YHC may be compensating for something, an observation which was made within 30 seconds of my joining the PAX at the launch this AM. After 4 months of all the running, all the time, I’ve been concerted in getting back into the boot camps throughout southland. When the turkiest of all site Qs offered up today’s beat down I didn’t think twice. I was, as they say, “down to henge.” They don’t say that? Oh, well, you get my point either way, back to the workout…
The PAX were a bit restless as YHC jogged up to the launch point… why jog and not drive? Keep reading and you’ll see. A brief yet Mermaid approved, disclaimer was given (its ok SOBs, you don’t have to get the reference, just stay with me) then off we moseyed. Down across the Ballantyne corporate and into the hotel parking lot for COP:
THE THANG:
COP:
20 SSH IC
5 Burpees OYO
20 IW IC
4 Burpees IC
15 Low Slow Squats IC
3 Burpees OYO
10 Low Slow Merkins IC
2 Burpees OYO
1 Burpee OYO
Walk the 50 feet to the back of YHC’s M’s Jeep (which was riding low as observed by multiple PAX) and withdraw coupons as follows; 2-80 lbs. sandbags, 2-60 lbs. sandbags, 2-40 lbs. slam balls, 2-20 lbs. slam balls, 1-120 lbs. sandbag.
PAX aided in distributing coupons around LochNess (80s at the near porch, 60s at the close porch, 40s at the point where the path heads down to the fit trail, 20s right by the entrance. Pair up and stations were as follows:
Near Porch: Bent Over Rows with 80# X10, Wall Jump Burpee X5 -Flapjack Repeato
Far Porch: Clean to front squat with 60#, Peoples chair 10 count with right leg up, then left for 10 count, Flapjack Repeato
Fork in the Road: 40 lbs. slam ball reps X10, mosey to pull-up bars for pull ups X5, Flapjack Repeato
Entrance: Ballover Merkins X20, Jump-Squats X10, Flapjack Repeato
With 4 stations one pair was free to carry the 120 lbs. bag around LochNess, oh joy! PAX carried the bag from one station to the next, handing off the bag to whoever was there and commencing to work until the bag came back around. This averaged 3 full sets or so. Pairs started carrying the 120 by the handles between them, but soon progressed to fireman carries as the preferred method. We made it one full rotation then returned the coupons to the heavy laden jeep and moseyed back to the cars for 3 minutes of Mary. FIN.
YE OLE MOLESKINNEY:
If I recall the pairs were Billy Goat with One Niner, Market Timer with Frehleys, Fire Hazard with Wild Turkey, and Kirby with Happy Meal. YHC took the double red pill and worked solo this time around. Whoa, that was a workout. Shoulders will be burning well into the second half of the late game today.
Speaking of games, Frehleys wore more orange than I’d thought possible for an F3 workout, not a stitch of black to be seen. My eyes are still bleeding.
One Niner crushed his reps and fireman carrying the 120, despite a bad shoulder. Great work brother, heal up soon.
Kirby may have the absolute worst squat form YHC has ever seen, but as mentioned at Coffeteria, bad form may be better than no form at all… maybe. He’ll undoubtedly benefit from all those waist squats at some point.
Wild Turkey was perspiring heavily by 30 seconds into the workout, but thats probably due to his pre-run which commenced at 0530, strong work my man.
Market Timer may have a stronger verbal motor than workout motor… but its a close thing.
FireHazard… never change my friend
BillyGoat learned today showing up to a dolphin Q without gloves is a bad idea, but solved that problem by solo carrying the 120 for the rest of the workout. Talk about making worse of a bad situation!
Happy Meal gamely carried the 120 despite it being at least as big as he is, truly a fete worthy of exclamation. He was certainly ready to ditch it tho when YHC arrived to relieve him on the final carry.
All joking aside, this may have been YHCs first post at Stonehenge, but hardly my first with this group of guys. Everyone dug deep and crushed a gnarly gear workout for ~45 minutes or so. I suspect they may have even enjoyed it, but what do I know?
As my last Q of 2019, this was a good end note by my own judgement, hopefully the PAX felt the same. As we move ever closer to 2020 I find myself incredibly grateful yet again for the role F3, and the PAX of southland, have played in my life this year. I end 2019 stronger of body than ever before. More importantly, I feel supported in a way I didn’t feel possible in all of my life’s endeavors. There are insufficient words to express how blessed I’ve been this year and that manifests as incredible momentum heading into 2020.
As I write this missive, I extend an offer to all who read (and many who don’t.). If there is an opportunity in 2020 for me to pull in alongside you and your challenges for a bit, to share the load, or just offer encouragement, please share that need. It would be such a blessing for me to be able to share 1 10th of what was given to me in 2019.
Thanks to all the PAX and I’ll see you in the gloom.
YHC will be celebrating my 7th year anniversary but I have an odd distinction in my time in the gloom, I’ve never Q’ed a Friday workout before*, despite plenty of posts at Centurion, the Brave and Cerberus. There was that one time Champagne and Madame Tussauds asked me to Q the Brave but it happened to be the day before the USMC Mud Run(when that was still a thing) and no one showed up, leaving my Friday Qginity intact.
Alf reached out to Slack yesterday asking for a last minute Q and I thought it would be a great time to break my streak.
Fast forward to 5:28 AM, Alf and YHC are the only two pax in the parking lot much to my disappointment…more on that later.
Ice-9 pulled in at 5:29 and after stalling for 2 minutes, we were off to the big parking deck for the main event.
COP Warm Up: IW X 10, Windmill X 10, Arm Circles Forward X 10, Arm Circles Backward X 10.
The Thang: Parking deck suicides Round 1: Lap 1: Run up first ramp, 5 merkins, run down ramp. Lap 2: Run up ramp, run around 2nd level, 10 merkins, run around 2nd level, run down ramp………………… Lap 5: Run all the way to the top and complete 25 merkins, Mary while waiting on the 6.
As predicted, Alf and Ice-9 were smoking me up, down and around the parking deck but sometime between laps 2 and 3, C3PO and Shop Dawg showed up. O’Tannenbaum showed up between laps 3 and 4. After all pax got to the top, YHC needed to find a way to do a better job of keeping the pax together. So I revealed the 60 lb sandbag, 60 lb kettlebell, 45 lb kettlebell, and 30 kettlebell that were hidden before the workout.
Repeat the Parking deck suicides again with the “fast guys” carrying the weights and squats instead of merkins. This took a while and eliminated mumblechatter for the most part. Pax took turns sharing the burden and everyone was smoked. Then there was just enough time to carry the weights back to the launch point and about 3 minutes of Mary.
COT
Moleskine: At 5:28 AM, YHC was worried that the first two times I’ve Qed a Friday would result in only 1 pax posting. YHC was more worried that Alf and I having to carry almost 200lbs of sandbags and KBs back to the launch by ourselves. Thankful for 4 more pax joining in.
For the 2nd time in 7 days, YHC has been at a workout that has seen it’s total pax grow significantly AFTER launch. At Da Vinci on Saturday we went from 10 to 17 and today we went from 3 to 6. Thankfully the late pax were able to easily find the crowd and still get a beatdown in.
Ice-9 is a monster. I thought making him do the suicides while carrying a 60 lb kettlebell would help bring him back to mean a little bit. I was wrong. If anyone has a 100+ lb sandbag or kettlebell, bring it to my next Q that Ice-9 posts at.
Announcements:
New Gear Workout starting on Monday Jan 6 at McAlpine Elementary. Pax in attendance were not in favor of Kettlebros, Swole, or Deadpool.
NYE Convergence 12/31 at Swift/Bagpipe location(medical park next to Einsteins Bagels).
After fartsacking on Thursday, YHC needed to post. After checking the website to find no Q listed; YHC inquired of Mermaid as to who was Q’ing. He informed that he was DR and that Margo was finding a Q…not so much. Here’s what Margo put out on the Twitterverse: “#F3Centurion will have a PAX led Q tomorrow. Come with ideas for your favorite things.” Don’t think so. YHC & Udder stepped up at that point…and actually Udder Q’d about 2/3 of the downpainment.
Giving site Q Margo some grief, but all in good fun…methinks he is the longest-tenured site Q in all of Area51, perhaps in the history of Area51….though Haze may have had a similar tenure at Fast Twitch.
BTW, Margo forgot the shovel flag, too; but in fairness it was buried below about 272 pounds of Christmas light boxes and other Griswoldian paraphernalia.
Anyhoo, below is some Thang and Moleskinny:
After a wandering, mediocre disclaimer from Udder that would have left Mermaid shaking his head, off the 10 pax went to Carmel Commons (or whatever the shopping center is called) for COP & a rough 11’s call from Udder: Jumping Lunges & Burpees – with running the stairwells and length of the retail complex in between. It hurt. Haze was yelling back to Udder that it should have been 7’s rather than 11’s.
The early finishing pax did some Mary while waiting on the six. Lorax, Haze, Brilleaux & Snuka were out front and almost lapped YHC….narrowly avoided that. Any knucklehead that says, “It’s you vs. you” – is wrong. We all know that. Stop with the silly sayings. Another saying that’s weak: “I am third”. Stop counting what place you are in line. Just serve. True humility is giving little to no consideration to yourself. C.S. Lewis put it this way:
Ok, off the soapbox now. YHC took the Q reins at this point — and we headed back towards CCHS, stopping at the rock quarry and doing some sets of thrusters and other stuff x13, of course. These were OYO. OYO.
Clover cleverly asked for a demonstration to stall…but even the relative rookie Point Break knew what he was doing. It did take Lorax and someone else about 3 minutes to find a rock…and he exchanged at least once. Boxing Day was yesterday, brother. Grab a dang rock, and let’s get to work!
Snuka was throwing his rock around like it was a Christmas ornament. After last week’s forced tutorial from Champagne at Anvil, the fast-running Respect is a lifting machine.
The not-so-loquacious Thunder Road & Brilleaux (the x is more silent than him, or is it?) were getting after it as they always do.
After the rock work, we ran over to the front of CCHS for some double-squat jump up’s & dips; then back to the launch lot for some Mary including Makthar N’Djayie’s…of course. 13 of them, to be exact.
That’s it for the workout, or at least what YHC can recall.
Some other sundry, yet noteworthy, observations:
Margo’s beard is still legit. Clover still loves ND and Duke though, thankfully, made no mention of either this morning. Purple Haze posted at a bootcamp workout. We did not visit Tartarus. Chelms was not there.
That’s it and that’s all, sports fans. Tierra del Fuego. Muchos obligatos. Feliz Navidad. Joyeux Noel (that’s for everyone’s favorite French Iowan, aka Brilleaux).
Passez un bon weekend!
5 pax gathered for a post-Christmas beatdown, including an fng (my second this week… and total). Attempted to go for a theme, but most carols are terrible for workouts and 12 days has been appropriately and roundly abused in the recent past. So, I ended up just attempting to hit one of the areas most affected by bad holiday decisions.
Everyone did great, the fng was never just lying on the ground questioning his life decisions, drive by was pushing it the whole time, Glider just outright killed my weinke, and Fuse Box was generally up front, but still threatens me with a crowbar… should I be concerned?
The fng had a narrow miss on his naming as he saved one of the best/worst wedding stories I think I’ve ever heard. The group walked away settling on the name Fourscore. A few minutes later he was talking about his various anniversary dates and the mnemonics he uses to remember them, in particular his wedding date. Apparently he was married in Nagasaki on the anniversary of the atomic bomb being dropped there. Hence, with this backblast, I believe I have secured him a much better f3 name as Nagasaki (with the exception of One Star attempting to name my brother Cock Blocker Tuesday). Been trying to talk him into coming out here for probably years at this point, and I believe it helps when they don’t have to wake up before the crack of dawn to attend.
Announcements:
12/31 – Watchtower converges at Bushwood – Marvin Elementary
1/1 – Chiseled converges at Dromedary – Marvin Ridge High
Will the streak ever die? Probably but not today! 15 men joined me at the worst AO in Waxhaw to burn 500 of the 5000 calories they probably consumed during Christmas dinner.
I arrived in Waxhaw around 5:00 to set out a few cones and scope out some uncharted territory. At 5:22 the Christmas dinner started talking as I made a dash to the convenient store only to find both restrooms out of order!!! Porta Jon!! I knew there would be a few at the new apartments in the heart of downtown. PJ found and crisis averted but I rolled up to the AO at 5:14.59! I hopped out of the car yelling out DiCCs and let’s mosey!!
We took off towards the tracks as 2 more cars rolled in….AUDIBLE #1 circle back for the late guys. Gerber and I led the way back to the AO to pick up the lone Pax only to discover they were not pax and were headed inside a building with Yoga mats… We gone!
Warmup:
Mosey from AO, down Another Bad Idea and along the back streets of Waxhaw to our final resting place at Pizza Hut. Circle up!
SSH x 10 IC
Merkins x 5 IC – Regular, Wide, Diamond
MC x IC
I think I skipped the calf stretch!! Sorry Gerber
The Thang:
Partner up:
P1 runs around the building, P2 walking lunges – Down and back 600 yards
Suicides:
#1 Burpee at each of the 7 cones increasing by 1/ 5 squats at the start – Stop at the end
#2 Alternate Carolina Dry Docks 5/10/5/10 at each cone/10-speed skaters at the start
Capt. Therkin 1 BBSU / 4 random ab exercises w/ 4 merkins 2/8/4 etc.
Partner up:
P1 inchworms across the lot, P2 runs a lap Audible #2 YHC decided the inchworm was too easy and changed to bear crawl. When you reached the end crawl bear back. RECOVER
We headed straight back to the AO and arrived at 5:15.10ish
Solid work by all and it felt great to Q again, and thanks for letting me lead! Merry Christmas fellas!!! Thanks to Mad Dog for taking us out.
Announcements
Legal Zoom on Q @ Clyent Dinner
Great stuff this morning men. Cobains here as I could only remember 24 of the 26 pax that posted. Not bad for not recording, and a convergence to boot. Speaking of convergence – a great mix of Area51 and SOB pax – roughly 50/50. Area51 hopes to return the favor at Bagpipe on NYE.
After YHC planted the SF, and Hopper reminded everyone they couldn’t sue anyone or anything, off we went.
The remainder of this backblast will be very little Thang and more Moleskinny.
Hopper had us pair up after COP and we ran some stairs, did a myriad of merkins. One thing to note during the stair work – Wingman was defying gravity and wisdom by jumping down 4 or 5 stairs at a time. Don’t tell his M. YHC partnered with Jazz Hands – great nickname.
Must insert here that despite Kirby’s HC on Slack yesterday – he was a fartsacker. Hope he shows on NYE. Cooter2 was there and pushing hard. Other random comments – didn’t see Frehley’s workout hanky? By the way, he’s got some Clemson tix to sell you if you feel like a trip to Arizona to watch Ohio State and the Tiggers. Can they both lose? If not, then better that Ohio State loses – no offense Hopper…actually, hope I did offend.
We did some circuit work, and YHC partnered with Spackler. The guy runs hard & well…just doesn’t do much of anything else. He may be better served at Fast Twitch.
Some other sundry observations:
Mighty Mite was wearing St. Nick’s lid…bet that smells tasty at this point. Geraldo was wearing a Santa Clause coat/t-shirt. You guys should’ve gotten a picture together and sent it as a Xmas present to all your fellow rucktards.
Jet Fuel was there – and that was noteworthy as he doesn’t post Tuesday’s very often…neither does Lorax and he was chatty and not hearing YHC’s instructions.
Snowflake and Snuka….I mean seriously. Do any of you think you’ll still be posting at F3 when you’re 58. We should open a book on that. Market Timer can run it.
Tagalong’s beard will still be posting in 20+ years when he’s 58….the beard will be 37.
Puddin’ Pop cleared some folks out….I think…during COP. Par. For. The. Course.
We did some other stuff for YHC’s portion of the Q including some box jump, double-squat burpees, Wallthar N’Djaiye’s, Burpees, People’s Chair variations, blah, blah, blah.
Cheddar – thankful for you brother. God’s continued grace to you and your M. and 2.0 in Chicago. We’ll miss you. Come back and see us.
Gotta run and grab a beer with Spackler at the Lodge, so I’ll end there….actually one more thing:
I can’t end a Christmas Eve backblast without saying the following: I am grateful for all of my F3 brothers. I pray for you guys often. My most consistent prayer is that all of you and your loved ones, if you haven’t already –> find hope, not just at this time of year, but always. Hope in that which is true, trustworthy and lasting forever. Most of you know I’ve found that hope in this holiday’s namesake. It’s not a religion or a bunch of do’s/don’ts. It’s a faith, moreover a trust, in this dude named Jesus. Do you know Him? I’d love to grab coffee, lunch or a beer with anyone who wants to talk about this hope.
Merry Christmas, men. Emmanuel.
When the decision was made to converge the great SOB/A51 hybrid sites for the weeks around Christmas and New Years, YHC thought “hey thats a neat idea.” Then somebody mentioned that a “swifter” should Q the FT workout today to which I thought “gee that’d be swell.” Then Purrell suggested YHC should do it…well the trend ended there, but he thought it was a good idea and so we found ourselves in the gloom embarking on a bit of an adventure. You see, YHC had never posted at Latin prior to this morning. Complicating things further, this would be the first time I’d attempted to Q a running workout… so… here goes.
The Thang:
Gather round the parking lot and at the tick of 0515 wait for Voodoo to clamber out of his soccer-mom-mobile and tie is shoes so we could commence warming up at 0516. Mosey around the big new building adjacent to the track, around behind same building and back down to the track (much to Haze’s protestations.)
Partner up with a PAX about your speed for AMRAP running work
Partner 1: Commence 400 intervals with 200 recovery
Partner 2: Run the same loop as during warm up (about .4 miles)
Flapjack. Repeato. The partners figure out the right way to switch out, but quite a few “I’m halfway through the 400” happened. By YHC’s math, the faster pairs completed 13-14 400s before I called everyone back to the gate.
Divide the group of “partner 1s” and “partner 2s” into 2 teams
Team 1:Flipper, Turkey Leg, Wild Turkey, Purple Haze, Woodson, Alf, Rosie
Team 2: Taco Stand, VooDoo, Laronda, Citgo, Astro, Wolverine, Purell
4 PAX from each team walk over to the far corner for a 7X200 relay as outlined above with a bit of a wrinkle (more on that later.) It was quite the event, ending in a narrow margin victory by team 1.
Mosey back around the building for a final cool down and back to the cars for COT with HawkPipe.
YE SKINNY MOLESKIN:
Today was much more of a success than I could have possibly hoped, with the PAX getting into the variety of format and grinding out some very aggressive turns during the 400 intervals. By 45 minutes in I was completely smoked and called the unplanned race segment as a way to camouflage the state of my flagging legs.
The relay was truly Epic, with TacoStand getting Team 2 off to a great start and opening close to 100 meter lead out of the gate. The margin opened and closed intermittently over the following legs with Woodson bringing team 1’s deficit down to about 25 meters right at the end. YHC was running to catch Wolverine (and hand off to Rosie who was the team 1 anchor) but the respect is strong and my legs were as mentioned before. Upon reaching the opposite corner imagine my surprise to see the bald greatness of Purrel, rocking his wife’s tights yet again, awaiting the tag from YHC. Off he went, and dang that man is FAST. Little did YHC know, Rosie is nursing a bit of a bum foot and Purrel convinced him to flop teams when the lead continued to be significant for team 2. Purrel, not to be beaten by his own artifice, blazed through 200 meters in what looked like 30 seconds flat to edge Rosie by a thin margin.
Also, Thin Mint and Polly were around somewhere doing the rogue thing… see them for details
Today’s workout was targeted at friendly competition, both in the pairings and the race. Having an adversary who can challenge us to put that next little bit into our performance encourages us to stretch, dig deep and develop performance in a way our internal motivation often can’t. Find somebody who tests you, and beat them, rinse then repeat.
YHC is reminded this time of year how much I am blessed by my strength of body and the strength of support I receive every day from the PAX. In year 6, YHC continues to be amazed by the power of this thing we call F3. Thank you to Purell for letting me be a part of FastTwitch, and to my brothers for being a part of your lives.
I truly hope each and every one of you has an amazing holiday week and enjoys time with your families and friends for Christmas.
Flipper Out
As a new year dawns in South Charlotte, it’s time to announce the establishment of a new series of strength workouts, including new days of the week and new locations. Pay attention so you know where to be starting on Monday, January 6th:
Please note that Skunkworks will be unaffected by this change. Funky Cold and Tulip will continue to run that site at Covenant Day School in Matthews on Tuesdays at 0530.
The goal is for these three sites to work together on a coordinated strength program during certain parts of the year (similar to Bratwurst’s 1-month rotations at Swift). If you joined us for the Total Tension program earlier this year, it will be like that, but with a few different programs being run throughout the year. During a strength program, the site Qs or weekly Qs will lead the prescribed workout and post a backblast. When there’s not a strength program in effect, they will function like a traditional gear site with weekly Qs leading workouts of their own design (and also writing up backblasts).
The first strength workout is a modified version of a prep program for the StrongFirst Girevik Level I certification. I recommend reading the original post, which can be found here. I have modified this plan (see here) to reflect a few things:
I am excited for this new chapter in strength workouts in South Charlotte. I’m hopeful that some new locations will make these options attractive to more men from both Area 51 and SOBland.
See you in the gloom,
Voodoo