Man anime/manga. Saw “genos” in the unpunctuated hashtag, have joked about how the morning workouts I do are kinda-sorta basically Saitama’s routine, and, well, things clicked together.)

A random guy pulled up to the curb while we were stopped here to take our picture and check our route. I assume he was taking a picture of whomever the fuck these weirdos were, ’cause he didn’t say or do anything and was pulling away when we looked back up.

Swing by Geno’s, then on down to Tony Luke’s (as previously mentioned, it’s possible one of the aforementioned urban spots was between these two). I’m definitely starting to drag. Our initial goal after seeing the short course was to break 10 hours; at this point it’s looking less likely but not entirely impossible. Get to Tony Luke’s, take our picture (while some other guy in a car stops at the side of the road and takes a picture of the two idiots standing in front of the place wearing sloths on their backs, or at least that’s what it looked like was happening). It was most of a mile out-and-back along a main-ish road to get there; head back and wonder if we’ll see anyone catching up with us. Nope, we’re the only GRTs on that street at that point. Cut left down towards Lincoln Financial Field; as we’re approaching it, see the first other team in a few hours messing around with their gear on the sidewalk. Based on where they are, it looks like they just finished Mifflin and Lincoln Financial and are headed up into the city; based on that distance we’re ahead of them but not crushingly so.

Home of the Phillies! I mean… Eagles? The Phillies are near there, right? Or is that the… whatever the soccer team is called, was that their stadium nearby?

Around here we saw another team for the first time since the trail coming back from the Covered Bridge. They, too, were going to Mifflin, but fortunately didn’t suggest teaming up.

See, by this point we’d slowed to a brisk walk, since Steve was still fighting off a lingering case of hundo fever from Grindstone two weeks ago, and we were figuring on recouping our energy at the gas station before the bridge, using the stretch out to Mifflin cross-country to digest and –

Wait, you ran Grindstone two weeks ago? Was two weeks off enough time to recover?

– but anyways, since we were walking briskly instead of outright jogging most of the time, a team up would leave us either

1. Slowing down to match their pace, which – especially as we headed into the cold hours and the wind crossing the bridge – we didn’t want to do, or
2. Gradually pulling away from them after agreeing to team up.
3. Or, I suppose, declining a team-up and then slo-o-owly pulling away from them (AWKWARD) or having to literally run away from them to make it not awkward.

Get close enough that the massive glowing red Lincoln Financial Field sign is legible in our photograph and head back to the main road toward Mifflin. See the team we’d just passed on the other side of the road; they were also headed to Mifflin. I’m curious why they were in the spot they were as we approached, as it was in the wrong direction; maybe they got turned around.

Walk the entire way from Lincoln Financial to the gas station that we know is a mile or two away, on the route to Mifflin, passing another team headed the opposite direction on the way. I buy about a thousand calories of beverages; Don gets his usual sack of donuts. We put on all of our cold-weather gear and start the slog over the bridge. We’re walking, so we aren’t generating a massive amount of heat, the temperature is down into the low 40s or high 30s, and we’re headed up onto a bridge that has nothing to block the wind, so it gets chilly. Usual mostly-quiet shuffle as Don tries to ignore the several-hundred-foot drop visible through the steel grate walkway at the top of the arch. Good times.

And we made it to Fort Mifflin! (The bridge wasn’t as bad this time, and we’d geared up with extra thermal layers / warmer hats beforehand, so instead of damn near freaking out I was able to get over it by just muttering Kipling and Yeats and Keats and Blake and such under my breath.)

Sure, we had to cut across a couple swathes of dense underbrush to avoid a road mile or so. And yeah, I was holding a plastic bag with my donuts in it and was movin’ generally kinda hobo-y, and I forgot to turn my lights off until we were halfway through and Steve reminded me, and there was a loudspeaker on the fence that said… something as we came out onto the road and started moving towards the back way to Mifflin, but… hey, we were moving from a public road to another public road and we never saw any “No Trespassing” signs or closed gates or anything.

On the way back we passed a bunch more teams, which made us kinda curious just what kinds of routes other people had worked up. All of the routes that we had seen as everyone was milling around the Cadre before stepping off looked generally the same, but maybe people were seriously mixing up the in-city waypoints?

After we come down the far side of the bridge, cut left through some woods and grass to get to the road we plan on taking towards Mifflin. (It’s possible to get there without cutting through, but it saves a couple minutes.) There’s some weird speaker sound as we set out along the road that sounds like a security system saying something about having taken a picture, but as we’re bundled up and not technically trespassing I ignore it (and no, that isn’t some Chekov’s gun that’ll come back later). Follow the road to where it ends at the railroad tracks, which are thankfully less flooded than last year. Trudge along those, pop out onto the road at the other end, and hustle to Mifflin. We expected the Cadre might be waiting there, as it was the furthest-out point to which you could drive, but it was deserted. Take our picture, adjust our packs. While looking at the map to get there, I noticed that there was a route back along the road that wasn’t crazy-long; I think due to a tunnel section Google doesn’t have it listed as walkable, but it definitely is. It isn’t clear if it’s shorter than the offroad route, but at least it’ll be easier, so that’s what we decide on. As we’re heading back (before we even get to the fork where the route split), we pass a number of other teams. Given that by this point we were solidly out of the running for a 10-hour finish, if it were just one team, I’d be worried that they were catching up to us; given that there were at least 3 or 4, it seemed more likely they were just people who were doing the loop in the opposite direction.

Ooh, we also realized that the road going back by the airport was indeed walkable (both from inspection of Google Maps / Satellite and, well… seeing other teams walking towards us on it) and so we were able to take that back. A tiny bit quicker, and we didn’t have to walk back through the stagnant swamp between the Water Treatment Plant fence and the tire/toilet/car-parts dumping grounds!

Road route back from Fort Mifflin works just fine, and probably a bit faster than our initial route. Based on measuring it after the event on Google Maps, it’s almost exactly the same distance as our offroad route, but the terrain is a lot easier.

But hey, at least I wasn’t missing half the skin off of my ankles from whatever phytophototoxins I picked up at Grindstone last year!

Blah blah blah blah, taking the road by the airport, long road coming back, figuring out that yup, there was a sidewalk on a bridge/overpass, it was just really overgrown and hard to see, heading back and discussing more about the upcoming Field of the Dead ban (shocked, shocked to see it was indeed banned Monday – kinda surprised that they didn’t hit Oko, too) and my theory that WotC’s dislike of the “unfunness” of combos and hard-counter based control (and, to a lesser and more FotD-specific extent, land destruction) removed those “natural predators” from the metagame, leaving it with Aggro vs. Over-the-Top Big-Stuff… and Oko is a pretty hard counter to Standard Aggro.

Long stretch along Island Avenue (or something like that). We pass another team headed to Fort Mifflin. Have to hop around a little bit to find safe places to walk, as sidewalks and crosswalks were rare commodities, but we manage without dying and cut up onto slightly smaller roads towards the college. The sky is just starting to lighten at this point. We were hoping to beat the sunrise (which would’ve been a bit over 10 hours), but that’s not going to happen. Even 11 hours is out. I’m dragging, although feeling a bit better after Mifflin than before. I definitely need to get in better shape and train more before our next Star Course.

Recognize some waypoints from last year (which we’d been doing the entire way, but now that it was lighter they were easier to see). There’s the warehouse where there was a rave going on, there’s the construction site that had frustratingly locked portajohns, there’s the first signs of the college. We cut up off the road and onto campus paths, still most of a mile from the Ben Franklin statue. I notice at this point that 11 hours is theoretically doable, although it’ll require more running than I really feel like. Balls.

As we rolled down the hill to the little quad in front of the Ben Franklin statue, we saw a team of four GRTs there, stretching out and adjusting their packs for the final push. We snapped our pic and paused for a moment to adjust our gear for the final push. Idle conversation ensued, and they mentioned that, yeah, they only had one waypoint left.

Fortunately – just as Steve and I are mentally gearing up to bust out of there like –

– it came out that their remaining waypoint was in fact the Covered Bridge, so they had another 14+ miles to go.

Pick up the pace, get extra-annoyed at traffic lights, eventually get to the statue. Take our picture, start stripping off our cold-weather gear for the final two-and-change-mile push. Only one picture left, at the Rocky Steps, and then it was back to Fairmount for the Endex.

There’s another team stretching at the statue, so I ask how many points they’ve got left.

“Just one.”

Oh shit. I really didn’t want to have an all-out sprint to the finish. I can do back-to-back sub-5 marathons, but sprinting, especially with a ruck, is not something I’m good at.

Which one?

“Covered bridge.”

Ah. Okay, cool.

Of course…

As soon as I find the right direction to go, we take off. I have to make Don slow down a few times, as he’s moving faster than I am, but we’re still in the running for 11 hours. As we leave the statue, Google is saying that we’ll get to the Rocky Steps right at 8, but that creeps downward as we approach. Run up to the top of the steps, ask some random guy to take a picture of us with our arms raised. Rocky-style (or so Don says; I’ve never seen any of the Rocky movies). The guy tries to be goddamn Annie Leibovitz or something and make sure the picture was perfect (or at least that’s what it felt like as I could feel the seconds ticking down), but he gets the picture, we send it in while heading down the steps, and we run for the park.

We hustled over, ran up the steps, and assumed the traditional position at the top

We hustle along, not actually sprinting but movin’ fast. We’d sent a text to our crew as we left Ben Franklin telling them we were D-2 miles from Endex, so everyone was up at the pavilion… pagoda… shelter-thingy waiting for us. (Of course, there was another team that had actually hit all of their waypoints ahead of us, but more on that later…)

Kelly Avenue for most of the way, then cut a corner across a field. Frost on the grass, so it got a bit colder than I expected. There was a guy playing fetch with his dog, but as there were two coked-out orangutan-sloths sprinting (for very loose definitions of “sprinting”) by, the pup’s attention was a bit elsewhere.

Cross the road, start the final hill up to the start point. As soon as we crest the hill, able to relax a tiny bit. Nobody in sight other than the Cadre and Homes, and it was still two or three minutes to 8, so no chance of getting beaten in a final sprint and no chance of missing 11 hours.

Into the shelter and, being pedantic, we half-hurdle our way to the table where the Cadres have set up to slap our hands on their clipboard. (See, at the beginning, they said that the time would be measured from when each team came to the red stopwatch and/or clipboard, so… the enemy’s gate was down.)

Get to the gazebo shelter thing, tag the red clipboard, done. 10:57:22.

Similarly to last year, as they’re recording the time, we see them break open a shrink-wrapped stack of patches. We also see no-one other than our crew and GORUCK Cadre & co, and there’s a stack of certificates with the $300 first place on top…

Yup, Team Sloth with the repeat!

Given the complete lack of other people, I assumed we had won again, but it wasn’t until I saw the gift certificate sitting on the picnic table that I knew for sure.

Get congratulations, get patches, get photos. Apparently the Cadre weren’t sure who was going to finish first; another team sent in their last waypoint photo before we did, but hadn’t made it back yet. They didn’t know which waypoint that was, but it soon became clear that it was probably the covered bridge, because they were nowhere in sight.

Phew! Neither of us had anywhere to go (unlike last year where Steve was getting on a transatlantic flight the next morning), so we hung around for a bit. Our crew left to hit up one of the nearby Dunkin’ Donuts locations for post-race donuts and coffees, but, alas, there was a cancer awareness march nearby that was blocking roads and, after much travail, he was forced to return empty-handed.

Homes went off in search of coffee, donuts, and other breakfast foods, while we hung out with the cadre and a goldendoodle that came by. Had some oranges and pop-tarts, drank some water and gatorade and beer. After quite a while, Homes returned empty-handed; apparently there was some march going on that made it impossible to get to any of the Dunkin Donuts his GPS had listed. Oh well.

This year I didn’t have to fly to London less than 24 hours after the event, so we hung around at the endex waiting for other people to finish. The second-place team came in around an hour and a half after we did. They were a larger team than expected, 4 people (I think), and had done the course in the opposite direction than we did. Sounds like they were mostly runners, not ruckers, which is in keeping with the pattern we’ve seen. They got slowed down by one guy tweaking something, so the others had to pass around his weight. (If you’re trying to win, you really should run it with a two-person team, but it seems like they were more doing it for fun, so it’s reasonable to have a larger group.)

Sitting around – Steve having my beer to go with his, me finishing my pre-bridge bag of donuts from 7/11 (yes, I was still looking forward to real, Dunkin’ Donuts donuts) – Cadre asked us what our mileage was. Steve had about 42 and change from his phone, I had 43.46, so we figured about 43 total. Steve checked and, if you used the wrong address for Fort Mifflin from last year, you would indeed get about 38 miles for the optimized, albeit incorrect, route.

Steve had a slightly shorter distance on his watch, since he didn’t start it until the north end of the park. His activity’s here.

Cadre Clark apologized for not getting us the full 50, but said that orders were orders – the route came down from HQ and they couldn’t change it.

We hung around, I wrapped myself up in a blanket and used Jed as a pillow to nap in the sun a bit. A local lady with a goldendoodle puppy walked by and spent some time asking about what we were doing, what GORUCK was –

– stuff like that. The goldendoodle kept eating the mulch under the gazebo, and there were a few false-positives for additional finishers from people showing up early-early for the 12-miler start. Team Pro Image Ruckers rolled in, a bunch more of the 12-miler teams, and then Team Pour Decisions rounded out the top three. We all took a group picture, then Team Sloth gathered up our stuff and headed out.

Keep hanging around, as it’d be nice to get a picture of the top 3 teams all together. Not long after #2, we spot a couple ruckers heading for the shelter. We start cheering, but it quickly becomes apparent that they’re early for the noon 12-mile Star Course, not finishers of the 50. Same thing happens quite a few more times. In the meantime, hang out chatting, mostly with the #2 team from the 50 but a bit with the 12-milers. Talk about training, upcoming events, gear selection, etc. Shotgun a beer with one of the guys from #2. Eventually, team #3 finishes, sometime around 11AM (so, 14 hours into the event). Sounds like they had navigational difficulties that added 5 miles or so, which is a bummer but likely didn’t change their podium(/2×12 park bench) spot. One of them ended up hopping on a team for the 12-miler. Hardcore.

Get a picture of all three teams together. Congratulate the other finishers, thank the cadre, gather up our gear, head out.

… and I guess that was Philly! Slept most of the way back to Virginia, waking up to eat some Burger King and then again to grab a milkshake and some coffee. Walked the dog and, yup, slept a bit more.

Now, parting thoughts…

Patches

I noticed after the DC Star Course that they had city-specific patches. Comparing this year’s patch to last year’s for Philly, though – as I just realized I already put in the caption – they’re different enough that I’m curious if there might have been a mix-up with the cities, although I’m nowhere near familiar enough with the Philly skyline to have any idea if the bottom is still Philly, just a different view.

UPDATE (2019/10/24 AKA “After we finished writing this but before it went live”): GORUCK HQ just sent out an email confirming that, yup, they had the wrong pack of patches at Philly, so they’ll be mailing out replacements.

Prizes

Important note: the following isn’t meant to sound like complaining, as the current prize structure is good. It’s just a suggestion on how to make it (at least in my opinion) a bit better.

For finishing, you get a patch, and for win/place/show, you also get a GORUCK gift certificate ($300/$200/$100 for 1st/2nd/3rd). That’s certainly nice, but the event costs $105 per person if you sign up 2+ months in advance, so it barely covers the entry fee even if you win as a 2-person team (that isn’t a problem, just pointing it out to establish that nobody is doing a Star Course in order to be able to afford more GORUCK gear).

Personally, I’d prefer something more unique, perhaps differently-colored patches designating 1st/2nd/3rd like I think they use(d?) for Scavenger combined with less credit (as I know small-run event-specific patches would add costs), or some sort of event-specific gear (e.g., bullet rucks or whatever the cheapest current bag is for everyone in 1st place, rucking tees for 2nd, regular t-shirts for 3rd). The overall cost should be comparable and it’ll be a specific reminder of the event, instead of just another piece of gear in my growing pile of GORUCK stuff.

Or just stick with the gift certificate and if Team Sloth keeps managing to win, by combining that with sales we should be able to register for 2 more events for each one we do, until every weekend is taken up with rucking. Like I said, not complaining about the current structure, just proposing another option.

Tracking

We chatted with Cadre Clark a bit about the waypoint check-in procedures. He was musing about a Tile-like dongle that could be given to ruckers / teams that would automatically track and update their positions. Maybe an app that teams could download, so that there’d be real-time tracking of Star Course participants. Of course, good app developers aren’t cheap, and cheap app developers aren’t good, so you’d need a software developer who’s big into GORUCK and Star Course specific applications, who may be willing to put in some time just to make something useful for the community…

***cough*** STEVE? ***cough-cough***

Still, even though it made it a teensy bit harder for people back home to follow us, the texted check-in photos were way better for keeping track of teams, as well as way easier to click-n-send while we were on the course. I remember in DC and last year’s Philly, we wanted to stick around to cheer on at least some of the other teams, but even after ten, fifteen minutes of going back and forth with HQ and scrolling through Instagram, Cadre & co. couldn’t figure out which waypoint(s) the second (Philly) or third (DC) place teams had left, let alone where they were or how long it might take them to get to Endex.

(Incidentally, that other team that had hit all of their waypoints before us? Their last waypoint was the Covered Bridge. So whereas we had ~0.6, 0.7 miles from Rocky back to Endex, they had about 8.2. IIRC, their total mileage was broadly similar to ours, so – I think – they likely did the same route but in reverse, and we just missed each other as we crossed the city center.)

Waypoints

I get that – especially in a city like… well, anything other than NY or DC – it can be hard to have a completely new set of waypoints each time. Still, the degree of overlap here felt a little bit high – we almost literally re-ran the course from last year, only we didn’t go over to Camden. At the least, switching around the far-out points (Mifflin and the Covered Bridge here) would substantially change the optimal routing without having to redo all of the in-city sites. Plus, since the bulk of the mileage is spent to and from the “outer” points, just changing those waypoints would mean you’re covering a lot more “new” miles compared to other years.

I liked the approach to the waypoint handouts this year better than either last year or DC – waiting in line to get them doesn’t really have that much of an effect on your finishing time (although, IIRC in Philly last year there were two teams that finished ~2 minutes apart, so…), but it’s still a bit aggravating, especially when there are a hundred teams like in DC.

Downside, though, as soon as we saw the list – even though we couldn’t start mapping online – we knew that it would be pretty much the same as last year, and we could start planning the deltas. Maybe a better compromise would be handing out the waypoints in envelopes – everyone rips ’em open at the start time and goes from there.

Key Takeaways

Overall, the race was kinda tame compared with the previous two. It was still difficult, don’t get me wrong, but it was much more straightforward, due to the course being simpler and us being more prepared. This was the first time that we just plugged in all the points, had AstroNav generate a course, and then followed it the entire way; both Philly 2018 and DC required on-the-fly adjustments due to places being closed at night and that sort of thing. Due to being more vigilant about my phone’s battery, there weren’t any points near the end where I needed to worry about whether it’d survive long enough to get to the end, or if I’d have to waste time grabbing my extra battery. Because the course was similar to last year, we knew a couple places along the way where we could stop to refuel, so when we needed to, we didn’t need to go in search of one.

Distances

I get that, depending on the course, you may be able to cut substantial mileage off through… judicious use of shortcuts. And that it’s a fine line in terms of routing – make the course long enough that you’re guaranteed fifty miles, and suboptimal routing decisions or simple fuck-ups (like the bridge over to Camden last year) can leave a team in an impossible position relatively early on w.r.t. the time limit. But 43 miles – 14% under – seems a bit on the low side, still, and the only “shortcut” we took was a quick cut through some undergrowth to avoid a small loop of road. Everything else was footpath or road, so it’s not like we found some deep-magic hack to cut the mileage down.

We were joking that the first three / five / whatever teams, or anyone who texted in their last waypoint before X o’clock would get a text back from Cadre with a “bonus” waypoint – like, “Great job! Now get over to Camden and photograph yourself in front of the USS New Jersey!” Maybe?

Distance-wise, the short course was unexpected, but I can see how it happened. If you just use Google Maps or some other tool built on top of it (e.g., AstroNav), the optimal route it gives is right around what the event is supposed to be. However, Google is a liar.
On a related note, I’ll probably be updating AstroNav as a result of the Mifflin detour issue. It looks like the biking directions Google generates show the optimal route (the one that doesn’t take you entirely around the airport and also doesn’t take you through a swamp), so I should have AstroNav pull both the biking and walking directions and merge them to figure out the optimal path. As Don noted, I may also play around with making a tool for tracking teams throughout the event. Probably not a smartphone app, as that’d be way too much work, but an AstroNav-like page where you can enter a list of waypoints, a list of teams, and then record the times that each team hits each waypoint, and at any point in time see how much distance each team has covered, how much they have left, and how quickly they’ve been moving. (Entertainingly, building that entire site will likely take less time than incorporating bike directions into AstroNav, because graph theory is complicated even before you have to start working with messy data.)

Training / Advice

So, Pro Image Ruckers said that they based a lot of their training for Philly on Team Sloth’s AAR from last year. Cool! That’s a good idea (not, you know, our AARs specifically, but prior year’s courses in general) because it’s looking like (small sample size, format still in flux, etc. etc.) the various cities’ Star Course waypoints are generally the same year-to-year. So if you git gud at last year’s course, then this year’s course probably 1) won’t be too surprising, and 2) will be something you’ve done in training already – you’ll likely have most if not all of it already route-planned.

Beyond that, um… I think we covered most of the advice we might have in the previous Star Course AARs. Route-planning apps have continued to improve and that, combined with the observed similarity year-to-year, means that it’s more and more coming down to a footrace. Literally, the strongest advice (in terms of explanatory power / expected utility per required assumption / difficulty of implementation AKA “bang for your buck”) is still: It’s a run with a ruck, not rucking.

Training

Don’s notes on training are pretty spot on. Treat it as running instead of rucking, try to practice sections of the specific course you’ll be competing on, and get comfortable with your route-planning tool.

If you want more specific ideas, my plan for next year is to find a legitimate running training plan (possibly one of Hal Higdon’s marathon ones) and follow it from near the beginning, with a ruck. When I say treat it as running instead of rucking, I really mean it. When I first started training for marathon+ distance running years ago, I weighed 20-25# more than I currently do, so adding a Star Course ruck just takes me back up to that neighborhood.

Incredibly important disclaimer: If you’re training with a bunch more weight, for something like Selection, 1) absolutely do not run long distances with it as it’ll destroy your joints, and, 2) absolutely don’t take any of my advice at all, as if you’re even considering Selection, you’re either insane enough that I don’t want to be responsible for the consequences, or in far, far, FAR better shape than I am.

PS: To the guy on Reddit who mentioned “2 dudes that weighed maybe 125# each”…

Until the next time I end up writing a… 5.5K+ word, 70+ picture AAR, an AAR that has almost taken longer to write up than the event itself took to run… I had something for this, but fuck it – RANDOM SLOTH MEME!