WHAT is the HARDEST days WORK you ever did, if EVER.

[Sourdough]

I submit that most humans (Today) have never done a hard days work, not once in their entire life.

Question: What is the closest you ever came to doing a hard physical days work....? Note: I am talking your body doing labor, so it does not need to be employment related, however it might be. It could also be a 50 or 100 mile day hike.......A high stress day at the office does not count, if planting flowers for 5 hours is it, well that is it. Pick the the one day you burnt the most calories doing hard physical labor in a 24 hour period. If you never worked, which most youth have never worked, well you never worked: and that is O.K........

This somewhat relates to what the idea that survival may require tremendous physical effort.

[Sourdough]

Good work, Remy.......Could you do it today.....???

[Rick]

Myself and one head lineman set 5 utility poles and hardware, strung 1/4 inch strand and spun up the cable in front of a new shopping center where the parking lot was being leveled with heavy equipment. So we were in a dust cloud all day. I was lucky enough to get the pole work since I was working with the HEAD lineman (that made me the grunt). The temperature was 98F that day. I don't remember how many hours we worked but I remember it was quite a bit over eight. It was summer time and it was dark when we got back to the pole yard. So we must have gotten back around 10 p.m.. I think that drained me more than any other day I've worked. We looked like mudmen at the end of the day from the sweat and dust.

[NCO]

Hmm, early spring 2008, almost two meters of snow in Vuosanka military training area. Heavy mortar training. Constantly changing position, preparing new positions, digging tent places, mortar positions, shooting to up to 6 km and then changing positions again. We kept going for 22 hours, got two hours of sleep in the tents and then it started again. All this in almost -30C temperature with very limited food supply.

Picture from a different exercise.
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[Rick]

A high stress day at the office does not count

You might want to reconsider that. There are a lot of folks that survived 911 and Oklahoma that would consider themselves survivors and had a high stress day at the office that most of us will never experience. I would submit that just as many calories were burned in those scenarios as one might expect to burn in that 50 mile hike.

[Sourdough]

You might want to reconsider that. There are a lot of folks that survived 911 and Oklahoma that would consider themselves survivors and had a high stress day at the office that most of us will never experience. I would submit that just as many calories were burned in those scenarios as one might expect to burn in that 50 mile hike.

The point is that you could not replicate this for training. However one could train to do physical labor well into their 70's or even 80's.

It is also interesting that few humans will do hard work, outside of military orders. At the individual level I don't care how fat and lazy someone is, but as a Nation, as a society, as a community of Humans, I care very much that we are fat and lazy, and can't hump a 25 miles hike once per month.

I applaud the work that men and women do in training in the many different military's of the world.

[Rick]

Point well taken.

[panch0]

I have worked picking cantaloupes, and worked a few days mixing concrete by hand and passing it up a ladder to make a concrete roof for one of my wife's uncles who lives deep in Mexico. I almost said forget this and went inside but the local boys would have hounded me for days. So I stuck it through. Those boys can do some hard labor and drink beer at the same time. I thought they were pretty tough hombres.

[red lake]

Garbage Man!
16 hours of physical and aerobic labour. Did it for three weeks.

[crashdive123]

The most physically demanding day was probably felling trees, cut, split stacked. Did that on a fairly regular basis in my twenties and thirties. Did it again for about a week last summer on some property I bought.

The most demanding days that I had however, were in the military and normally were not keenly physical, but usually lasted for 72 hours or so.

[oneraindog]

wasnt ever in the military. part of me sort of wishes i had taken part of my life to experience that and have that background. not just for the training and development but i also sort of envy the type of camaraderie such an experience develops. it seems to have a quality unlike others.

that said i have had a few back breaking days in my time. everything from industrial janitorial jobs-which will destroy you i assure you-to my mothers epic landscaping projects.

but i think the most trying day was riding my bike for 19 hours straight. i used to do marathon cycling and the shortest distance for these events was 125 miles, the longest about 800. 200 miles was the most i ever covered in one sitting. when your body has acclimated to 200 miles it has reach a peak level where there is no more training you can accomplish as far as endurance goes. you can get stronger but your endurance is topped out. which is interesting because that means that once you can go that distance you can hypothetically go any distance as long as you maintain good hydration and calorie levels-that is until sleep over comes you i had just gotten to that point when my knees finally decided once and for all that they were not going to put up with any more of my crap. i still have some pretty sweet snap crackle and pop in them

[Ole WV Coot]

Myself and one head lineman set 5 utility poles and hardware, strung 1/4 inch strand and spun up the cable in front of a new shopping center where the parking lot was being leveled with heavy equipment. So we were in a dust cloud all day. I was lucky enough to get the pole work since I was working with the HEAD lineman (that made me the grunt). The temperature was 98F that day. I don't remember how many hours we worked but I remember it was quite a bit over eight. It was summer time and it was dark when we got back to the pole yard. So we must have gotten back around 10 p.m.. I think that drained me more than any other day I've worked. We looked like mudmen at the end of the day from the sweat and dust.

You forgot to mention after that getting called back out on a wet lead pulp cable, located in a muddy manhole, pulled in a new pic cable, buzzed & cut around the 2400 and after 30 more hours crawled out and went to sleep on a 2X8 between 4X4s to keep you out of the mud in the rain or trying to replace one a DitchWitch chewed. And YES I still could.

[endurance]

Forest Service trail crew. Hike 5-10 miles, using a two man cross-cut saw to cut trees off the trail, sometimes a dozen or more in a day, while clearing every waterbar along the way, carrying a 40-50 pound pack and a handtool (pulaski or fire shovel). What was funny was getting onto a wildland fire and thinking that grubbing line for 12-14 hours a day was easy by comparison.

Portland Maration 1997. I had developed stress fractures during training that I kept at bay by cross training on the bike three days a week. That day, around mile 22, everything started to come apart in my foot. By the finish line I was gimping like an ol' man with a false leg.

24 hours of e-rock. A friend and I duo'd the race, alternating laps for 24 hours. By the end, we each rode 165 miles and climbed over 10,500'.

24 hours of moab-solo 2006. It was only eight hours because of a hideous rain storm that forced them to close the course, but being out on course in torrential rains for eight hours and 60 miles was quite a rough day out.

I usually do 2-3 epic days on the bike every year. Days where I'm riding at least eight hours, unsupported, and covering anywhere from 50-100 miles, depending on the trails and terrain. This year I bought a BOB trailer that will let me haul up to 70 pounds, so that should make things much easier...

[Ken]

Let's see.......

I spent 5 years working on an outdoor grocery loading dock. Sometimes double shifts, unloading trator trailers with a 20 year old manual pallet jack that barely lifted or rolled - sometimes in the snow, sometimes in July - and would have to "consolidate" the stock on the pallets once I dragged them in the warehouse.

Another time - it WAS in an office. Memorial Day weekend. We were moving. Had to move about 12,000 law books down 3 flights of narrow rikety stairs - into a van - and carry and re-shelf them in the new office.

The absolute WORST? I was about 16. Two friends and I had to clear a 25,000 square foot lot to add on to a used car lot next door. The work was by hand, with axes and shovels. Used an old tow truck with chains to pull stumps after we dug out or chopped away at the roots . Had to drag out all sorts of junk that had been dumped there over the years. You name it, someone had dumped it there. No chain saws, no backhoe, no dozer. Everything except the wood, which we had to cut and stack, was moved out in an old trailer hitched to the tow truck. Absolute bull work for $5.00/hour.

[Pal334]

Dug a 5x5, 6ft deep spring house. Then Built the actual spring house,, all for $50 (parts not included). Then went out on the town (was 18 years old). Last week built forms, hand mixed cement for a driveway drainage system for an elderly neighbor (did not go out on the town that night ).

And more than a few multi day ops in the sandbox up until a couple years ago .

Can still do all of the above, just a little slower

[OICU812]

I started "MY" hard labor career at around age 6, by this I mean more than most will see in a life time, that was some 32 years ago and finally have it easier than ever before in my entire life and thankful to say the least. In my family there was work, school, sleep and more work 365 with no summer vacations or any of that mordern bull, you just felt good to sit down sometimes because if anyone out there has done more physical labor than me, I take my hat off to them because they are more than likely dead!

[wareagle69]

i once had to hand a shovel to someone who dug a really big hole, man was i wiped

seriously this one time at band camp

ok pops i know where you are going with this, do i know what hard work is, i thought so as many here i have put in many a hard day ,wether it be in the army or training for a fight or job related, but i will tell ya living in the bush or a rurual area takes the cake, work 12 hours a day then come home and work the homestead, i tried to do it the old fashioned way, cut a tree down in thwe bush by hand then carry it back in 8ft sections on my shoulder then cut it a gain then split it then stack it, same with moving manuer or all the other chores, garden and such, this is a day in day out process, i have now opted for some more modern equipment as the day is only so long and much work to be done, just think about if you had to do this evry day for the rest of your lives, not just looking back going "gee i remember a day or a week or a month where i worked hard" want to live in the bush be ready to work your arse off every day, for me sometimes i regret it, should have just bought a real small place in a town of 500 hundred and just go into the bush and play evryday, but i chose my path and it is the one i follow until i hit the fork in the road

[Rick]

Which, of course, is how and why we've progressed to ultra lite titanium one man tents that weigh in around a pound or so, dozers and let us not forget one of man's favorites, the AR15. Oh, yeah, and the survival knife.

[Winnie]

Hardest days work? there were many as a youngster growing up on a farm. Shifting tons of haybales by hand to beat the weather works up a good amount of perspiration.
The last hard day was a 50 mile competetive long distance horse ride in 1995.
These days it's a few hours in the garden.

[Pict]

I've had all sorts of nasty jobs so far, though its hard for me to remember which one was worse or had me working hardest on a given day. Each one had its own particular aspect that made it a challenge. Three come to mind...

Road Crew - We had several weeks of making asphalt curbs, mile after mile. This involved walking up to the tipped back, heated bed of a moving dump truck to shovel the hot asphalt. It was like working in Hell for the summer.

Recovering Electroplating Racks - Racks used for electroplating are covered in plastic insulation so they don't plate with gold, chrome whatever. Sometimes a rack gets jammed and bends out of shape. The racks are custom made and expensive so twisted racks get refurbished. My job was to load the twisted racks into a huge vat of Methylene Chloride to soak overnight. The next day I had to use a razor knife to cut the relaxed plastic coating and strip it all off. I had to work in a long rubber apron, respirator, goggles, faceshield, arm length rubber gloves, canvas gloves over those. My work station was in the sun. At our 10 min break time I had just enough time to strip my right arm, throw the apron over my left shoulder, get the headgear off, down a liter of water, and maybe (big maybe) take a leak. I had to be suited up and ready to roll at the second buzzer.

Mold Damage - I spent several weeks gutting a building that had so much mold damage that it looked like a fire job. We had to work in full hazmat suits and respirators. This was in the winter in PA but it was about 90 degrees in the building, we would go out and lay in the snow on breaks. The job was to gut the building walls and floors and spray everything. I was in charge of the crew which included one ex-con and a dishonorably discharged former Marine. These two hated each other. At one point we were tearing up floor, all hammers and hooks, and tempers started to flair. All of a sudden the thing escalated and ex-con took a Loiuisville Slugger grip on his crowbar and went batter-up intending to cave in former marine's head. I was behind him and as the hook came back I hooked it with mine and ripped it out of his hands. Later ex-con profusely thanked me for stopping him, former marine wanted to fight me and ex-con, could handle himself, and didn't need my help. Putz. Mac