Category: Richmond, VA

June 29th being the occasion of YHC’s 43rd birthday, the dream of designing and running a ninja warrior course was in order. After greeting the pax and conducting a quick COP including 43 SSHs, we moseyed through the course so YHC could explain the various obstacles and exercises.

After returning to the start of the course in the parking circle of TES, we divided into pairs. The first pair, YHC and Doozy, took off at the sound of the starting buzzer and the race began. The second pair, GP and Probation, started after waiting one minute, then the third pair after another minute, and so on, while the rest of the waiting pax conducted more COP (thanks Splinter for leading the COP).

Course was as follows:

• Run to the handicap ramp, perform under/overs on the ropes suspended across the railings. // Second set of railings: Bear crawl in the air horizontally up the second set of railings // Third set of railings: Crab walk in the air horizontally up the third set of railings.
• Mosey up to the field to the exercise equipment. Shimmy across the parallel bars with arms in locked position // Perform 3 pull ups on each of the escalating pull up bars // Swing across the horizontal ladder // Run across the spring bench // Climb up the chain link wall and down over the other side // Monkey swing across the rings using only one color of ring.
• Mosey to the swing set. Perform 25 swerkins on the swing set (Get in plank position with feet rest on a swing, Pull legs in to a reverse crunch position, extend legs back out and then do a merkin).
• Mosey to the front southern corner of the TES school property. Run up the large mulch pile then scale and jump over the chain link fence. Run around the back of the office building and then across Forest Ave. into the middle Third Church parking lot.
• In the Southeastern corner of the parking lot, grab a coupon. Perform 25 squats with the block // Run to the next corner, 25 Overhead presses // Run to third corner, 25 curls // run to next corner, 25 incline merkins on the block // run back to the original corner, deposit the coupon back in the pile
• Bear crawl through the center retainer ditch and out the other side. Once through, run to the back parking lot of Third Church.
• Mosey to the playground. Jump, leap, or climb over the playground fence using the green bench. Climb up to the top of the slide then slide down face first on the nobbly slide, at the bottom, keep feet on slide and perform 25 Derkins.
• Mosey to the fire escape. Original plan was to climb rope ladder suspended on the outside of fire escape, but better judgement (M’s lecture) prevailed. So modified instructions were to bear crawl backwards up the fire escape, but YHC and Doozy discovered it was pretty much impossible, so we modified to lunges. Lunge forwards up fire escape stairs, perform 25 WW2s on the top, lunge backwards down the stairs.
• Mosey to side parking lot. Burpee Suicides. Start on the curb, run to the first parking lot line, perform 1 burpee, run back to curb. Run to second line, perform 2 burpees, run back to the curb. All the way up to 8.
• After 8th burpee round, run back to touch the curb, then run back across Forest Ave., around the front of the school, and back to touch the tree for the finish.

First finishers performed COP while waiting for the pax. Once pax was in, we finished with some ab exercises and a merkin ring of fire.

Numberama, Namerama, YHC took us out.

NMS: Tclaps to Doozy, Garbage Plate and Probation for finishing the course in just under 20 minutes. Well done!

Thanks so much guys for bearing with me this morning in this experiment. I had a ton of fun and I hope you did too. It’s a rare gift that 40+ year old men can get outside and do stupid stuff together for fun and fitness, and I’m really grateful for this group. Also grateful for my sweet M who delivered donuts and coffee to us at 6:20am sharp! Great to hang out.

Have a great day guys. peace+