My wife and I used to enjoy hiking together when we first met, this turned into rucking for me as I felt I needed more of a physical challenge. We often drove to different parts of the country, seeking out more scenic and difficult terrain, often camping out to extend our stay.
This all changed when we became parents for the first time, even more so when our second child was born, this is how I managed to return to rucking – with a difference.
Having children meant a complete change of view regarding how weekends and holidays should be spent, my daughter was born only a little more than 12 months before her brother, so for the first couple of years, like many parents, my wife and I had very little sleep. We were both working, I run my own business and my wife is a nurse at a local hospital, weekends and holidays became more precious to us, something to really look forward to, simply because we desperately needed to recharge our batteries.
Once we had become accustomed to the mind numbing exhaustion and both babies had settled into more of a routine, we began to feel the need to take walks that were a little longer than a stroll up the road to a nearby wooded area. Generally, we still needed to stick to paved streets, as a double buggy is not designed to handle very rough terrain.
We decided to start with trips to the nearest shopping mall, we live on the edge of a small town and the local store is fine for basics but not really for anything more than that, the shopping mall is about two miles away, making it a great first step to the longer, more physically challenging hikes that we once enjoyed. The buggy had a tray fitted beneath the babies but this was only big enough to hold a few small items of shopping, the bulk of what we bought was split between our two rucksacks. We couldn’t always do it this way, if the weather was just too terrible or we’d had a bad night with the children, even if we needed to buy more than we could fit into our rucksacks, we just used the car.
Our children are now both at school, it is approximately four miles away and at the top of a steep hill, there are also long stretches of steep hills between our home and the school, both children could easily walk this distance but time restraints mean that I have to use the car. I drop the children off at school, grab my weighted rucksack from the trunk and walk home, I walk back when the school day is over and drive us all home. My wife is not always able to join me but I try to arrange my schedule so I can do this every day, it is a convenient and pleasant way for me to get some gentle rucking, the children aren’t affected by the weather and arrive at school fresh and ready for the day.
This is my experience of getting back into rucking, it doesn’t have to be difficult and it is often possible to find a workaround that will allow you to enjoy this increasingly popular and inexpensive form of exercise.