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Walking my dog through the neighborhood the other day, a man driving by too quickly to identify wanted to let me know he thought I was a “fucking bitch.” He rolled down his window (or maybe it was already rolled down) and yelled, “you fucking bitch!” before the Doppler effect thinned out his voice, and then he was gone. Mission accomplished.
It’s possible I misinterpreted what happened. I didn’t see this person or immediately recognize the make of his car. I didn’t notice anyone else walking up or down either side of the block. But 16th Street is a busy thoroughfare. Maybe it was road rage. Maybe he was arguing or clowning around with someone riding along with him. Maybe he was a problem child on the phone with his mother.
But I’m pretty sure he was yelling at me. And what’s more, I think he had a decent reason—at least as far as these things go. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, exactly. I was minding my own business, safely on the sidewalk across the median from him. But I was wearing this weighted training vest…
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…and—at a glance, or if you aren’t using all of your common sense— it does make me look like an ICE agent¹. I also happened to be walking just a few blocks south of a nearby park where, for a time earlier this year, federales and metro police would congregate between joint patrols.
The “fucking bitch” guy seemingly mistook me for one of them, off duty from harassing or abducting members of his community. The next day a neighbor who actually knows me spotted me wearing the same vest and said she thought it was part of a bad-taste Halloween costume. My own saintly wife wishes I wouldn’t wear it outside the house, particularly when we’re walking the dog together. We all at some level understand that everyone’s on edge and tempers are running hot. Not that this guy should have screamed “fucking bitch!” at me. But, you know, we understand.
The vest is designed primarily for an activity called rucking. The GoRuck company, which manufactures the vest pictured above, makes products for ruckers, and organizes rucking events—outdoor endurance challenges of varied difficulty meant to recreate special-operations training exercises in civilian spaces. Participants have to walk long distances and complete group tasks under a load of at least 20 pounds.
These events are wholesome, though a bit weird if you aren’t a joiner or don’t enjoy cosplay. But anyone who hikes or walks or jogs under load is rucking, and that’s typically how I use the term. I’ve been a rucker in that sense for about a decade. For most of that time I conceived of it as a distinct activity: block off some time, choose a walking trail, load up, and hike for miles. In recent weeks, though, to advance an unrelated goal, I began treating more quotidian tasks like dog walking and commuting as opportunities to ruck.
Earlier this year I decided I would retrain myself to complete a strict² muscle-up before the end of summer.
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As an accountability measure, I mentioned this to my friend Mikala Jamison, who writes a culture-of-fitness newsletter called