Why We Run or Ruck 9.11 Miles | Columbia, MO 5K & Ruck

Why We Run and/or Ruck 9.11 Miles

Five years at Cooper's Landing

Somebody asks it every year. Usually at the starting line, usually with a nervous laugh, while adjusting a ruck or tying a shoelace before doing something hard.

Why are we doing this?

Fair question. Nobody makes you drive out to Cooper's Landing before sunrise on a Saturday in September and put weight on your back. You could be doing a hundred other things, starting with staying in a warm cozy bed.

Five years in, here's the answer.

The sport gave me everything

I found running in high school, at a time when my home life was broken. I was invited by the new history teacher who was also the new Cross country and track coach. It was the first thing in my life that made sense:  a team, a coach who guided me, and the opportunity to push myself. Show up, do the work, get better. It was something positive to look forward too and taught me grit, discipline, and fortitude. 

It carried me through 27 years in the Army. Through marathons and ultras, the Missouri River 340, Dirty Kanza twice, five days of Expedition Ozark, and more long-distance races than I can count. Whatever I've been going through, the trail has been there. Running has given me stability, friendships, a career, and a way to clear my head. 

At some point you look around and realize you've been on the receiving end of all that for thirty-some years. Volunteers handing you water at mile 18. Race directors up at 3 AM setting cones. Strangers cheering for you by name because it's printed on your bib.

This event is me and our team paying that back. I feel like i'm a guy who owes the sport a debt he can't fully repay, working on it one September at a time, alongside a crew of people who feel the same way.

Why Cooper's Landing

Because it's my favorite spot in mid-Missouri. 

The Missouri River is right there. The Katy Trail runs straight through it. It's the kind of place where you finish a hard effort, grab a seat, and sit for a while looking at the water with people who just did the same thing you did. No parking garage. No convention center. A river, a trail, a cold beer, and good people.

If you've never run or rucked the Katy at first light, you're in for something. The fog comes off the river, the bluffs are on your shoulder, and it's just peaceful. Missouri is beautiful this time of year. The course carries you along the river before turning you out into the farm fields.

Why 9.11 miles? Why 9:11 in the morning?

September 11, 2001 was a day that changed everyone's lives. 

Most of us can still walk through that morning minute by minute. Where we were. Who told us. What we did with the rest of that day. The country that went to bed on the 10th was not the country that woke up on the 12th, and for a lot of us out here, that day redirected the next twenty years of our lives.

That morning, firefighters climbed stairwells that everybody else was running down, carrying sixty, seventy, eighty pounds of gear. They ran toward the danger. They put themselves in harm's way for people they'd never met. So many other first responders put it all on the line that day.  Running toward danger when others were trying to get away. 

They went up anyway.

That's why we carry weight. If you've never done it: rucking is walking or running with a loaded pack on your back. Soldiers have moved that way for as long as there have been soldiers, and it has a way of humbling people who are otherwise in very good shape.

Two divisions on the 9.11-mile course. Lightweight is 10 pounds. Heavyweight is 35. You bring your own weight, and however much you're carrying, it will not feel like that number at mile seven. Somewhere in there the distance stops being about your legs.

The 5K goes off at 9:11 AM. Run it, walk it, push a stroller. One foot in front of the other.

Who we're carrying it for

The beneficiary hasn't been the same every year. We've put the proceeds behind a few different organizations doing good work for veterans and first responders.

This year it's the Veterans Community Project.

VCP puts veterans experiencing homelessness into tiny homes of their own: 240 square feet, a real front door, a real key: and surrounds them with one-on-one wraparound support until they're standing on their own. Every man and woman who took the oath, regardless of discharge status or type of service.

Two reasons we chose them. First, it works: roughly 85% of the veterans who come through a VCP Village move on to permanent housing of their own. Second, they're in our backyard. They started in Kansas City and now run campuses in seven cities, St. Louis among them. Missouri money, Missouri veterans.

Five years

Hard to believe it's been five.

What people tell us afterward is almost always the same three things: the venue, the swag, and the spirit of the event. What I love about it, is people come back year after year. My favorite part is always the first-timers. Somebody who's never rucked a step in their life, wearing a borrowed pack with too much weight in it, no idea what mile seven is going to feel like. 

We also love the family spirit. Dads and daughters. Brothers and sisters. Whole households out there doing something hard together on purpose, which is a rarer thing than it should be.

And it's every one of them carrying something for a reason bigger than a finish time.

The ice bath

Last year we added an ice bath at the finish. Sit in it long enough and you earn a copy of my book, Life on Offense.

It is a wonderful thing to watch. People who just covered nine miles with weight on their back,  people with every reason on earth to go sit down to drink something cold instead, climbing into a tub of ice water because somebody is standing there holding a book. The first ten seconds are the worst ten seconds. Then the breathing settles, the panic passes, and you find out you can stay in longer than you thought. That is this entire event compressed into about two minutes.

It's back this year.

A huge shout out to Ultramax Sports for helping us produce this race year after year! 

Year five

Saturday, September 19, 2026:  Cooper's Landing, Columbia, MO

7:30 AM 9.11-Mile Run or 9.11-Mile Ruck

9:11 AM: 5K Run/Walk

Bring a ruck or don't. Run it or walk it. Come alone or drag six people with you.

Do Hard Things!

Register here.