- Post 1: RWC 001 (2021), 4th Place (Team): 11h55m14s, Title Cleverness Status: Fading
- Post 2: Ounces Make Pounds, Pounds Make Pain, But You’re Paying for Pain, So…
- Post 3 (⇠You Are Here): Rucking Events, How Do They Work?
- Post 4: BUT NOT NEARLY AS COMPLICATED AS LITERALLY ADDING ONE PICTURE TO AN EMAIL OR POSTING A SINGLE SENTENCE ON FACEBOOK FFS!!!
Wherein I go on and on about the formats of the Star Courses and Rucking World Championships, talk about how they’re the same, how they’re different, what I like or don’t like or simply prefer about each compared to the other, and – unless you’re super into that sort of thing – come off as a cross between Abe Simpson
and Jeff Albertson.
Individual Division
Really like this difference from the Star Course. First, obviously, it lets you run it solo if you please, which is always a nice option to have, especially if something happens to your teammate. (It’s rare, but there’s been one race we’ve run where someone came down with a bad cold/flu [in the before time, so it really was just a bad cold/flu], right before, and so could pace for part of it but not run the whole thing.)
Second, it gives you more flexibility. We saw a fair number of people forming makeshift team-ups –
– as either running buddies, groups of three with a shared crew, or larger ad-hoc Challenge-stacks. (As in, we passed a group of maybe a dozen? people in formation, complete with a back-to-front sprints and a call of “Reach!”) Plus, anyone who’s ever had to work hard to try to convince someone to try out this weird “backpack thing” knows, sometimes you just can’t grab another body.
That said, the one potentially awkward thing about it that I really can’t speak to directly is the Individual Women’s division.
I’ve read about previous Star Courses having periodic check-ins when people end up doing them solo because of teammate drops, and moving along a fairly narrow & well-defined course point-to-point is a bit different than the “you went where!?” failure modes of Star Course navigation, but still… Look, as guys we don’t really have a sense of any of this, but just from general/first principles I’d imagine that the whole “running along an unknown point-to-point route through DC overnight with a heavy backpack” thing may bring different considerations to a woman than a man, let alone a pair of dudes with at least a few decades of martial arts between them.
(To be clear, we’d still be running away if shit went down. That is what we TRAIN for. But, like, maybe we [hopefully] have a better-developed sense of when, why, and how to GTFO of there, yanno?)
Now, Cadre Mocha and Igor had a very solid & safe route laid out (i.e., no detours through Anacostia, and the “sketchiest” part of the course was an unlit but well-maintained and right-next-to-a-main-road park trail), but I cannae help wondering if this might have had something to do with the low turnout for the Women’s field. After first and second finished individually, there was a group of five who stuck together as far as we could tell (they finished together, at least), and… that was it. (There may have been an eighth who started, but I can’t recall for sure; I think all of the teams were male.)
So, a field of eight for a $5,000 prize pool? I know that there are plenty enough women who do GORUCK, and I’m reasonably confident that women, too, like winning money, so I’m at a bit of a loss otherwise why the turnout was that low.
Prizes
RWC had custom 1-2-3 patches for each of the divisions, which was a very nice touch. I mean, we didn’t get any of them, but we saw some of them, and they were nice, and it’s an excellent idea. We’ve been thinking for a while that, honestly, custom patches would be a much better prize for the Star Courses than the store credit. It’s certainly fine to give out store credit, and we’ve happily used the credit we won in Philly and DC, but it’s kinda… When you figure the entry fee, the most you can “get” out of the prize pool at a Star Course (for a first-place finish with a minimum-sized team of two) is to recoup the entry fee and get, like, a hat or a shirt or something. Basically, free-roll your event.
Which again is absolutely not nothing, and like I said we didn’t exactly give it back after those Star Courses, but if it’s intended to be a competitive goad, then it’s not really that enticing (compared to the cold, hard, cash of RWC) for non-GRTs, and for GRTs… well, we’ll do some really stupid shit for a patch.
However… the patches we got for finishing, as well as the winners’ patches, had “2021” on them. So either GORUCK has a patch supplier that operates on a lead time of less than a month in the middle of last year’s pandemic / supply chain hellstorm, or…
Game Theory!
Incidentally, there was an interesting bit of game-theoretical gamesmanship possible heading into the event. (Steve, having actually taken and taught courses on game theory, can probably speak to this better than my “A Beautiful Mind”-watching ass.) Basically, the top finishers got $3,500 / $1,000 / $500, regardless of Team or Individual division. So, the two fastest people there – regardless of gender – would be best served by signing up as individuals, since it would mean an expected payout of either $4,500 (same division) or $7,000 (mixed gender). The only practical effect of running alone, together would be you couldn’t cross-load if it came to that, but let’s be clear – if you’re in a position for this to be in any way close to relevant, you weren’t gonna be cross-loading anyways unless you literally – not figuratively, but literally – lost the use of one or more limbs.
Of course, if too many people have the same thought, then the individual fields become more crowded, and the not-the-literal-fastest-but-still-plenty-fast people have an incentive to shift back to the “easier” team field. And back and forth it goes, based on incomplete information. How to address this?
- Throw up your hands and YOLO – if people want to… play around like that, let ’em find out. Who cares – just ruck.
- Make it ++clear that one division (Team?) is the “premier” one, the “actual” World Champs, and the others are, like, if you couldn’t find anyone willing to run with you…
- Some sort of per-person / hybrid payout structure that would remove the incentive to game divisions; this, however, would lead to the problem of the payouts for one division being affected by performances in other divisions, which… kinda defeats the idea of separate divisions?
Have separate events so that people can run as both individuals and teams?Nevermind, this is silly, disregard.
Interesting thing to think about, in any case.
The Course
Coordinates
I get the land-nav flava of providing GPS coordinates, as well as the “here’s an actual landmark instead of a string of numbers” at Star Courses, but since everyone, so far as I know, plugs them into a mapping app regardless, it’s kinda lost. It might actually be interesting to give the precise coordinates for the Star Course, where (see next) it’s a bit of an issue precisely where the location verification takes place, and the landmark names for RWC, where there’s a big tent or GORUCK flag set up to mark the point.
Waypoints
Team Sloth actually talked about this a little bit with Cadre Mocha Mike after the event – it was super-nice to have waypoint tents set up here with volunteers or Cadre to be sure that you’d hit the actual mark. With Star Courses, there was a lot of uncertainty over just where you needed to be, how close was “honorable” to take the picture, etc. For example, in Philly, depending on where you decided to snap your picture of the USS New Jersey (BB-62), you could add maybe half a mile to your route for that point alone.
That said, it really isn’t practical to have a setup like that at every point at a Star Course. So, how do you tell when a team has hit a waypoint? Pictures, like is being done now, with, effectively, the honor system? Works great for Star Courses, less great with thousands of dollars on the line. More specific photo locations could help, but then finding them becomes an issue.
Maybe an orienteering punch or some special item – like the books at the Barkleys? – that you need to use or include as a proof of visit? A Cadre or volunteer there, even if it’s not a full tent/flag station? Dunno, but it’s an unsettled / open question slash possible area for improvement / refinement. (Things aren’t not working, it’s just not clear that they couldn’t be improved here.)
Competition
Having a much more linear, point-to-point course is definitely a plus for any formally-competitive event. After all, it’s a rucking competition, not land nav per se, so you want to find the best ruckers, not the people best at shaving off a few miles here and there. For example, at Star Courses, Team Sloth has been consistently under-miled because of route optimization. (I think our low was 42 miles in Philly 2019.) In DC 2019, we actually went a shorter distance than Balance Gym – they were just that much faster than us.
The linear course makes sure that everyone will be doing the same minimum mileage (I mean, if you go off course [like we did, albeit only by a block or two here and there], you’ll do more, but that’s common for ultras) unless they screw something up, so you can avoid the issue of one team winning despite being objectively worse ruckers because they managed to find a shortcut, some way to cut out distance for a series of waypoints, etc.
Aid Stations
Having actual aid stations rather than randomly running into Cadre with a car trunk of stuff was nice, and would definitely help people who might otherwise be worried about, say, running out of food or water at 3AM, six-plus miles outside of town. Of course, that’s a lot easier to set up when you have four, five points in public areas like parking lots and parks than when you have twelve to twenty right near prominent landmarks.
Landmarks
At first – during the race – I was grousing & bitching a bit about the lack of landmarks. Like, oh, instead of the Washington Monument we’re headed to… a parking lot! Shit like that. Midway through, though, I came around a fair bit – first, we went past the Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Capitol / Library of Congress / Supreme Court (several times), the Treasury building, through Georgetown, past the National Zoo; we actually hit a good deal of the traditional spots.
Second, especially for a competitive event, how long do you really spend looking at the landmarks? Sure, you can stop for a cheesesteak in Philly, spend time looking at the buildings in DC, stuff like that, but if you’re pushing hard, you’ll just stop long enough to hit your mark and then move on. Any partaking of the view, you’ll be doing on the move anyways, so why not have the points be in optimal spots logistically, set up so that your movements take you past the interesting bits?
Yeah, I really like how RWC did this.
(Plus, potential for unrest / demonstrations aside, it was nice not to have to stop in front of the White House, Capitol, etc. wearing heavy black rucksacks and waist belts with cylindrical holsters/carriers strapped to them; holding phones connected to blank bricks; choosing our words carefully to avoid stuff like “target”, “hit list”, “aiming for”, etc.; and cursing and fumbling with said phones. While wearing sloth skins as well.)
Out-and-Backs
Actually very nice. DC 2019, we went hours, as in, most of the event, without seeing another group. Apart from Balance Gym along the C&O canal path, and a number of teams coming back along the River Road (?) (both of which were, effectively, out-and-back legs), we only saw one other team I can recall, by SCOTUS. With the numerous out-and-back legs here, we saw a ton of other people, which was kinda nice to make it more of a GORUCK event throughout, rather than just at the start and finish. (Plus, by doubling up on waypoints, it makes the logistics that much easier for Cadre/volunteer and crew alike.)
Surprise!
We (at least, I) were a little bit disappointed that there wasn’t the promised surprise! at the end, even if I recognize that it can be a bit… something to have such a surprise with a five-figure prize pool. Adding a new waypoint partway through a movement would be a logistical nightmare, and having some sort of extra movement at the end would be… not really a surprise, unless it was a super short out-and-back. (Sure, we went back through Folger Park partway through, but as you’re approaching ENDEX, it’s kinda obvious when a point marks the finish line, unless you have, like, a generic waypoint in the park and then the “real” finish-line and associated chillers, already-finishers, and post-race partiers in the gym across the road.)
Still, we could have at least been given a new point of interest, made to plug it in, show the Cadre our route, be ready to get going and then called back and told we were done. (Although, again, since it’s competitive, you could end up with a situation where two teams are neck and neck getting out of the last station, and $2,500 ends up riding on which team the Cadre checks out first, which… feelsbadman.)
Bottom line… at the bottom, it woulda been kinda nice to have a surprise, especially since it was hinted at so heavily – okay, outright stated, almost – in the description & packet.
End of burblings.
Don Norum 