The Tobacco Road Marathon is pleased to parntner with GORUCK, The Rucking CompanyTM. GORUCK is a builder of performance gear and apparel, as well as an advocate for rucking, a form of active resistance training gaining in popularity in recent years.

Borne in the military, rucking is simple: put weight on your back and cover distance on foot. It combines active cardiovascular exercise from a brisk walk or shuffle, with resistance training in the form of a weighted backpack, or rucksack. It works the core and auxiliary muscles in ways running alone often does not.

The Tobaccco Road Marathon began offering a ruck division for the 13.1-mile distance (only) and is pleased to support growing the community of ruckers.  Andy Peterson from local ruck club Black Creek Ruckers noted that "Rucking scales well from folks just getting off the couch who may not be ready to run distance, to those looking to challenge themselves at ruck distances of 50+ miles, or endurance events lasting up to 48 hours.” Scaling the effort is as simple as varying the amount of weight carried.

Ruckers are encouraged to consider a 20-pound weight for participants up to 150lb bodyweight, 30-pound weight otherwise. Female participants can scale to 10 and 20 pounds respectively, though according to Peterson, "We’d love for folks to choose a weight that’s challenging to them, yet allows for a bit of fellowship during the event.” Sign up for the Half Marathon (only--not available for the Full) on https://tobaccoroadmarathon.com/register and choose "Rucking" for your division (instead of Age Group or Military).

Frequently, Ruckers self-organize a weigh-in on race morning. If so, look for a pop-up 10'x10' between the big tent and the bag check tent to meet other Ruckers and weigh-in!