With the announcement of Bratwurst’s return, 7 PAX put on their shorts, shoes and headlamps to venture out for the Landen- Ardrey 5mi Loop at Blakovery. Arriving at his usual time (5:15), Bratwurst took off out of his Toyota and there we went.
This is the Landen-Ardrey route: leaving the AO going down Rea towards Elevation Church. Turn right into Landen subdivision, then right onto Hirsch Drive. left on Hanworth Trace Drive, left on Albury Walk Lane, right onto Castlebay, left onto Tonawanda Drive, right onto Burnside Ln, onto Ardrey Woods, from there somehow we ended up making a left onto Community House, right onto Ardrey Kell and back to home base for stretching led by Paper Jam.
MOLESKIN
Usually I have some words of wisdom or lesson learned from my Monday morning post, but you really can’t pick up any of the good mumblechatter for a backblast when you are about a 100 yards behind everyone else. I need to pick up the pace.
The only thing I discovered was that Picasso is a true artist when it comes to hanging shelves in his house…or was that Meatloaf…also I could swear that we ran by Escobar’s house. I was not sure because it looked like his Range Rover was in the drive way and I wouldn’t think that he would fartsack on a Monday morning.
This was the 2nd opportunity for me to use a headlamp I was given as a Christmas present. Obviously someone in my household confused me for a runner. So this morning, to my surprise, when I pushed the button for the headlamp, only a red light displayed. Confused and dismayed, I attempted to get the lamp to work but to no avail. Fast forward to this evening, Paper Clip was able to teach me how it works-apparently he had been exploring the closets of the house with it and discovered all the tricks.
Thanks JRR Tolkien for running some with me-good to catch up and Brat and rest of the crew for circling back.
ANNOUCEMENTS
BroOlympics 2/24/28. Participate. Volunteer. Just be there.
Take out by Bratwurst.
11 long standing members of F3 nation kicked their week off at The Matrix this morning. With the virtual shovel flag firmly planted in the cloud, the garmin striking 0530, and the weather just about perfect, we set off for a warm up lap around the school and down to the lower lot.
COP:
The Circuit:
Run to the area that used to have the stumps (RIP stumps) and find a tire in the ground
Run to playground equipment
Run to raised sidewalk between parking lots in front of school
Back to playground equipment
Repeat the above for 4 rounds with each exercise moving up in reps (15, 20, 25) except for pull ups (stay at 10…or AMRAP)
Orange Whip led some mary waiting for everyone to wrap up. Mosey back to driveway between our parking lot and the lower lot and partner up.
Gummy’s Inch Worm:
Lunge Walk back to YHC’s car. Yep.
Mary:
All Done.
Ye Naked Moleskin:
Solid group of seasoned F3 veterans out there today. Disclaimer done after the warm up lap, although not needed. I did it for you, Mermaid. Are you even reading these?
It took somewhere between 2 and 45 minutes for me to get back into Q form. My cadence may have gotten a little off and my directions a little murky, but we managed. Thanks Gummy for pointing out all of those moments. Speaking of, Cotters to Gummy. Thanks for driving an extra 3 minutes to see us and for letting us get you back in the fold before you Q Hydra this week.
We went heavy on toning the glutes today (squats, dead lifts, lunges, leg lifts). Major muscle often underworked. A lot of running injuries are spurred from inactive glutes. Your welcome. Hit the foam rollers tonight, kids.
Rachel was smoking it per usual this morning. Come to find out he didn’t understand my Dead Lift cadence count. He may have only done half of them, although he still would have smoked us doing them all. Orange Whip wasn’t too far behind either. If you haven’t witnessed his Burpee Broad Jumping, he could take the gold in the next Brolympics if they have that as an event. I meant to make a disclaimer before that to partner up with someone your opposite, but I didn’t need to once I saw OW & Gummy partnered up. It all evened out.
Lobsta was grinning as much as he possibly will allow in anticipation of another Pats Super Bowl. Viewing party at his house. All Eagles fans are welcome.
Great job everyone. Thanks to Gummy for the takeout. No other announcements.
HIIT – High-Intensity Interval Training Accumulator
For each round, there are 5 exercises (see below). In an accumulator format, start with 1 exercise for 20 seconds, then rest for 20 seconds, adding another exercise until all 5 exercises are completed in succession. Then, work back down until only the last exercise is left. Each round takes 13 minutes. Take a 2-minute rest, then start the next round.
1 – Rest
1-2 Rest
1-2-3 Rest
1-2-3-4 Rest
1-2-3-4-5 Rest
5-4-3-2-1 Rest
5-4-3-2 Rest
5-4-3 Rest
5-4 Rest
5 Rest
Round I
Round II
Round III
With no time to spare, we actually couldn’t fully complete Round III, there was only a quick little baby jog around the parking lot before we started with no COP warm-up. We dove right into the workout. Each round starts easy, but halfway through your sets, the reps really start to add up.
Moleskine
Mumblechatter was cranked to 100% today. With no running and some of the best cut-ups in the region, Kirby, Fireman Ed, Madam Tussauds and Frehley were particularly in rare form today. The workout exercise names and introductions including – Grab with two hands, that was hard, the ‘hole, start with the snatch and work your way down, take it from behind – to name just a few were plenty of ammo for this crew to launch into comedic riffs. Argonaut had to stop mid-swing a few times to rid himself of the giggles. It was great seeing Bounty Hunter and Fireman Ed at the ‘hole. Keep coming back! Gear workouts are essential for any athlete.
Announcements
Brolympics – Feb 24 – Weddington High School
f3southcharlotte.com/2018/01/11/2018-brolympics-2-bro – Sign up!!
24 Pax came out to Flash this morning as we covered 3+ miles in a simple workout this morning.
Warmup:
Thang:
Using the hill between the 2 roundabouts start with:
Mary for the 6
Mosey to bleachers
Round 1:
Round 2:
Round 3:
Mary for the 6
Mosey back to start
Moleskin:
Announcements:
…5 pax finished their pull-up merkins challenge for the day even if they signup for it.
COP
Merkins 10IC
(20 merkins)
SSH 10 IC
Thang:
5 merkins at every lights until we get to the lake
Get to kids hanging bars and gym
Here we did 6 rounds of :
5 pullups and 5 jump squats
Then run to the shelter with about 20 benches
1st bench 5 derkins , 2nd 5 dips, 3rd: 5 derkins, 4th 5 dips… till last bench
Come back 5 merkins at every street light.
Stop by Grace Life Church and do some mary, merkins and pax called exercise
Yomo – called out a minute long elbow plank, rest 4 pax called an exercise but YHC forgot
Reached back to base – finished the 200 merkins and 30 pullups
Moleskin:
It was nice to be back at this awesome AO. So much we can do , so little time. It was a cold morning at 19 F , but the pax looked too strong for it. YHC main aim was to get to 200 merkins and 30 pullups – and we did it. I still remember Dumpster Fire rolling in as the clock struck but YHC imagine he was completing some early taxes. Private Benjamin and No Show looked solid. Dumpster Fire kept the chatter on and as always gave his 110%. Yomo our FNG gave a very good effort. He did say he didnt like running but he did fine. Great call on the 1 minute elbow plank brother.
It was great talking with the fellas, just keeping everyone together. Enjoying some 2nd F while running and doing 5 merkins at each light. This is what F3 is about for me, get some good fellowship time, push hard and always get the best 45 min you can start your morning with. Everytime you getup, think of sleeping, think of how cold it is outside, its just the 3 Fs which we can experience which can surely sway your decisions.
We heard about the sad news of Gremlin passing that morning. We will be praying for him and family, he is with the almighty now. Let’s reflect and have him in our thoughts.
Thanks to Dumpster Fire for the takeout.
Announcements:
The Fort Mill Pax created a 5K Relay CSAUP a couple years ago that was a rousing success. In the inaugural year, BTW, it was won by SOB/UC men.
The Rock Hill Pax saw this, and raised it up to a marathon relay, dubbing it The Rooster (there’s probably a story in the here, but your imagination may work just as well). 26.2 miles of suck, spread over 5 Pax.
Partner 1 = Miles 1, 6, 11, 16, 21 = Jingles
Partner 2 = Miles 2, 7, 12, 17, 22 = Old MacDonald
Partner 3 = Miles 3, 8, 13, 18, 23 = Posse
Partner 4 = Miles 4, 9, 14, 19, 24 = Ranger
Partner 5 = Miles 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 = Land Shark
Wait – who does Mile 26 (& 0.2)? The whole group runs together.
So each person will run 6 miles; just not all at once. It is basically the Joe Davis 10K from 2 weeks ago, spread out over several hours.
Sounds pretty awesome, right? I know!
The Warm Up
Meet at Indian Land Elementary to clown car to Winthrop Coliseum.
Let me pause to equate clown car’ing as the secret 2nd F. YHC clown car’ed on Friday, Saturday morning, & Saturday afternoon – a total of 10 other Pax spread across 3 rides. Each conversation was rich and diverse. Not being all that much of a talker in person, I tend to shy away from the clown car. I worry about the Car Ride of Silence. It has proven itself time and again to be a false fear. The boys on Screech Owl do love them some clown car’ing; they are my shining beacon of another street. There are some other pairings out there (Longhorn & Hooch, Deflated & Foundation), but I don’t know of trips & quads like Screech Owl. If you haven’t done it (or done it in a while), time to step into that other man’s car.
Anyhoo…
The warm up continued with bringing our gear out to a pre-dawn field in Rock Hill. Then offering to help set up pop-up tents of other teams who thought about bringing fire pits or gas heaters. It was everyone’s first rodeo, but some were MUCH more experienced than others.
The Thang
Prior to the start, Rock Hill’s Popeye gave a few words. RH Popeye’s day job is Public Relations Officer for either RHPD or York County Sherriff’s. So when the 4 officers were shot last week (with the YCSD officer dying from his wounds a few days ago), it was Popeye in the public eye across all media. He had a range of emotions in those few minutes, and rightfully so. Relief at being able to unplug from that strain for a little while as he surrounds himself with a different group of brothers. Regret at not being able to see his fallen comrade again, missing his hugs and his good works. Reaffirmation that he and all past and future law enforcement officers would literally take a bullet for you. For me. For anyone else in harm’s way. It was a humbling reminder of what kind of life and death choices others make so I can go about my day in my own little bubble.
Dawn breaks on a beautiful open field with a lake that we will be circling. The path is all paved. It is 28°. Jingles and I are ecstatic, because that makes it 20° warmer than when we ran the Joe Davis a couple weeks earlier.
Jingles runs the first mile and brings back intel that the loop isn’t actually 1 mile. It’s 1.3 miles. OM confirms this. At this point, these 2 begin Beautiful Minding / NASCAR Crew Chiefing the ramifications of such news. OM starts with taking our individual lap times and doing some kind of New Age Math on figuring out our actual mile times. Jingles figures out we won’t have to do all 5 laps apiece to get to 26.2; that we’ll get to it much sooner. This realization comes to all the teams at one point or another. I’m certain we were first in realization & calculations (hence the title).
When it was all done, we ended up doing 31 miles in a total time of 3 hours 25 minutes. I went to school in South Carolina, so if there’s any mathematical disparity in what I just wrote, I don’t want to hear about it.
Frosty Moleskin
Ranger (my 2.0) learned several things. He learned that running with someone makes everything better. On his second lap, he just happened to start with Dr. Suess. Don’t know what region he’s from, but they had a full conversation at a 7:30 pace(?!?). It was over before he knew it, but those few minutes was all it took for him to learn that life lesson. They were never able to synch up again on future laps. Ranger also didn’t see Dr. Suess when it was time to leave. Another life lesson – tell those you meet how much they matter to you RIGHT THEN, even if it’s only for a short time. And a bonus lesson for those of you reading – you never know how much of an impact you will make to someone. Double bonus – those moments of impact, may be just that – moments.
Ranger suffers from the same mindless eating that his father does. Ate too much between laps 2 & 3, so laps 3 on didn’t treat him well. However, when his time came, he would step up for his leg of the run. When he wanted to walk one of the later laps, he asked Land Shark if they could run together. Clearly an upgrade from what I would have done, even a year ago. I would have run during the part when my crew could see me, then walk the rest of the hidden way. Ranger chooses to #shieldlock with someone faster. Someone who will pull more out of him. If I were in his shoes, I would have run with someone much slower, so I would not have to expect so much out of myself.
I became Captain Obvious to him in the car afterwards. “When you come up against adversity, will you choose to saddle up with someone who will push you to your full measure, or will you look for someone who will encourage you to take the easy, mediocre, least effort, least growth way?” The intellectual answer seems obvious, but making the courageous choice has been difficult for me. I do find that I am making the hard choice more often, with less friction, since joining F3.
Jingles has a lion heart. He tweaked his knee playing with his boys during Snowmageddon this week. He didn’t say anything until the convergence on Friday. I think he only said something to explain why he may be a little slower than expected. There was never a doubt to him that he wouldn’t be out there come Saturday morning. With each lap, the pain continued to grow. Determined to do his laps, but worried about the time, he asked Old MacDonald to partner with him (see above life lessons). At the end of the event, visibly limping, he admitted that he had 2 Aleve in his pocket the whole time. But he didn’t want to take them to mask the pain, so as to not make a tweak potentially turn into something worse (hopefully I didn’t violate some HIPPA thing just now; hopefully the disclaimer about not suing me also covers medical). Sound, practical thinking. As for me, I’m allergic to pain. I would have downed whatever I could have to numb the pain. With that many days to think about the pain, I would have likely tapped out or looked for a replacement. Jingles, you continue to reveal more of your heart with each race I run with you. Thanks for sharing.
Land Shark was the first to join the team. Spurred by a desire to make the IL track team this spring, he thought this would be great conditioning / testing grounds. He will be judged by his mile time, so why not test it 5 or 6 times in a day? Find someone to chase down. Find your stride. Find your breath. Find your rhythm. He was put on the anchor leg because this would be the person who would have to run the final lap, then immediately go right back out there to run again with the whole group. And the other 4 would have a break not afforded to the 5th. He accepted it without hesitation or argument. If you’ve been in the workouts with him, he’s the epitome of “less talk, more work”. But he did speak up quite a bit during the CSAUP. And it was all positive encouragement. He’s a lifter. You want this one on your team. I’m calling dibs for the next set of partner work.
Old MacDonald. At first, he was willing to let LS run this thing as the only member of the MacDonald family. But it only took a few hours to realize that this would be a great bonding experience with his son. If you’ve never heard this before, Steven Covey talks about being an effective parent means spending time not just as a family, but spending time as one parent : one child. Have a special time / event / phrase that only the 2 of you share. Each one learns their own uniqueness, which gives them the confidence to express their uniqueness when the group needs that gift. Solid work, Mac. I also learned that he is an exceptional planner. Once we got the group together, I should have just handed off the controls to Old M. It took me to the last minute to get the info out to the group. He also is much better with names than I am. I called our group “O.G.’s & Upgrades”, but he had a string of alternates. My favorites: “3+Two.0”. “Generation Gap”, “We Thought This Was a 5K”, and my winner, “The Young & the Rest of Us”. He is also to blame for this backblast. I had no intention of doing one (why start now?), but he slid a compliment with an assumptive close so fast, I didn’t realize I just said yes to writing this up. Not that this should have been kept secret, but it’s taken longer to write this up that it did to run the marathon. Still, you all deserve to know the kind of people you run around with. If there’s someone you should run around with more, it’s this guy.
Did I learn anything about myself? Sure.
I’m close enough to breaking the 9:00 minute mile that it makes me want to start working on that.
I’m hard on my son until I write up something like this to realize he’s making better decisions than I did at that age. It’s a harder time, yet he’s handling it better.
I’m surrounded by so many great people everywhere I go now. It’s so pervasive that my thinking is shifting away from “I don’t belong here” to “where do I fit?” It excites and scares me.
I gotta write shorter backblasts if I ever want to see my family again.
16 PAX gathered in gloom at the Vine to get their work in. After a brief disclaimer and an alert to keep an eye out for black ice because we will be visiting areas that are shaded it was brought to my attention that everything is in the shade because the sun isn’t up. (and we were off)
Mosey to Courtyard parking lot for warmup (all in cadence):
10 side straddle hops; 10 low slow squats; 10 imperial walkers; 10 merkins
Mosey long way around the pond to the far platform where we did 10 derkins and 10 stepups, run long way around pond to other platform for 10 incline merkins and 10 jumpups. Repeat with 10 derkins and 10 stepups at current platform, run long way around to other platform for 10 incline merkins and 10 jumpups.
Mosey to fitness trail, count off by 3s for circuit work – group 1 does 15 dips, group 2 does 10 pull-ups, group 3 does 10 burpees; for 2 cycles through the circuit. Plank and wait for the 6.
Mosey to upper Snyder/Lance parking lot and partner up. One PAX runs to far wall and back while other PAX does exercise: 200 LBCs, 100 merkins, 100 squats. Mary and wait for the 6.
Mosey to Snyder/Lance entrance & Bagpipe Hill – run to bridge, 5 burpees and back, repeat w/ 4 burpees, then 3, then 2, then 1.
Admittedly the Q needed a 10 count and then we were off again… Mosey to Premier parking deck to grab some wall and 20 presses in cadence. Mosey back home with 2 stops on the way for plank and Mary.
With ~2 minutes left of the clock we did plank work and rendezvoused with Geraldo & Fire Hazard who were rucking.
Overall ~4.5 miles covered and lots of exercises worked in. Great work by all the PAX. I don’t know about anybody else but I was gassed and feeling it later. Thanks to all for coming out and allowing me to lead.
Announcements:
Bro-Lympics on Feb 24 at Weddington High School
Brave has changed launch location starting this Friday – new location is Brazwells on Ballantyne Commons Parkway
Today was a sentimental day for me, it was 3 years ago I first started F3. It was at this particular site. A site started by my dear friends and hero’s Ice 9 and Snowflake. I still remember the first time my friend Kevorkian EH’d me to come. He said “you gotta come Sean, you’ll love this F3 thing.” I had heard about it before but didn’t give it much credence, I worked out in my garage, I had my own thing going but I decided to give it a try given my friends excitement. I remember I was originally planning on wearing my weight vest, THANK GOD I didn’t, Dasher was on Q that day, I believe it was his VQ and he kicked my ass. I was only 15 minutes into the workout and I was cooked and I was hooked. More about that later.
The WU (AS BEST I CAN REMEMBER):
Snowflake Kicked us off. Quick Disclaimer, mosey around the lot to the bus pick up
15SSH, 15MC, 10 Merkins, 10 Low Slow Squats, 10 Plank jacks then head to the wall for peoples chair followed by balls to the wall. Quickly Grab a friend and it was two sets of Curls, Triceps extensions then shoulder presses (10 each).
The Thang: Mosey to the half wall with a lunge walk across the bridge, to the half wall. 10 Step ups each leg, 10 Derkins, and 10 triceps extensions (X2) some quick Mary up to the side concessions. YHC takes over, quick stop for some American Hammers the to the side lot for my main show. Partner up for 100 burpees while P1 runs the loop, swap till you get to a hundred. Mosey back to the concession stand by the flag pole for the handoff to Mad Dog.
Mad Dog takes on a mosey to the back of the school with a bear crawl across the icy bridge (Ironically, we did that on my first work out, thought it was stupid crazy back then, as well:) up to the railing for 10 Supines with a mosey around the sidewalk and a calf raise up each step (this X3). Mosey to the side of the school and utilize same partner with the timer being 100 Mike Tyson’s while P2 runs the lap till completions. Mosey to the hill in the front of the school. BREAK: in all my years I personally have never used this decent hill in the front of the school, never, what a great place to advertise and show F3 to people driving by and I have never ever used this hill, Break OVER. 7’s on the hill with merkins at the bottom and burpees at the top. Short mosey to the front of the school for some quick mary to finish.
Moleskin: So back to my sentimental discussion. In discussing with Mad Dog taking over as Site Q he had many interesting and good questions, questions about protocol, expectations, and culture. So bore me for a minute and let me share with you some of what I shared with him as F3 means a lot of different things to different people.
What it means to me, at first it was success. I saw men that were older than me that could run circles around me, Snowflake is a beast and the way I looked at it was, he’s 52, in shape, do what he does if you want to be in shape when your 52. Common sense to me, success is 90% copy, so what I have found for myself is find people I define as successful and do what they do, its not complicated.
But as time went on F3 became so much more to me, it taught me what true leadership is about, it has taught me about developing other leaders, it has taught me that unless you put others ahead of yourself you can never get to meaningful friendships and relationships. It has taught me that it should be a blessing to men and can change their lives for the positive. F3 has also taught me so many other things I don’t have time to share them all but I can tell you, I am very grateful for the relationships I have developed through F3 and I’m looking forward to developing more.
So it was with great pride and honor that Snowflake, Doc and myself could hand these responsibilities and more importantly the culture over to Mad Dog and Popeye as trusted carriers of the culture and with that they will bring their own individual culture to the F3 that we all get to enjoy.
Last, Mad Dog takes the bull by the horns at the COT and asks if anyone would be willing to be his co-site Q (by the way, pretty sure Mad Dog has been dying to say this since day one in the COT with Popeye). Popeye steps up, great fit, but the mumble chatter quickly realizing that two civilians just handed the reins over to two ex military and then Mad dog WITH OUT EVEN FLINCHING states;
“You know the Marines is a department of the Navy, THE MENS DEPARTMENT.”
Commitment is in good hands
10 PAX (including 2 Turkeys who survived another Thanksgiving) showed up in the cold, wet parking lot of Anvil. Little did they know that all they did that morning would come very close to being forgotten (thanks to a lazy/forgetful Q and a BB that almost never was).
Thang
Moleskin
Happy and sad to say this is the latest BB YHC has ever posted. Sat down to type up the RockZero BB and remembered this other Calvary Q I started writing about in Textpad then procrastination, holidays, excuses, and so on. Tempting to just ignore it and call it a loss, but then I pictured Purple Haze with his angry face on and it just didn’t sit right. More importantly, YHC at least wants the men who showed up to be counted as having been there, no matter how bad this BB ends up being.
Can’t remember all that much about the morning, but here are things I either remember, imagined up, or likely would have happened based on past experience:
Great morning with these guys. Cobains on the late BB and anything I may have left out.