Saturday morning. A little light dusting of the snow came last night while we were all nestled in our beds with visions of Popeye dancing in our heads.
5 minutes early arrival
I read the playhouse to see what was the chatter
one said “unofficial” OYO
and hike the other said “roads are fine” and he was running through the trails
i arrived to find no one here, so I did what anyone else would do and covered the Q.
DCCS covered – gorgeous morning
head for a mile mosey to warm up
SSH, IW, merkins, LBCs and j-los
mosey for 3.5 miles
Crap, it’s only been 30 minutes. Bored out of my mind. Keep running thinking about Strava art
mosey mosey mosey
sprints, then rocks, then merkins, then more mosey, mosey mosey.
get to 4.
get to 5.
say hello to officer on his patrol here at Kensington, “all good, everyone else stayed in so…” alright now you be good – he says with a smile.
finish with high stepping more merkins and 100 LBCs.
back blast.
I learned that I would not be here if I had to do it this way every week. Week in week out, individually. I don’t say much during the workout, it’s fun to hear the chatter about others, their jabs, jokes, laughing, pushing, sweating and connect and make sure a fellow pax got past that hurdle they have been trying to at work or at home or out here.
we have worked out in much worse and I missed you guys today.
cheers!
These frigid, black January mornings aren’t so bad when your team’s in the playoffs.
Most of you made that connection years ago but, as a Cincinnati Bengals fan, this buzz is unfamiliar to me.
Sure, they’ve put together some decent records and have qualified for the postseason several times over the past two decades, but the Bengals haven’t been in the playoffs for more than 30 years. To say I’m excited would be quite an understatement. Heck, even our very own Icky Shuffle, who has his own complicated history with the Bungles, admitted to having pumped his fist and let out a celebratory (involuntary?) cheer as Money McPherson’s 52-yarder cleared the uprights last weekend to send Cincinnati to the AFC Championship game.
Despite the challenge that awaits Sunday in KC, it’s been a fun week. Heck, it’s been a fun season! So when Voodoo texts with a “hey, can you Q tomorrow” it’s a no-brainer. Certainly I can spare an hour from watching Joe Burrow hype videos and singing Who Dey parodies alone in my office. In fact, why not bring a little of the ‘Nati to Meathead?
So we did.
No, we didn’t get “creative” with our rep counts – matching player jersey numbers, memorable game scores or even years of ineptitude. We did, however, mix in a few of my Paul Brown Stadium favorite hits along with my normal barrage of 90’s alternative, early 00’s pop-punk and, more recent indie-pop tunes. So with the likes of “Bang the Drum All Day,” “Jungle Boogie,” and “Welcome to the Jungle” blaring in the background, here’s what we did:
Pregame
SSH x 20
IW x 20
2-hand swing x 10
Merkins x 10
low, slow squat x 10
2-hand swing x 10
Merkins x 10
Good Morning w/bell x 10
2-hand swing x 10
Gametime
A. Clean/Press
B. Squat/Clean
C. Heavy swing/Lawnmower
Q’s Choice:
Right leg walking lunge w/bell x 8, suitcase carry 50 yards, Romanian deadlift Right leg x 8
Left leg walking lunge w/bell x 8, suitcase carry 50 yards, Romanian deadlift Left leg x 8
Waiter carry w/bell 50 yards, High pull right x 10
Waiter carry w/bell 50 yards, High pull left x 10
Single arm snatch R x 10
Single arm snatch L x 10
Postgame
2-minute plank – elbows, hands, left arm high, left leg high, regular, right arm high, right leg high, regular, elbows
Hollow body hold x 1 minute
Presser
Fun morning with bits of mumble chatter mixed throughout to keep things interesting. Yes, much of the talk involved football and even included discussions around the origins of the Bengals “Who Dey” battlecry and debate over which came first, “Who Dey” or the Saints’ “Who Dat?”
Following the spreadsheet makes putting together a Weinke pretty cut and dry but engineering a playlist is always fun. As always, I appreciate the opportunity to lead, as well as the pax generous indulgence in my playoff excitement. Who Dey!
Bluescreen’s last day as a 62-year old boy (hit panic button)! Birthday is tomorrow but still made everyone pay with 63 (9 reps x 7 sets) burpees flexed in between sprints to target and seven kettlebell circuits.
Rows
Extensions
Swings
Press
Elective
Cleans
Twists
That all equals R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and lots of heavy breathing and Ice9 screams and vomit.
520a and YHC sneaks around the backside of target. Sees strange car parked in the lot. Nevermind them, scoot down enough so they can’t see you unload something from the back of the land yacht.
525a roll into launch and see a couple of passport fellas looking for a new stamp.
530a disclaimer given and we are 10 strong and off.
20 SSH In Cadence
20 IW IC
20 Windmill IC
Find some parking lines
Lunge walk to next line
20 Merkins
Repeat.
High Knees to next line
Butt Kickers to next line
Bear crawl to next line
Crawl Bear to the next line
That got us across the parking lot in front of GNC.
Mosey to the Rock pile at the Church. Grab a lifting rock and make your way to the lot on the right.
Line up.
20 Curls and Run to island
20 Presses and Run to island
20 Tricep Curls and Run to island
20 Bent over rows and Run to island
20 half curls
20 top curls
20 full curls
Run all the way to the end
20 LBCs while we wait.
Take the rocks back and mosey beside target
20 Carolina Dry Docks
run
20 CDD (stay away from Frehleys. You should always stay away from Frehleys)
run
20 CDD
Plank
Mosey to the drop off point from 520 to find a couple of plates.
2 on hairburners (timer)
4 on the wall with sets of 20 air presses
4 on the up and down the hill
rotate out from hairburners to the wall. 2 from wall to hill, 2 from hill to hairburners
repeat until we all got two sets of hairburners. #crowdpleaser
Dolly, ChippyCross
Run b/n speed bumps and alternate 20 squats, 20 squat jumps
hold plank at 6 inches.
Find some wall for Balls to the Wall with 5 inverted merkins. Repeat.
Mosey back to launch for 1min at six inches.
done.
Shout out to @landslide and @stag for grabbing another stamp. Way to push through the hairburners!
Wild Turkey – killing it up the hill with me today. pushing each other for one-more-run.
Frehleys – leading rock sets. no rock is a replacement for a bell. made it look easy
Teddy – hard push through the hairburners.
Rousey – always giving 110%. You were IC with your count on the dolly thru 10. then.. not so much. 🙂
Right Turn said, “should have gone to Devil’s Turn”. You kicked ass anyways.
Cable Guy – no stopping him. all out warrior. shorts and all.
Circuit City – always smiling, encouraging. equally pushing hard thru the burners.
Great work by all today. Good group. Everyone came to work. You got it.
Thanks to turkey for the take out.
–announcements–
SOBeer Run. Feb 26h. More details coming soon. Expect a early afternoon launch. Start/Finish at Bradshaws. 4/8 mile options.
Run a bit. Drink some beer. Run some more. Repeat.
This is the home version of the brewery run. You don’t want to miss this!
Disclaimer: This is YHC’s second backblast in two days. I’m turning to the Waxhaw-side.
YHC was tapped to Q one of the three Wednesday workouts that all occur within 1 mile of each other. Because, I dunno, it’s F3. Why not have two gear workouts within walking, rucking, or running distance of each other. Meanwhile the bootcamp workout just stares at you from across the room thinking, “we were here first and everything was fine until you guys had to show up with all your gear. There are perfectly good rocks that you could lift and carry, but oh no, gotta spend inordinate amounts of money on iron things measured in kgs or overpriced backpacks with hip belts and matching duffle bags filled with sand. Call us old fashioned but we were just fine with our rocks and running 2 – 3 miles. No one still alive complained about bootcamps and no one was stealing the hotbox on rainy days. Now you guys have earned a view of our superb monkey humper form.”
But I digress, back to the assignment of the Q. YHC was voluntold to Q SACS because he called out a certain site-Q’s expert Q schedule planning strategy during COT at Centurion. Said strategy is a copy/paste of that sister gear workout Meathead, corner someone on Slack and tell them they’re the Q. Vague references to public shaming. That’s it.
So at 0511 YHC rolls into the parking lot. Cheese Curd was already there. Likely running away from his fatherly duties to the new puppy. His M and 2.0s shamed him into getting convinced him it was a good idea (spoiler alert, it’s going as well as one would expect a new puppy in a new home would go two weeks in). As YHC stepped out of the car, Wild Turkey, Flipper, and Geraldo all pulled in like they planned it. One after the other, like they needed YHC to take the brunt of the puppy whining before they showed up.
The crew gets out of their cars and starts slapping sandbags on the ground like the large phallic-looking items they are. All this talk about who’s carrying what, mine’s bigger than yours, look at this someone’s carrying a whale dick.
YHC corrals this rag-tag group of part-time ruckers and full-time slackers into something resembling a workout. Comments are made about who didn’t show up *cough* Focker *cough* and then we ruck-up and head out of the parking lot for a 1 mile warm-up of the route for the challenge. As we exit the parking lot, a CINTAS truck comes in on two wheels. We all have the same thought, that guy is lost.
Never mind, it’s Rousey. Wild Turkey, meanwhile, floats a story about Rousey tricking pax into unloading his truck during a workout all in the name of “fitness”. More like, someone found a group of suckers. That’s a #promove Rousey. Well done, sir.
Once Rousey’s ruck was packed with starched uniforms, resume the route. All the way down Strawberry Ln to Rosecliff, turn around and ruck back. It’s .5 mile one-way. So 1 mile round-trip there, math majors. Ruck weight was standard 30 pounds. After, the pax went through some dynamic warmup moves and stretching. We did a few laps upping the weight, each time, as we went. Had to get a strong warmup before kicking off the main challenge. Two notable events occurred during these laps:
Like the light at the end of the tunnel that is a train, it was time to begin the main event. Pax loaded up with their own choice of weight. See below:
* Cheese Curd and Wild Turkey, switched up at some point and again later in the mile. YHC supervised and assisted in the transition. To Wild Turkey’s credit, he was managing the ruck + sandbag, with a kettlebell in one hand. Throwing off one’s balance and the sandbag kept shifting off his shoulders. To Cheese Curd’s credit, he switched with Wild Turkey, and carried the kettlebell against his chest to minimize the weight shift. It was a struggle, but these guys pushed through and completed another Pathfinder class this week with a smoking APFT score. Smart, strong, and efficient. T-claps, men.
At the end, no one was happy with the challenge. There were groans, curses, strange noises not heard in the daylight, and the group felt the pain all day. But all we’re stronger for it. We completed the challenge. Welcome to SACS, “concept … walk with heavy stuff is a weekly occurrence. Some days we walk longer than others … ”
Oh yeah, and Flipper sucks at fantasy football. We all learned that today.
Waxstravaganza Pre-Blast
Saturday, February 12, 2022
leave from 200 McDonald Avenue, Waxhaw NC 28173
7:00 – Ruck launch
7:33 – Bootcamp Launch
11:00 – Waxhaw Taphouse for 2nd F
Disclaimer given and off 7 PAX went into the gloom.
Warm up: SSH, WINDMILL, IW, (9th PAX One Star joins us, HB
The Thang!
SECTION 1: Store front window shopping.
Five exercises at each of six store entries and run back to start. The rounds – Merkins, LBCs, Burpees (C3PO tribute proclaimed). Mary for the 6 between rounds.
SECTION 2: Partner Big Boy Wall Climbs behind Target
Partner 1 does Big Boy Sit Ups while partner 2 does 7 wall climbs and returns (alternating lead leg for each rep encouraged. Tags partner to switch – three rounds.
While YHC was checking the digital winkie…One Star observes “I’ve never seen anyone bring a Kindle to a workout.”
SECTION 3: Grab Some Wall
Citizen counts for all.
People’s chair x3 (20 shoulder presses, hold then 10 shoulder presses with right leg up, hold and flap jack to left for another 10 presses).
Balls to the wall – feet on ledge. Derkins for 15 count then Mike Tysons for 10.
Irkins – 10 regular, 10 right leg, 10 left leg
Section 4: Dips in the fountain
Swarmed around Bratwurst who was doing his post run stretching. Citizen count digs from 12 down to 2 with one more good luck.
Return to launch for 3 minutes of Mary – Freddy Mercury (Trickle), Flutters (Odd Job), Down and Dirties? (One Star)…seriously what did you call that “Carolina Dry Dock swoop down into 6-inch plank and rise up to Cobra thing” we did 8 times?
COT:
Announcements: Bratwurst promoted 3rd F Timekeeper at 6:30 Tuesday’s after Bagpipe at Einstein Bagel. New book discussing “2nd Mountain” starting up. What’s next after you climb that mountain in life to conjuring personal growth and live to serve others?
One Star reminded us that Taco Stand leaves Thursday to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. He’s been challenged to leave behind an F3 sticker or trowel flag. It was either an announcement our prayer request…either way safe travels and much respect TacoStand.
Take out – Trickle
It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.
Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters led by Wild Turkey has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of Stone-Hoth-enge.
The evil lord Darth Helmet, obsessed with finding young(ish) Wild Turkey, has dispatched thousands of backblasts and into the far reaches of space….
Camera zooms to Wild Turkey and Lex “Solo” Luthor riding tautauns for a pre-run. Along the way Lex wryly states, “There isn’t enough life on this ice cube to fill a space cruiser.” No sooner did he finish his words, did Happy “Wampa” Meal emerged from a snow drift . The trio return to the rebel base to find it bustling with hearty soldiers emerging from ice-crusted vehicles. Without warning, the AO is under attack from Empire Star Destroyers who’ve located the pax. With shields breaking down and an ion cannon providing cover, the rebels narrowly escape. “You will go to the Dagobah Parking Garage”, whispers the voice of Luke’s fallen Jedi Master O-Mr. Bean Kenobi. Training proves difficult. A despondent Turkey is told by Yoda, “Do or do not, there is no modification!” INSERT training montage with Turkey and Pax swinging on vines, doing flips and running with Yoda in a rucksack. Their Jedi training (nearly) complete the pax zoom to Cloud City with the promise of safety. Despite the pax’s best efforts, the crew end the workout in peril. Lex in carbonite, Turkey missing a hand and working out daddy issues, and a besmirched Tagalong who after declaring his love to Lex was given a smirk and told, “I know.” Awkward. Tune into 1983 when the Pax fly to Endor to learn to prepare for GoRuck by carrying logs with Ewoks.
Warm-up
SSH, horizontal SSH (snow-angels), mountain climbers and plank jacks
Tusken Raider Sand(people) bags
Thrusters, flutter press, curl & press, sit-ups
Dagobah Parking deck
20 push-ups, 20 squats and 20 lunges each level going up
Burpee elevator 10 – 6 going down
assorted wall work – air press, donkey kicks, shoulder taps + Mary going up
Polar bear crawl challenge in the snow at top
Burpee elevator going down 6 -1
Return home and endex. 3+ miles ran.
Moleskin
I was truly relieved and flattered by the strong showing. Thank you for braving the weather. The veteran crew put in the work this morning!
May the force be with you!
From Sons of Ballantyne in Charlotte, North Carolina welcome to GUTS The Brave, the action sports show that’s gonna make you sweat!
The action sports show that asks, “Do You Have It????” AUDIENCE: GUTS!
And now, let’s meet today’s fearless players!
Today, our players will be tackling our radical parking deck, the Aggro Crag, where almost anything can happen! The pax with the most points at the end of all of our events is the winner and he will be take home a glowing piece of our awesome rock! Now remember folks, all of our events here in F3 are specifically designed with our players’ safety in mind! They will be wearing safety equipment, and they will have a professional stunt director and stunt spotters with them at all times, are led by peers in a rotating fashion with no training or certification necessary, so please, do not try this at home!
It’s time… to… AUDIENCE: SPILL YOUR GUTS!!!
The Aggro Crag
Final Scores
Announcements
Truth Nuggets