He’s putting families of Ronald McDonald House on his back
To help a charity about which he cares, Michael Grus is doing some heavy lifting. His plan is serious, but it’s also literally to ruck around — that is, to carry a 50-pound rucksack for 41.2 miles of walking around North Park, in one day, to earn pledges from Pittsburghers totaling $4,102. He’s calling it “Ruck 41.2.”
The Cranberry resident will give the money to the Ronald McDonald House Charities.
The nonprofit came onto his radar last year when he and co-workers at Turner Construction, where he’s a lean coordinator, volunteered to cook meals for the families with sick children staying at the Ronald McDonald House Pittsburgh. He wanted to do more volunteer work there, but COVID-19 has precluded helping in person. So he brainstormed other ways, naturally gravitating toward his natural habitat — the outdoors. He played lacrosse at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, and that led him to get into marathons and triathalons, which led him to rucking.
“This is actually a niche workout that people do,” says the 25-year-old, who, after he got this idea rolling, bought a $185 GORUCK rucksack, with shoulder straps and a hip belt, matched to a $135 45-pound rectangular metal weight. He throws in a regular round 5-pound weight plate to get to 50 pounds.
He has been training daily at North Park, sometimes with his girlfriend, Naomi Schwaiger of Downtown, who has her own rucksack with a 20-pound weight. She and several friends are going to join him at North Park on April 10, when he hopes to complete his weighty walk in 12 hours, with snack and cold drink breaks after each 5mile loop.
It’s very different, but others personalize how they do good for the Ronald McDonald House Charities in Pittsburgh and Morgantown, W.Va., which channels them into its Projects of Passion program. People can do one of their passions — bicycling, ice skating, dropping pumpkins off of tall buildings are all actual ongoing projects — to help support families with sick children.
Of these P.O.P.s, as they are called, “We have roughly 50 a year, so at any one time there could be as many as four to five happening at the same time,” says Lynn Ussack, the regional charity’s media and outreach coordinator who’s helping to publicize Mr. Grus’ passion project.
You can learn more about the projects at https://rmhcpghmgtn.
To support the Ruck 41.2, you can visit the event donation site at https:// e.givesmart.com/events/ k8x/c/:GK5gHO7HdSM. Contact him directly at mgrus17@gmail.com.
As of Thursday, Mr. Grus had surpassed $3,300 in pledges and says he’ll keep going past $4,120 if he can to help this good cause. With everything seeming to be about COVID-19, he says, “Sometimes we forget that other people are dealing with things, too” — and carrying heavy loads of their own.