‘For Those Who Can’t’: 11th Annual Ruck4HIT Crosses Lower Cape

BREWSTER – More than 150 people ran with weighted backpacks across the entirety of Cape Cod over a span of about 30 hours last weekend during an annual fundraiser for a local veterans assistance organization.

The 11th annual Ruck4HIT started at around 1 a.m. Friday at the Cape Cod Fairgrounds in Falmouth. By the time the first of the 14 teams — a group called “I Thought This Was A 5K” — had returned back to the fairgrounds Saturday morning, they had collectively tackled 200-plus miles at an 8 minutes, 44 seconds per mile pace — all with 10 to 20 pound rucksacks on their backs.

The event raised at least $177,000 for Heroes in Transition, a Mashpee-based nonprofit that offers assistance to veterans and military families.

“It's so taxing on your body,” said Savannah Fabbio, chair of Heroes in Transition’s board and herself a former rucker. “You train throughout the year. You do everything, and then once you get out here, it's a mental game, right? You've done all your training. Mentally, you have to stay in it. You have to do all your fueling for food and water and stuff and make sure that you're in it. But it's very mental, especially the second night.”

The course was split into 71 different legs of two to four miles. A rucker would complete one leg, then — with a high-five, a fist bump — pass the next portion off to a teammate waiting at the relay site.

Those relay sites, exchanges, were spread through the entire peninsula. In Brewster, ruckers hit exchange points Friday at the transfer station, town hall and Crosby Beach. In Orleans later that day, they relayed along the Cape Cod Rail Trail. On the return stretch after traversing up to Provincetown and back, they cut through Harwich by Brooks Park.

In Chatham, participants lugged their rucksacks along Route 28 in the dark of night as Friday turned to Saturday, headlamps strapped to their foreheads. Vans all the while drove teams to the different exchanges to continue the relays.

“Friday night into Saturday morning is the toughest time for anybody,” Fabbio said. “It's dark, probably cold. Normally, everyone wants to sleep. The van door is opening and closing, and so people are getting in and out. So it's definitely the hardest time, and you have to have a good team to really help keep you going.”

The ruckers themselves came from the Cape and other Massachusetts towns: Wareham, Plymouth, New Bedford, Lakeville, Duxbury, Cambridge, Milford, Hopkinton, Rockland, Winchester, Sutton, Rehoboth and Hopedale among them. Others came from Rhode Island, New Hampshire, New York and New Jersey and as far away as Virginia, Florida and Hawaii, according to Heroes in Transition.

The pool of competitors were active and retired military, family (like Fabbio, the daughter of two Marines), first responders, plus those just looking for a physical challenge.

“And then it becomes so much more, because it is so much more than that,” Fabbio said.

The event is one of Heroes in Transition’s biggest fundraisers. The organization, which offers 15 programs that assist nearly 2,500 people (veterans, active service members and families), was created in 2009 by Cyndy and Kenneth Jones after their son, U.S. Marine Capt. Eric A. Jones, was killed during a combat mission in Afghanistan.

During the event, participants weighing 160 pounds or under had to carry 10 pounds, and those above 160 pounds carried 20 pounds. How those backpacks are loaded to reach those measures is done a little differently by everybody, according to Fabbio, who said she once used sandbags or rice before switching to a weight plate. 

“You train with it so much it becomes one with you,” she said.

Ask any person involved with Ruck4HIT why they ruck and the answer is firm and collective: “For those who can’t.” The rucksack is a symbol, a representation of the burden carried by the military and its service members. That’s why they haul a weighted backpack around the peninsula and back for 36 hours; why they try to catch sleep inside a dark van parked on the roadside before their turn to hump a few miles comes up; why they slap hands with a teammate to run a leg and get ready to do it again, even though it’s cold and late and they’re standing in front of an Ocean State Job Lot. For the millions who can’t. 

For more information about Heroes in Transition, visit heroesintransition.org.