Conrad Janzen
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San Francisco GoRuck Star Course 50 Miler

Last week I completed my first GoRuck event, a 50 Mile Star Course. I was only recently introduced to GORUCK this year. It’s based on Special Forces training and rucking is the concept of training with a weighted pack through exercise or long distances.

The event has the following requirements:

Wear List

Pack List

Tips and Recommendations

Ultralight

Take out the stuff you didn’t need. While I don’t regret my extras like the camera which was an extra pound, I think I was able to afford it because we decided to go with ultralight packs opposed to the standard GORUCK packs. GORUCK makes amazing packs and I have fallen in love with my 15L Bullet but their weight really add up quickly. When you’re hitting the 30-40 mile mark all that extra weight really adds up.

Equipment is Key

Sternum straps and hip belts are highly recommendeded. Having the weight distributed really helped us in terms of comfort. Our packs came with them but if you’re using a GORUCK pack, I would highly recommend the attachments.

Eat Eat Eat

Both of us carb loaded before the event and throughout we ate a ton but still needed to keep our energy up. Pizza, McDonald’s, 7-Eleven and Greenbelly really kept us going throughout this event.

Multiple Maps

We used RoadWarrior to track our primary route, then used Google Maps between each two points. This allowed us to optimize and look for trails using the sattelite view.

Take Your Time

Spend extra time at the beginning to route your course. We almost had a huge miss because there was similarly named things. We spent 15 minutes routing and the top team spent almost 20-30 minutes.

Role Call

Organize your team into roles. Jonas was the captain, navigator, and check in. My focus was morale, nutrition, and body maintenance. By having defined roles it kept us both in check and we were able to support each other when unexpected

Maintain Speed

Before the event, we decided on a minimum pace of 4.5km/h with a maximum of 5.0km/h. By keeping within these limits, our pace gave us time to spare, which was needed because of the elevation of the course.

Good Mentality

Weeks before the event Jonas and I texted back and forth this is going to suck. We had trained and I am probably in the best shape of my life, but I needed to stay humble because I knew this event was not going to be easy. We’re both people that need a little suffering to really push us to our limits and this event did a great job of that.

Good Teammates

The only reason I decided to do this event is because of Jonas. He’s been a big part of my focus on health, both physical and mental, this past year.

Good Sleep

A good sleep will make or break your event. The event starts at 2100 and I work a “normal schedule” so I wake up around 0730 to 0800. I asked for a day off two days before to switch my sleep schedule as soon as I could, but I still woke up around 2pm on event day. Do your best to be close to the event start time, I cannot stress this enough.

Our experience

Event asked us to arrive at 7:30pm at Fort Mason park in the north part of San Francisco. We show up and there’s maybe 6-8 people there. I was initially a little disappointed but, this is probably to make sure that folks who arrived “late” wouldn’t miss the start of the race.

Leading the event was Cadre Shredder and along him was Cadre Brad and Cadre Heath. All three of these men were former military. They begin walking around confirming the teams and that their weights met the conditions.

Around 8:30pm the Cadres call all the groups together. Cadre Heath gave a very inspirational speech as all the teams got together. I’m always wary about more military focused events but he did a great job about how GORUCK is about diversity and bringing everyone together for a singular cause. He asks everyone to sing the national anthem and everyone is belting it out loud and proud except for Jonas, my teammate, who is not from America. (I learned it in choir)

Afterwards the team leaders get together and they are issued a “hit list” This is the master sheet of all the points we need to hit before completing the event.

Jonas and I spend about 15 minutes working on it and plugging it into Road Warrior, a routing optimization tool.

We go over it twice and we’re on our way. We decide the clockwise route which starts in the city and then heads to the far point. The following sections are in the order of the points we hit on our route.

And here we go.

SS Jeremiah

We get to where the SS Jeremiah was but it was unfortunately closed. We got as close as possible for a photo and send a DM to the goruckstarcourse account. They confirmed it was sufficient so we headed to our next point at a good pace.

Dragon Gate

Next stop was Dragon Gate on the edge of the Financial District and Chinatown. This was super close as we both work in this area but we took an alternative path that was slightly longer but avoided some elevation.

Willie Mays Statue

Walking through SF night is a relative breeze. This neighborhood was pretty quiet and we kept a good pace all the way to the baseball stadium. Jonas began some initial complaints about his feet but we were still going strong and in the lead of any teams headed clockwise.

San Francisco Mint

We back track a bit to hit the SF Mint and we were still going strong. We suspected we were still ahead at this time so I stopped to let Jonas adjust his shoes a bit and take a quick snack.

Golden Fire Hydrant

We think something happened as a bunch of teams were ahead of us by the time we get there. We suspect we took a route that was an extra kilometer but avoided elevation. When we get to the top of Delores Park to the hydrant and ask some folks where they have been. A team, not sure who, mentioned they hit painted ladies and so we suspect but during our check we realize we had incorrectly put in the “new” painted ladies, which was not the correct point. We make the adjustment and go on our way.

The Painted Ladies

On the way to the painted ladies we see a pizza spot and stop for a quick slice, one of the best decisions we made during the race. Jonas makes an adjustment to his shoes on the way here and suddenly all his foot troubles are gone. We suspect this is because he had them tied for running but the hiking was making the seats expand a significant amount. At the Painted Ladies we meet up with a large group traveling together which we discover discover to be 3 teams of SPD officers. A couple of them already were checking their feet and they took a long rest even though they were before us. We take a quick rest and move with the pack.

Oddfellows Cemetary

On the way we’re pretty much trailing the officers all the way there. We comment on how if anything during the night we’re to happen we’d at least have support. We get to oddfellow and take our photos quick. It looked like they were to like they were planning to spend time there but we felt it would be best to separate from a larger pack.

Star Spangled Banner

Moving from the pack helped us up our pace pretty quickly and suddenly we are moving pretty quick. There are about two teams we could see in front of us at this point. We were making good pace and caught up with one of the teams just before the stairs.

Moraga Stairs

This was an area Jonas knew pretty well so we were able to optimize for elevation here. They were much more engrained in the GORUCK culture and it was really nice to hear why others decided to something like this. We ended up parting ways at the top of the stairs and we all headed towards one of the toughest part of the course.

Mt Davidson Cross

Did you know there is a giant 200 foot cross on top of a mountain here in San Francisco. This fog ends up brought a level of wet that neither of us were really ready for. Jonas had a nice running jacket but I only brought a hoodie and I was already getting pretty wet. This is where the merino wool pays off as it naturally dried relatively well…that was until we hit the top of the mountain. The cross is in the middle of a park and the entire area is soaked from the fog and suddenly I find myself soaked while under these trees which are practically raining at this point.

CCSF Oceanside

We head down from the cross down a very sketchy trail leading into a neighborhood and take some back trails to get back to the city streets. We knew this point would be our last one for a while so we get there, prep a bit, and begin our long trek to Pacifica.

Battery 244

Apparently every event has “one long stretch” and this was it. It took about 3 to 4 hours to hike from CCSF Oceanside to Battery 244, which is in another country btw. Our goal was to hit the point around 6:30-7 so we would be able to meet up with my partner who had a small care package for us. The hike was a bit boring here, as it was mostly industrial and closed down shopping malls but around 5am I see a pair of guys with packs head into a McDonalds. There we met another team “dadbodsf” and we sit down with them to get coffee, food, and rest.

After that we’re off and it’s starting to get light at this point. Jonas takes off his sock liners and I decide to keep mine on at this point. He didn’t bring an extra pair of socks, so I gave him mine knowing we have a drop later.

Pacifica is surrounded by mountains, so getting in was super tough. On our way in we see other teams, who have already hit Battery 244, coming up from the counter clock wise route. We have no clue what pace they are at but we just continue just at our own pace, not caring where others are at. our own race. It’s a nice urban trail once you get to the bottom of Battery 244, and we take that up to once again see dadbodsf.

They take an extended break there but we have a drop planned so we end up leaving pretty quick. We get to the bottom and meet my partner outside of a 24 hour fitness. While we didn’t take much I took the opportunity to rest up, change shirts, and take out the sock liners. Not sure if this was a mistake as my feet were in really good condition before but the liners got wet around the Mt. Davidson climb so I made the call to ditch them.

Nike Missle Site SR 59

Getting out of Pacifica proved to be tricky. As we’re hiking on the huge hill out of there we ran into dadbodsf again but we kept our pace up and shortly left them behind. We thought it was smooth sailing once we were out but there’s a highway that proved too difficult to walk on. We ended up weaving through neighborhoods and eventually made it to a beach just south of the point but about 250-300 feet below.

This added a lot of vertical and sand, but for safety we felt it was worth it. We got to the top and both of us looked at it each other. Exhaustion and fatigue were really kicking in at this point. Jonas had to check his feet at the point and I was beat from hiking in the sand. We were pretty broken at this point but we prepped up, ran into dadbodsf on our way out, and headed to the next site.

SF Fire Station 18

A relatively simple walk to the fire station through the city streets of the Sunset. We’re pushing on at this point but both of us are pretty scuffed up at this point. The walking on concrete for over 12 hours really started to add up here. Ibuprofen is your friend on this hike for sure. Things were getting to heat up as we got out of the fog cover of the Sunset area. We stopped here for a while and took the time to hit up a local Safeway for additional water. My bladder was out and I believe Jonas needed a fill up as well. The break was well welcomed at this point.

Dutch Windmill

We headed to the Dutch Windmill close by and when we got there we met up with another team who had just dropped out a minute ago. They decided to route all the way to Pacifica first then come back up and hit all the points in San Francisco. I think they missed a lot of points they could have hit on the way and really cost them their time by the end of it so they concluded they couldn’t finish. Their encouragement really gave me hope to keep going and get this completed. I know our route was good, our time was good, so it was just up to me at this point. We share pleasantries and then head off on our way.

El Cid Statue

We climb pretty far up to the Legion of Honor building where the El Cid statue is located. While this hill was relatively small compared to what we faced before it felt brutal at this point. At this point we knew were going to complete it but we were dragging our bodies to try and make it done as fast as possible. I was moving quick to have it end sooner rather then get a good time.

Fort Mason Park

This is it. We get the confirmation that we have hit every single point and we are to head back to the start point. While we are so close to the end, at this point we were done both mentally and physically. We pick up pace as we only had seen one team that could have finished before us. Our goal was just completion but actually achieving a placement was extremely realistic now. We walk on the north part of San Francisco heading for the park. The sun is definitely beating down now and fatigue starts to hit both of us. When the park is in sight, I pull out my phone and begin to play streets 112, (an iconic video in the speedrunning community). When playing this, it truly gave us a second wind and suddenly we’re starting to properly jog towards the finish line.

What a rush. It was over.

We came in at 17h23m. Cadre Shredder was there to greet us at the finish line to give us our patches, beer and congratulations.

We end up in second place and we pop down next to the 1st place guys and discuss how the event went. Apparently these guys have been training for this event for over a year.

I am definitely proud of us. This is something that was incredibly difficult and something that I couldn’t believe I could do only a few months prior. Would I do the 50 mile again? Probably not. We’re going to continue our hikes moving forward but not to increase our pace or speed. Definitely would consider some of the shorter races but won’t be attempting for better times.