First MOT Q ever and I dressed like a construction worker. Even north of the river knows now because Gomer was there on the summer tour.
Got a little 4 mile run (https://onthegomap.com/s/hn0eddqp) and some hill work (up the grassy hill by the track).
Airwolf and Rosetta smoked me up the hill every time. Went up the hill and around the sidewalk about 6 times (did one track lap between the 5 and 6 hill).
Damnit. I blame the alarm. Got out of bed thinking it seems a bit too late…it was. 540 am. Still had to show up. Fortunately, the five HIMS there already had good leaders ready to roll. According to Purple Rain, this is how it went down before I showed up:
imperial walkers, LBCs, flutter kicks, merkins
Walking lunges w/ kettlebell (KB) from curb to centerline of the parking lot, 50 calf raises w/ KB
Walking lunges w/ KB back to curb, 40 calf raises w/ KB
Walking lunges w/ KB back to centerline of parking lot, 30 calf raises w/ KB
Repeat until 10 calf raises
Mosey around the parking lot
20 one leg deadlifts per leg (40 total) followed by 20 KB swings (repeat this 3x)
Mosey around the parking lotQ handed off to me.
Time
Numbers/Names
Announcement: SoJ happy hour Friday.
Prayers: Pray for friend of Pax dealing with some addiction issues.
YHC took us out.
Setting two alarms tmw.
This was my first time posting at Twin team, but I am no stranger to the area surrounding the Swamp having spent many hours running up bleachers, hills, etc during wrestling practice (Handshake can attest).
I pulled into Beattie Weaver this morning about 10 minutes early to see Rosie sitting in his car ready to roll. By 530, we had a total of 6 SOJ brethren ready to rock out and explore the wondrous National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence: James River Highschool.
Mosey from Beattie Weaver parking lot towards Janes River Highschool with 5 dudes in tow. Quick beeline through the woods to the brightest light pole I saw in the senior lot.
F3 mission statement provided, notification #1 that James River Highschool is a National Blue Ribbon school of excellence.
Warmorama: SSH, Copperhead Squats, Deadman ha….oh hey it’s Pigskin.
Pigskin thought we met at James River Highschool, didn’t see anyone, but saw us when we were moseying from Beattie Weaver.
Back to warmup: Merkins, LBCs, some plank work, followed by some stretching.
COP #1: Triple check in the senior lot. A man does curb walk on the island, B man does squats, C man runs about 75 yards down and back to next brightest light pole.
COP #2 – Get em Pigskin: Mosey over to the front of the Highschool for some Gridiron style beatdown against the columns. Initially, I was just going to attempt to duplicate a Pigskin inspired beatdown, but who is better than the man, myth, and legend himself.
I asked if Pigskin could lead us through his routine (a few grumbles for the guys that knew what was coming). According to the security footage, we did about 3 to 4 rounds of wall sits, thigh taps, toe taps, etc polished off with several helpings of donkey kicks. You’re welcome!
Thanks Pigskin.
COP #3 – Pole touching?: Mosey to the James River Regiment practice area (big green wooden observation deck). Partner up. 6 lightpoles. As a team, have to touch each lightpole. While partner is out touching light pole other dude does squats or LBCs.
COP #4 – Mixed bag: Mosey towards the tennis courts, but I spied a perfect dip station (two benches).
Part 1 – 20x/15x/10x/5x dips and incline merkins
Part 2 – Mosey to tennis courts. Line up along sides of tennis court/face partner. 3x rounds of 10 squats, bear crawl to partner, 2x booyah merkins, crawl bear back.
COP #5: Pax grumbles for abs…be careful what you wish for. After blasting the upper body, there was some grumbling for a bit of ab work. Be careful what you wish for me. I asked Tobit, Mudslide, Drape and Pigskins to give me their favorite ab exercises. Order of four corners, “lady of the night” style…1/1-2-1/1-2-3-2-1/and 1-2-3-4-3-2-1.
Four corner exercises were:
Mosey back to the flag behind JR, but hit the pullups for about 20 reps. Ran to the Junior lot to hit the hill 2x.
Time. Numbers. Names
Announcement: See slack. Second F opportunities with Firehouse subs and Billiards next week.
Don’t forget the homegrown half/10k
Prayers for a friend of the Pax that is going through a tough time. Hope we can bring this guy out and support him through a solid beat down.
Other: Good times guys. A few runners stopped by and traded greetings with us. They knew of F3 and we handed out a few cards.
Heist
Oyster and Heist’s wife put together a feast for the good folks at Daily Planet. Here is how it went down:
My M made sauce from scratch, browned the beef, and made layer by layer of Italian goodness.
Oyster made the meal come together with salad, homemade cookies, and some tea.
Seven badass Bostonians (included two FNGs) and two downrange Pax hit the Coliseum this morning for a quest Q from down south.
Mosey to the Willie O’Ree Community Rink for Warmorama:
Warmorama: SSH, Ukrainian Soldiers, Deadman hang (center/left/right), Merkins, LBCs, scorpion stretch.
During scorpion stretch I told the Pax the legend of the of the unnamed Pax member down in RVA that got upset by a “your mom” joke. Got some laughs.
COP #1: Eye of tHe storm: Couldn’t help myself as we were standing in a perfect spot for eye of the storm.
Picture an outdoor roller hockey rink with big Bruins logo. Start in center with 5 burpees, sprint to each corner perform called exercises and return to center for another set of 5 burpees. Plank when complete. Four corner exercises were:
Plank for the six.
COP #2 – Amphitheater fun: Pax started at bottom of amphitheater and performed 5x incline merkins then box jumped step to next level. 5 steps total. Went back down with 5x dips.
COP # 3 – Triple check: By this time Dunder had made it to the beatdown. Three groups of three for triple check. A man runs accross soccer field to the mound, B man did squats, and C man did curb walks along the concrete in front of amphitheater.
COP # 4 – Bear crawl across the BMX course. Lots of grumbles, but something different.
COP #5 – Mosey to the basketball court for “lady of the night” four corners. Exercises were 10 SSH/10 merkins/20 LBCs/30 single leg squats . Build up and build down.
Finished up with 2x rounds of donkey kicks and squats on the chain link fence. Jogged back to the flag for a partial pushup ring of fire.
Time. Numbers. Names
Welcome to Gaddafi and Goggles, Boston’s newest member’s of the Pax.
Gaddafi was a marine and did a tour in Libya (hence Gaddafi).
Goggles is a big David Goggins fan and pumped out the 4x4x48 challenge in the pouring rain. Hence “googles”
Final thoughts:
Very cool to post with these guys and see how things probably were 8 years ago in RVA. Makes me appreciate that much more what we have done here.
Last thing, Pebbles was down range from Providence, which is where the Carpenter planted the flag. Cool stuff.
In Boston for work. Posted at the Coliseum today (Harvard football field). Nice AO with tons of cool features around it like a track, BMX park, body weight based exercise course with workout stations (think Old Hundred Elementary playground with rings, pull-up bars, ab station complete with platform to throw a medicine ball), even an amphitheater (similar to the Forge).
Warmorama. A bit different. More stretches, etc.
Main COP was three rounds rotating (every minute) through various exercise stations (3x) on the hybrid workout station:
COP 2: a few rounds of block jumps and incline merkins
COP 3: Alphabet abs. Pax lays in circle calling alphabet in order (leg raises to spell out called letter). If someone calls out wrong letter on their turn Pax owes 5 burpees.
BOM, etc.
Very new chapter. Started last October. About 6 core guys, but average 9 with down range guys.
They were curious about what we do in the RVA. They let me grab the Q Thursday. Hope they don’t regret it. Too many beatdown choices.
No Q today. No problem.
I kicked us off with the warmup and disclaimers, which looked like this:
1st workout (Warby): Four corner: Merkins, squat jumps, monkey humpers, LBCs
2nd workout (Nancy): Relay around the U. Pair up. 5 groups (one with three). Each pair mans a station for merkins, LBCs, squats, toe taps. Rotate a 5th group as timer/runnner.
3rd workout (P.O.G): Nurpee (burpee cousin) mailboxes
4th workout (Mudslide): DTH clone workout. 50’s on four corners of tennis courts call out exercise whoever is done first.
Numbers/Names
Announcements: see slack
BOM/Prayers: I took us out. Thanked the good Lord for the ability to get out there this morning and to get some! Prayers for all our friends and family in community. Prayers for Meatball to ace his interview today. Prayers for Futon’s mother in law who is going through chemo treatment.
Great day. Get after it guys.
One year with F3 in the books. What a blessing it has been to meet new friends, rekindle old friendships, and better myself learning to lead by some solid HIMs.
Conceptually I knew what the three Fs (Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith) are; but I didn’t experience the fullness of them until I joined F3. Thank you for that.
Warmorama: Mosey to nickel bridge maintenance lot. Welcome/intro/disclaimer.
COP 1 (Nickel Bridge): My plan was to start at north side of Nickel bridge and to do 1 burpee per light pole on way down. Return back doing descending number of squats starting with the highest number light pole. Somehow I counted 14 light poles on the way down and yelled for the Pax to start with 14 squats and decrease by 1 for each pole back to north side.
Sounded like a good idea, but there are actually 16 poles. Rosie kindly let me know I had miscounted, but now I know!
Plank for the six near the toll booths and a 20 count once everyone rolled in.
COP 2 (Love Hill): Partner bear crawl, lunge, broad jump burpee.
This COP goes out to Swirly! Back in February we did Love Hill from gate to gate (pump house drive to amphitheater). Was one of the toughest things I have done with F3. Luckily Mr. Rogers was my partner and carried more then his weight.
A few grumbles on this one about whether the gate off Pump House Drive was open for business or whether we start before or after the gate. Ended up starting just after gate and partner A began to bear crawl up hill, with partner B running to community garden area and returning to switch with partner A. Repeato wirh bearcrawl, lunge, broad jump burpee until we all reach garden area.
Key to this COP is to bear crawl as far as you can to avoid extra broad jump burpees!
COP 3 (Valley of Death): 7s with drydocks and WW2s.
COP 3 goes out to Mr. Rogers who busted this out the same day I learned about “eye of the storm,” which I also love. I found his explanation for 7s, “it is like 11s, but it is just 7s” catchy and even used it today.
Funny thing is Valley of Death doesn’t look too menacing, but when you run up the last 15 feet or so of each hill it can crush you!
Started with on the Love Hill path with 6 drydocks and ran down and up valley of death for 1 WW2. Finished with 1 drydock and 6 WW2s.
COP 4 (Triple check – pull-ups and dips):
With about 13 minutes left, I gave the guys choice A or B. Choice A was selected, which was the triple check (pull-ups and dips). Choice B would have been at the amphitheater with some variation of merkins or box jump (which suck). Glad people selected A. Wilson wanted “choice F”(back to the flag maybe?)
Knocked out triple check with 4 minutes left. BTTF.
Numbers/Names.
Announcement: Pickleball tournament coming up. See Hitchhiker for details. Goal is to beat Bleeder!
Prayer request – Bone Thugs shared that he recently lost an aunt to cancer (his father’s brother). He had to unfortunately share this news with his father. His aunt sadly did not inform the family she was ill as to not burden family. Good message shared with the Pax: share your struggles, we got your back!
Wildcat took us out in prayer.
Many thanks guys. Good seeing everyone. Good mumble chatter as always.
5:57 a.m. 5 blurry eyed runners discussing the running route for the morning when Aisle 5 comes in hot. No Wilson today to join Aisle 5 for a walk, but there was a backup plan: electric unicycle.
Pretty much the last thing on earth we expected to see this morning was Aisle 5 charging ahead or behind the running Pax with his bionic enhancements. Really cool. Played music and everything.
10k knocked out just under an hour.
Starbucks post run. Good second F on a variety of topics including bourbon and the pros/cons of men’s short shorts.
P.S. Text a dude who hasn’t been out in the gloom awhile. I plan to work on Aisle 5 this week.
9 SOJ Pax hit Satan’s Hill this morning in the misty, moist gloom.
HP today started off with Warmorama led by Nancy Lopez: SSH/UKS/CHS/Arm Circles (front and back).
COP 1: Nancy Lopez led the Pax with some static cindy holds (OH/Skull Crusher/front raise). We then did 21s (curls).
COP 2: Honeymoon led the Pax with a “horse shoe” workout.
COP 3: McGruff led the Pax up Satan’s Hill with a native american run. Pax in the rear peforms Burpee and sprints to the front. Made it to about Rosetta’s casa and turned back to the flag area.
COP 4: Vagabond led the Pax with a triple check. Perfect set of 3×3. A man does cindy curl to OH press. B man sumo squats with cindy. C man (timer) was with cindy in OH press to the “second light pole. Ongoing debate on the location of second light pole.
5 min left.
COP: Heist called a baby triple check. First called jerkins/cindy swing/a 20 yard dash timer. Things got a little goofy. Switched out jerkins for arm circles. Nancy proclaims this was the shortest triple check in the world. With a min left we put cindy’s back in their comfy home.
Time.
Numbers/Names.
Announcements:
Hermey took us out.