In the gloom War Eagle asked, “so whatcha’ got planned for today’s workout, Cooter?” I went on to explain how I got talked into running in the Palmetto 200 relay race in March (I’m in way over my head…) and how today my training schedule says I’m supposed to run 6 miles of Hills. War Eagle shot back, “That’s not my problem!” I then displayed my new reflective running vest to all when Olaf quipped, “did they only have size small?” Tough crowd. It was time so we launched.
Side note> I’ve always heard veteran Pax tell stories of how they went from fat and lazy to running half marathons after joining F3 and many times they attribute their success to other Pax “talking them into” doing something that feels impossible to them at the time. One of the other Pax believed in them enough to ask them to step way out of their comfort zone and try to do something that sounds crazy. I’ve always enjoyed those stories. Now I can say I’ve had that happen to me. After the Makeshift 10k a few months ago, I was enjoying my runners high and began running off at the mouth to Blackbeard about how I’d like to do “one of those relays” one day. Once I managed to get a couple of 10ks under my belt I felt 10 feet tall and bullet proof, I guess. The next day, Blackbeard texted me asking if I’d like to do the Palmetto 200 relay with him and 7 other Pax in late March. “You can totally do it”, he said. I initially thought he was crazy because “I’m not a runner” but he was persistent and said he wasn’t going to leave me alone until I committed. So, as I like to say, I was “talked into doing it”. Thank you, Blackbeard – I think!?! Happy Meal is one of the other 7 Pax who is stepping out for the challenge. Iron Sharpens Iron, and once again I’m thankful for my F3 brothers. Back to the workout now:
10 Pax headed off for COP on the other side of the theatre, soon to be joined by Floor Slappper to make 11.
-SSH x 10
-Hillbilly x 10
-Potato pickers x 10
-Plank Jack Merkins x 10
-MC x 10
Mosey to the Murderhorn and partner up for laps around neighborhood circle. P1 goes left and P2 goes right. Down the hill and meet your partner at the bottom for 5 socially distant hand slap merkins. Back up the hill to the start for plank and wait on the 6. 2 more laps ensued.
Now that we’re warm and toasty, we moseyed over to the top of the Murderhorn for 7’s (burpees at the bottom of the hill at the first street light and monkey humpers at the top of the hill).
Lunge walk, high knees and butt kickers down the hill to the 2nd street light not without a healthy dose of grumbling and mumbling from the Pax. Run back up the hill to the top for some mary. All in, we got about 2 miles of hills in. Nice work! But we’re just getting started.
Mosey down the sidewalk towards Ballantyne Commons and grab some curb for incline merkins. This is the point where Loogie tried to put a stop to me. He was not successful. So we moseyed some more this time over to the fountain for 10 incline merkins w/ the clap (say what?) lead by DranoII, followed by 10 derkins called by Rousey, and since that was so much fun, Floor Slapper lead us in 10 dips to wrap up this set. No one fell into the fountain.
Mosey to Ballantyne Commons entrance to shopping center where Happy Meal lead us in some Mary that was short lived because of the car that wouldn’t stop following us.
We headed back behind the shopping center where YHC called exercises at every speed bump. Thankfully the PAX shouted out the 3 minute warning so we chalked that and headed straight back to the launch. Long run back, but sometimes you just gotta push yourself.
2 miles of hills + 1.3 non-hilly miles = 3.3 miles for the workout + 1.7 miles for the pre-runners = 5 miles in all. Well done.
Moleskin:
I always enjoy the opportunity to push myself and each other at NoE. What a great goup today. Drano, good to see you again, my friend. Thanks for the pre-run push and I hope your calf gets better. Floor Slapper was casually late (per the usual) and then fell right in and started cranking out the work. Mic Check is a beast. Great having you with us on the pre-run and telling us all about how you waded through ice cold water at the Spartan Race. That sounds like it sucked. Olaf, great work today and thanks for taking us out. And btw, I purposefully bought my reflective vest on the petite side as to not mess up all my aerodynamics. Rousey crushed it as usual and he has been quite a force lately. Keep posting and blaring music in your bad@ss car. Circuit City makes it look effortless. Thank you for the opportunity to lead today. Happy Meal was also talked into running the P200. Lord help us all! Teddy, this was no Devil’s Turn but not too shabby, eh? Nice work today. War Eagle, thank you for the pre-run push and always leading by example. And then there’s Loogie. Oh Loogie. You had me scared a few times during the workout. You’re a pretty big ‘ole dude even with your 50 year old shoulder. Respect.
Announcements:
*Blood Drive Feb 18th at Brace YMCA. Sign up on Slack or Mighty Mite will come find you.
*Midriff and Thin Mint are doing a 50k run at some mountain. Sounds terrible. But if you’re into that sort of thing, you can sign up on Slack.
Thanks for humoring me today! God bless you all.
Cooter2
With apologies, the Company will not reimburse for tonight’s Clyent Dinner. Expecting a night out with drinks, steaks, and good conversation, the pax instead found only silliness. We did some new and little-used exercises, such as:
We sang some songs in cadence while moseying about boogers and granny. Plus we did some real exercises. Most of the kids had fun, except for the kid who cried (sorry Blue Screen), and everyone got a little exercise. Enjoyed being with you all.
Announcements: the now infamous blood drive and a Rice n’ Bean/Christ Closet giveaway coming up Feb. 20th. Blue Screen took us out.
Peace.
***Note : Site Q Slingshot is not only posting on behalf of Queen but apologizing for being a week overdue in doing so***
18 PAX came in for the beast that we call Hydra. I decided to stay around campus, but tried to make it fairly tough to minimize chatter. Here is how it went:
Disclaimer – very standard
COP
SSH x 25
IW x 20
Low Slow Squat x 15
Slow Merkin x 10
Mosey to the Small Field
Merkin ladder 16, 15, 14, etc.
Mosey to the playground and partner up
Partner 1 runs full lap around school, not cut through on grass
Partner 2 does sets of 15 air squats, 10 LBCs, 5 pull ups
Repeat for 3 sets
Mosey to the benches around the tree
Partner 1 runs to the far parking lot entrance and back
Partner 2 does sets of 20 dips and 10 step ups each leg
Mosey back to launch
Moleskin: The 16 Ladder merkins were pretty brutal for everyone except Proehl. He literally lapped everybody by the end. We can hate on him all we want for his age, but if most of us went back 20-30 years in time, he’d still be killing us……..I was worried that we might not have enough room on the pull up bars. Oh, no need to worry there. I think I saw maybe 5 or 6 of the PAX actually doing any of those. The refusals were near an all time high. You would have thought I called out burpees or something. We had guys opting out like they were UNC football players and this was a bowl game…..The exact length of the lap around the school is still up for debate. I had some guys telling me it was under 3/10ths of a mile and others were claiming it was .4. After 136 merkins, it was long enough.
Thanks for Sling Shot and Jet Fuel for the opportunity to Q.
– Queen
So this is Pursuit. Not much to tell other than we ran for an hour. Not much happened that was funny, per se…
Shout out to ExLax for getting out there and crushing it! The man has a goal of a 35 minute 5k and is already seconds away. I give him another month and he’ll be all over it! (Or should I say… under it?)
Shout out to Posse and Fusebox joining today and encouraging ExLax as well as going for a goal of their own which I believe is a non-stop 5k (you run the whole time rather than stopping for a breather). I think they got close but came up just short. Way to set a goal and go for it fellas! Who cares if you come up short. (This time). It just means you get to keep trying. I know they will and they will achieve it when the time is right.
THANG:
The route we did is officially called “Pursuit: Frank and Beans” but I will call it Twig and Berries from this day forth. The funny thing is, I live right on the tip of the “Frank” or Twig?. Insert “Just the Tip” joke here…
Announcements
Blood Drive, January 6th. A couple of spots left as of this morning. Hopefully those were filled as of this publication…
CSAUP February 6th – I could write a paragraph or two about this but the main points are get out Next Saturday and join us for what will be a memorable event for the Waxhaw PAX and any others that join us. I really look forward to the 2nd F afterward. It’s been a while since we gathered for anything other than a workout.
A couple of other CSAUPs are coming in March.
Beer Mile: drink a beer and run a 1/4 mile, R/R until 1 mile is reached and 4 beers have been consumed. There are more rules but you get the gist.
Rooster: Individuals or Teams of 2 or 5 run a marathon distance on a 1 mile course. Get your teams together and go kick some a$$ WAXHAW!
9 were not afraid to venture out to explore some new Floater territory. Multi-PAX disclaimer given.
Warm Up:
Mosey to Cox Law Firm, PLLC. All IC-Mountain climbers x 10, Plank Jacks x10, peter parkers x10; Maktjar Ndiaye x 10, elbow Parker Peters x10
Thang:
From there, run up Providence to CVS. At every third light, 10 Merkins and 10 squats. There were 258 lights so do the math. CVS-some mary until the 6 arrived
Run from there to the cleanest Burger King in Waxhaw-We did Merkins, elbow planks and some other stuff, not sure all what we did there but we were subjected to at least three terrible puns by the comedians of the group.
Main Event:
Keep moving to Providence Farms, a lovely but rather hidden residential community
We stopped at the bottom, small hill on one end and large hill on the other end. .25 miles end to end
Run up the hill, 20 15 Bomb Jacks, back down and at other end, 15 Jump Squats, in the middle, 15 Monkey Humpers. We repeated this 2 times, most got to go up the large hill 3 times to get back to Providence.
Thang2:
Back down Providence, at every driveway/street, complete 10 merkins, 10 dry docks.
Cross the street. Up Keith Jong’s dirty Hill, at halfway point, run backwards up hill.
To half wall, dips, 20 Derkins to close out the day.
Approx 3.4 mi.
Moleskin:
Shame on the Floater Site Q’s for not finding this hill earlier. Only had 4 years to find it. Little bit of a trek to get there but it’s always good to try something new, which I’m definitely not known for. Plenty of merkins and running, stayed dry, plus no train and no burpees, headlamps and reflective gear for days, doesn’t get much better than that.
MadDog comes in announcing that he couldn’t wait to be the six, yet moments later FNG Veritas (works for Apologia and is going on 8 kids, yes we missed an opportunity there) comes strolling in claiming his six throne. Rough first day, I Apoligized.
Chastain, Easy Button, Ice9 and Bottlecap love them some hills, so they were happy and likely the culprits of the bad Burger King puns (YHC was in deep Q focus). All sprinting up and hoping that they will be #1 when a Strava segment is eventually created.
Shake’s favorite movie is/was Talladega Nights, hence the name. Plus he stated that if we were going all the way to Alma Village like my last Q, he would bar we from ever Q’ing The Floater again. Ouch.
Dasher made sure we all had excuses for why we weren’t at Express on Tuesday before he would work out today. Good thing we set up a separate Group Me channel to come up with the excuse.
Twinkle Toes openly admitted he used to write backblasts in his early F3 days but since there are so many new guys, knew he could get away with pretending he could not (maybe).
Announcements:
Easy Button loves being a new site Q. Floater sign ups needed
16 eating yesterday at Appetizer! In the mix several pax and 2.0’s to do a warm up, Paula Abdul 11’s combination of LBC’s and burpees, and a 4 corner spritzer. Got in 2.0 miles tonight and had fun. We ended with a special prayer for shop dog’s father and family as they mourn the loss and celebrate the life of Mr Shop Dogs dad, then naming an FNG Lexie Brawn AKA “Goldfish” Goldfish is one of three daughters from Tim Brawn – Tanya Teen! Great having you all there.
In attendance: trickle; tumbleweed, Zinfandel, the dude, the bean, c3pO, Rubbermaid, freestyle, bolt, banjo, T1000, Lefty, and twinkle toes! Thanks everyone for a great workout together. See ya next time. – https://strava.app.link/qV0ia3CWodb
The commitment to run a workout and torture my fellow PAX is an easy decision. The hard part is finding time in the evenings to document said event in between all the day trading and trying to keep up with the 96000 posts in the Playhouse. I find a lot of joy in running us all around but man, after a long day of telling people what to do at work, sitting here typing up a two-day old workout is like looking at the stale donut in the box. Is it worth it? I hope so and for those of you reading this, you are likely enjoying the diatribe of the day.
The Thang
Mosey to front of the school
Mosey to the walkway and add a little bear crawl in for a good gesture along the way to the back of the school
Run to the start of the path
Alternate 5 squats and 2 burpees at each light to the end of the trail
Find Some wall for shoulder presses and jabs
Run to the circle by the high school
Triple Nickel between the benches and the bottom circle
5 Merkins at the bottom, 5 dips at the top, repeat 5 times
Run back to the start – 3.6 Miles for a hell of a workout
Announcements
7 m3n assembled on the paved plains at the southwest corner of 51 and Rea Rd for another edition of Meathead hoping that the rain would hold off (spoiler alert: it did). Somewhat disclaimed we began to move in place as we most often do.
5xReverse Lunges (R/L)
5xMerkins on your bells
5xBent Rows
5xSnatch (R/L)
Hard plank
Hollow Body Hold
Glute Bridge
Flutter Presses
Freddie Mercury (accompanied by Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody)
Moleskin:
Announcements
When Glidah asked me to Q ignition I was excited about it. I Plan and then re-plan, and then erase everything. Had just 1 mile loop in plan all others had been erased. As always I have good number of PAX on my Q.
Mosse to cuthbertson road and see a cop vehicle guarding the entrance. Planned to circle up for some exercise, but PAX warned of the danger of cars coming in. Scrap the circle time and mosse back to school. Do few exercise and let the runners take off and come back for the six. Stop at the high school entrance stop sign. Few more exercise and then run a mile into the neighborhood. Now am exhausted as I had not posted for few weeks before that. This is the 1 mile loop that was not erased from the original plan. Had the Pax run the loop with mike-tysons at the start, Jump squats a the other end and speed skaters at the 3rd end of the loop.
Back to middle school entrance stopping for few exercise in between. Do some Big bois, donkey kicks. Partner up. Partner 1 runs around the middle school parking lot, other partner does dips and airpresses and alternate. Mosse to cafeteria. Step ups and run to shed, come back, incline merkins and run back to the shed. Lots of miles. Back to COT from shed with 5 burpies at lamp posts. End with American hammers.
I had missed F3 for few weeks and it’s been tough. Glad I was able to be back and Q again. PAX did rallied around me as I was struggling and are great encouragement.