Wil Ravelo has marched thousands of miles under a loaded pack. He started in the Marine Corps as a Force Reconnaissance Marine, and when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan kicked off, he chased them—jumping to the Army, joining Special Forces, and landing on the streets of Baghdad in combat inside of a year. After the military he spent thirteen years with the San Francisco Police Department, much of it on SWAT. He’s a father of four, a twenty-year jiu-jitsu player, and the coach behind what he calls operational conditioning: getting civilians ready to perform in their own lives the way an operator stays ready for a mission. We were introduced by our mutual friend Michael Ostrolenk, whom Wil helped train for the 50-mile GoRuck event in Washington, DC. I’ve done a 50 mile march every year since 2019, but never with significant weight on my back—so I called Wil to get a tactical overview. We recorded this a little over a year ago, and I’m embarrassed it’s taken me this long to release it. A few things you’ll get out of this one: * Why he eats gummy bears by the mile * The mental tricks he looped in his head to survive Special Forces selection * “Be like a tiger”: the 18-hour fast and one-big-meal philosophy that left him stronger at 165 pounds than he was at 225 * The footcare hacks he learned from hikers (you’re probably using the wrong toenail clippers). * Why he never trains past 30 miles – even to get ready for 50 * The confidence test he gives every client Follow him and learn more - @realwilravelo; wilravelo.com 50-Mile Math Charlie: Anytime you’re talking about marching 50 miles in a day, with a 25- or 30-pound pack, that’s no mean feat. Michael said you were the guy for the tactical overview. So what’s your framework for balancing rigor with recovery—how do you push without overdoing it? Wil: It depends on the event. A rucking event isn’t something you just walk into. You’re not going to say, “I’m going to go ruck 50 miles.” You’ll have a hard enough time saying, “I’m going to ruck five miles,” if you’ve never done it and your body isn’t accustomed to it. In Special Forces selection—which happens before qualification—most of the events are graded on how well you carry a pack. Distance, weight, time, and how well you work with others. The first thing they do is hand you a pack. Minimum 45 pounds, not counting water or food. They tell you 50, but the standard is 45, and they don’t tell you that, so guys are over- and under-packing the whole time. You get dinged if you’re under. The final event is 24 to 28 miles, the day before you turn in equipment. The GoRuck event we did was modeled after CAG selection—40- to 50-mile rucks out in West Virginia, across two states. Fifty miles is fifty miles. That’s a lot of distance. Now, to your question. If you overdo rucking too fast, you’ll damage your feet. Tendonitis. Strained little muscles. You can fracture the small bones in your feet. Your ankles, your knees. And the whole time that pack is on your shoulders, cinch straps digging in. When I came back from selection, my upper back was nothing but knots—I’d been holding a rifle the whole time, too. So for someone training for a rucking event: start easy. Three-mile ruck. Twenty-five pounds—that’s the GoRuck challenge weight, water doesn’t count. It’s easy to slide a 25-pound plate into a pack and go for a walk. If you’ve never walked three miles, scale it down. You’re not running, but your heart rate is up and your body’s under a lot of stress. And don’t ruck more than twice a week. Even that’s pushing it, depending on the weight. Say your goal is a 12-mile ruck. Week one: Monday is your ruck day, three miles, 25 pounds. Tuesday is a run—two or three miles, not for speed, just for the cardiovascular tank. Wednesday is rest: lift, stretch, do yoga. Thursday is a longer run, five or six miles; if you’re not a runner, go from one mile up to three. Friday is your second ruck, identical to Monday so the body adapts. Even and even. Week two: same three-mile ruck, but timed. The Special Forces standard is a 15-minute mile under load. Hit that on average and you’ll make your distances in the allotted time. When we did the 50-mile GoRuck in DC, I wasn’t worried about finishing—I was worried about the time. I was pushing guys forward the whole way. Charlie: So you’ve got three variables—distance, weight, speed—and you don’t want to increase all three at once. When do you start stepping each one up? Wil: This is where it flips. By about week three, your distances start to drop and your weight starts to climb. You’re still doing the three-mile ruck on Monday, but I expect you well under a 15-minute mile by now—hauling ass with that 25-pound pack, four miles, five miles, fast. Then on the longer ruck day you start building toward the 45-pound plate, and that’s where the miles get added. Bump up two miles at a time, depending on how you feel. You’ll hit a point, somewhere between 12 and 20 miles, that just sucks. It’s like running a marathon. You’re out there all day, the pack eating into your shoulders and lower back, and it’s always there—every time you take it off and put it back on, it’s worse than if you’d kept moving. And every time you stop, your feet matter. You build the calluses slowly. Push too fast and you get blisters, and then you’re back at the beginning. So Monday is my flux day—speed and weight, short distance. I can put 60 to 75 pounds in the pack. Buy a 60-pound sandbag at Home Depot, or a cement bag and tape it up. I’m not telling you to carry it 10 miles. Carry it two, carry it three. You’re building the chassis. The real work happens on the second ruck—the last day of the week, at competition weight. “I did eight miles last week. This week, 10. Next week, 13. Then 16.” You keep ramping. When my wife and I trained for GoRuck, I never hit 50 miles in training. That’s an overdo—it’d take a week to recover and I don’t need that. If I can do 30, I can do 50. The difference is your brain’s already there; the rest you just push through. “If I can do 30, I can do 50. Your brain’s already there—the rest, you just push through.” Charlie: Let me play that back. You’ve got a flux day—call it Monday—where you vary speed and weight, distance stays short. A long day—call it Friday—that mimics actual conditions. Once you’ve got a baseline, you add two miles at a time, and the flux day doubles as a gauge: if you can’t hit a 15-minute mile, you’re not ready to add distance. And underneath it all, you’re building strength in the gym. Wil: Traps, traps, traps. Shrugs, upright rows, grab the trap bar and go to town. I do a lot of jiu-jitsu, so the grabbing and pulling is built in—that helps too. The whole point is keeping them from fatiguing under the pack. The first hour or two, you’re fine. By hour four or five, you hate your life. By hour nine, you’re numb. Every time you take the pack off you get that little ahhh—then you put it back on and you’re worse than before. Then a deadlift for your lower back, squats for your legs. Build in any direction you want, but the upper shoulders are non-negotiable. You’re carrying that thing for hours. Foot care Wil: Best thing I can tell you for your feet: go slow. If they start heating up, change socks—old Army thing, always carry a clean change. I’ve worn nylon slip-socks over my regular socks so they slide against each other instead of against my skin. A blister is heat plus friction. Eliminate the friction. Carry a blister kit. I use one of those little nylon shoe-cleaning pouches the military gave out, fanny-pack-sized. In it: small pointed scissors, the kind you’d cut nose hairs with, to cut tape and lance a blister. Nail clippers—Mr. Clipper makes a flat-bladed pair; most are curved. Avoid the curved ones, because a rounded toenail digs into the toe and becomes an ingrown, and that’ll wreck you 20 miles in. Charlie: How did I get through 36 years of life without knowing this? Why don’t they teach this in school? Wil: Honestly? There’s a book, How to Get Selected for Special Forces—the guy put some of this in there. But really, just follow the hikers. They’ve figured it out forever. We ruck in SF because we go to combat with everything we own on our back. Hikers are doing the same thing—they’re just doing it for joy. One more trick: if you get a blister and don’t want to lance it, run a needle and thread through it, pull the needle out, leave the thread in. It wicks the fluid without making a mess. And mark your hot spots before they blister—tape the spot with athletic tape, then duct tape over the athletic tape. The duct tape slides; put it straight on skin and you lose half a layer when you rip it off. “A blister is heat plus friction. Eliminate the friction.” Wil: The one thing you have to learn is to shut your mind off from the pain. When I ruck, I listen to an audiobook or a podcast. Sometimes I just zone out and live in my head. In selection we couldn’t bring radios—you’re alone in the middle of nowhere with a map. I lived on two songs: Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together.” I knew half the lyrics to each. I looped them and went into zombie mode. At some point you start picking up the pace without meaning to. There’s nothing better than doing painful, hard things while you’re in your own head. You find a bunch of answers in there. I’m in pain. I have to keep going. I can’t quit. That’s a really good thing. “I lived on Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ and Mariah Carey’s ‘We Belong Together.’ I knew half the lyrics to each. I just looped them and went into zombie mode.” Gummy Bears, Sunflower Seeds, and Eating Like a Tiger Wil: I’m not a big fan of eating mid-ruck. Mike asked me once abo
