Category: Richmond, VA

  • If There Are No Turns, Will There Still Be Questions?

    11 two-leggers and one two-wheeler (yeah, RAMM Gears, we see you!) braved the heavy air and avoided the flooding on Groooooove to take in the ever-challenging routes that are an everyday part of the RAMM. Conditions were ever-constant at 70 and sunny. According to the woman reading her phone while driving and turning and nearly running over Bodo’s (VA Plate: 1 MOBJAK), the following likely happened:

    Route: Commonwealth. 45 minutes of Commonwealth. If you are not on Commonwealth, you have made a wrong turn.

    Marketing Distraction (the PAX saw through this): run a giant suicide on Commonwealth. Grove to Franklin to Grove to Wythe to Grove to Cutshaw to Grove (something like 4 miles). Repeat Grove to Franklin one more time (5) or two more times (6).

    Numbers, names, Marv was kind enough to take us out.

    Announcements and Prayer Requests:

    Ukraine. We are fortunate in the US that it is unlikely we will ever wake up to face the historical wrath of an autocrat with no moral limitations who runs a neighboring country with a large military and nuclear weapons. Ukraine does not have that luxury. Prayers for all of those who stand against aggression and wanton destruction, and further prayers for those whose lives are endangered as a result.

    Our pals are running this morning. Bro code. Not the West End, once-a-month bro-code. This is the it’s-only-two-hills-in-the-Grand-Canyon Bro Code. Good luck, fellas. The PAX are pulling for you.

    NMS:

    The PAX clearly, universally, and emphatically appreciated the simplicity of today’s route. Inspired by our “it’s only two hills” brethren, today’s route strove for simplicity: no hills, and only 3 turns, all 180 degrees. And, ever steadfast in their inquisitiveness, some sought to clarify, while others quickly realized that it was really just 45 minutes on Commonwealth. Nothing gets past the PAX.

    UpChuck spits the bit.

  • Change of plans

    12 warriors gathered in the gloom for a Friday Bro Code run, the Q lacked the appreciation of “Bro Code” and suggested a longer route with a shorter turn option. After the mutiny cooled down the Pax took off for a beautiful cool March morning run. Along the path the Q decided the Pax had spoken and we altered the route for the less aggressive pace and finished with a @4.5 mile run for the group with a few hitting 4.88 miles. Great turn out for our Friday and talk of starting F3 lunch gathering each month for more opportunities to fellowship. West end location chime in if you would like to be part. Q closed in prayer. Remember to lift up in prayer Lighthouses’ family in the Ukraine as they are dealing with war and dangerous situations.

  • WTH Welcomes an FNG

    3 regulars and a FNG showed to work off some March madness calories on a beautiful spring morning

    The Thing,

    Mosey from lot over to Wells Fargo at Pump and Three Chopt, Side Straddle Hops, Ukranian Solders, Don Q’s, Merkins, LBC for a warm up and then head back out over to Pond at Wellsley, pull up and add 3 sets of 25 merkins, 25 WW2s, and 25 Side Straddle hops, mosey to tunnel under lauderdale. 11s back and forth in tunnel Merkins and Squats, mosey by way of Lauderdale to Three chopt, stop at Credit union to deposit some sweat: 10 burpees, 25 LBCs lap around building X 3, out of time and run back to base. 3.8 miles covered. FNG shared on way back he may be young and look strong but he is out of shape, Welcome aboard, Dingy!

  • Murph, party of 2, Murph party of 2?

    2 wild and cray guys made their way to a Twin Team beatdown on the last Friday of the month expecting the usual Honeymoon lead pain fest but at 5:31 it was decided that a warm up was in order.

    COP

    DQ’s and away we went through JRHS parking lots and one lap around the track to the BWES playground.

    YHC and Rosie alternated cadence on merkins and squats until 10 reps where complete along with the pull ups

    Run back through JRHS track and parking lot

    Numbers / Names YHC took us out

    NMS: The Murph is always a tough beatdown but it’s nice to be able to see or track your improvement over time. YHC is still not able to do 10 sets of 10 pull ups but its getting better every time. Happy to have the time to talk about our family trip out west with Rosie who’s family is heading there in a couple weeks.

  • Baseball Coaching, Spies Like Us Readers Digest Edition

    Yep, that’s the mumble chatter in a nutshell for this elite 8. A quick COP and off we went east on Grove with a mobile Lindsay. Exercises were Box Cutters and Carolina Drydocks.

    Line up in the church parking lot for incremental Red Barchetta.

    • 10 HRM
    • 10 HRM, 25 Jump Squats
    • 10 HRM, 25 Jump Squats, 50 Mountain Climbers
    • 10 HRM, 25 Jump Squats, 50 Mountain Climbers, 75 LBCs
    • 10 HRM, 25 Jump Squats, 50 Mountain Climbers, 75 LBCs, 100 Flutter Kicks

    A long mosey down Malvern and over to another church for some Triple Checks. Partner 1 – run around the parking lot, partner 2 – American Hammers, and partner 3 – Monkey Humpers.

    Workout was cut a little short as time permitted and back to the AO.

    YHC took us out.

    Announcements:

    HDHH on Wednesday at 630 at the Answer. For those who want to run prior, show up at 545. Gomer Pyle is on point.

  • The Funky Bunch

    The hottest 7 man boy band in Metro RVA took the Forge stage for some good vibrations. With temps a balmy 68, and not a raindrop in sight, here’s what aired this morning on MTV:

    The THANG:

    WARMERAMA:

    • Mosey loops to circle up in the lot
    • Welcome & Disclaimer
    • Variable Tryhard IC reps for a full body warm up

    COP #1:

    • Mosey down to the handicap rails
    • Bear crawl first half of ramp
    • Second half complete an Indigenous Peoples Jerkin Fest, with last man completing x5 Jerkins while the rest hold jerkin positing on the rail
    • Finish off at the top with x20 Derkins and x20 Dips

    COP #2:

    • Mosey to the bottom on the lot and line up for “SheHateMe” – x20 lunges, x10 Groiners, and x10 Merkins – from one end of the parking lot to the other (took most x3 sets to traverse)

    COP #3:

    • Line up at the bottom of the grassy hill for a Dirty McDeuce
    • Complete x4 sets of the following: x12 Merkins, x12 Am.Ham’s (2-ct), x12 Squats
    • Between sets, Bear crawl up the hill or mosey down

    COP #4:

    • Run (not mosey or sprint) about 200 yards
    • Partner up in the grass for x3 rounds of Dying Boxing Cockroaches 

    Mosey BTTF:

    • x4 Minutes of Mary

    COT:

    • Counterama # 7
    • Namerama (welcome Marky Mark!)
    • Announcerama (see Comments)
    • YHC took the PAX out in Prayer

    NMS:  Beautiful spring morning to welcome another FNG to the SOJ fold. Pat is a good friend from YHC’s church and he and his wife attend our Bible Study. Pat loves the Eagles, and he earned the nickname Marky Mark when nickname banter took us to remembering Mark Wahlberg’s role playing Vince Papale in the movie “Invincible”. Welcome bro!!! Appreciate you guys permitting me to lead. Yours, DTH

  • Thursday KBs

    A reprieve from showers and warm temps greeted 8 KB warriors on the glorious Thursday.  With 1 FNG in tow, here is how it went down:

    • COP
      • SSH
      • IW
      • DQ
      • Helicopters
      • Arm circles
      • Merkins
      • LBC
      • Run the bus loop
    • 13 exercises – each round do 7 reps of each, with one exercise getting 13 reps;  just keep cycling through until we finished with 48 reps of each exercise
      • Lawnmower pulls – each arm
      • High pulls
      • Curls
      • Swings
      • Squat thrusts
      • Lunges – each leg
      • Figure 8s
      • Sit ‘n press
      • Overhead pulls
      • American hammers
      • Halos
    • COT with YHC taking us out

    Great work today from the PAX.  Welcome to White Deer’s out of town guest, Grimace (double respect).  White Deer never shut up, and it was hard to tell who he was barking at most of the time!  Great to see all of the PAX.  Prayers for Gypsy’s heart condition, Lighthouse’s family in Ukraine and all of the recent graduates trying to adult it up in this climate. 


    God is good all of the time!

    Attila

  • Frisbees on the track

    6 slightly awake men gathered at Timberwolf to hear that 1 more would be coming in hot.

    Mosey to the parking lot for COP

    DQ’s, 5 Burpees, Helicopters, 4 Burpees, Imperial Walkers, 3 Burpees, Russian Soldiers, 2 Burpees, SSH, 10 Burpees for Hermie

    Mosey to the track with 12 frisbees in hand. Frisbees have painters tape with an exercise wrote on them. We moseyed the track putting frisbees in every other lane in four locations. PAX gets in groups in a lane do 25 of the exercise on your frisbee run to the next frisbee do 25 of that exercise. Complete all four in that lane and switch lanes. Once all PAX have done all lanes and exercises PAX does a frisbee pick up, YHC runs ahead and grabs 2 frisbees mixes them up and lets a HIM pick a frisbee, PAX does 25 of that exercise.

    Mosey up to the end of light pole alley, various leg exercises at each cone, at the last one switch to run to each light pole add one merkin at each.

    At the bus parking lot circle up for American Hammers.

    Mosey BTTF

    Numbers / Names YHC took us out

    NMS:

    This was the first time working this Beatdown and I think it went fairly well. We only had 1 light so that kept us together for the most part. If I did it again I would make the exercises like WWII’s and Hand Release Merkins a 10 count rather than 20 because they take so much longer.

  • Thank you Alan Adler

    Thank you Alan Adler

    In case you are wondering Alan Adler is a serial inventor, and creator of YHC’s favorite coffee maker called the Aeropress, along with the Aerobie. What is an Aerobie you ask, it’s a difficult to catch frisbee like device that can fly for hundreds of feet. You can find them on rooftops of suburban houses back in the mid 90s. Bet you didn’t know that the Aerobie holds the Guinness book of world records for the farthest thrown object. Here is how things went down for the 5 Wdog warriors this morning.

    YHC started off with some stretching, always important to stretch. Dead man hangs, reach for the skies, a few others, finishing out with ‘the sprinkler’.

    Then mosey on over to the sunken field for a modified version of ultimate frisbee – name is still in the works. The way it was ‘supposed’ to work, everyone gathers at the end of the field, the group has 5 minutes to make it to the end of the field and back, continually passing the frisbee, or in this case the Aerobie, a difficult to catch object made even more difficult with the low light conditions. Every time the Aerobie drops, the PAX drops and does 5 burpees, clock does not stop. If the team does not make it back in the 5 minutes, 20 burpees. Bodos did the math and said well why not just throw it all the way to the end and run and do the 5 burpees anyhow. That was the last we saw of the Aerobie for the rest of the workout. YHC called the workout and onward to the next activity.

    The PAX was off to the penny stage to pick up a coupon, then mosey on over to the amphitheater. Using the coupons as a ‘book mark’ the PAX took their coupon and did one block burpee at each step up the ampitheater, leaving the coupon on the level to remind them where to come back to, after each block burpee run down to the bottom and back up to the block and repeato all the way up to the top.

    At the top there was time for a quick block merkin ring of fire, keeping feet on the blocks. Then it was back down the amphitheater steps, this time each level 5 WW2s, and using the coupon as the ‘bookmark’.

    Then it was time to return the coupons to their home, and some time left over to pay homage to our brethren Pigskin with some donkey kicks and wall sits on the penny stage. The PAX also preformed a structural integrity evaluation of the penny stage to ensure that it was strong enough to withstand our mighty donkey kicks – HEEEE HAWWWWW

    Mosey back to the flag for names numbers and announcements.

    Mumble chatter: Some thoughts were shared that wow it takes a lot longer to go up and down the amphitheater when we actually keep track with the ‘bookmarks’. Big thank you to Bodos for going back out afterwards and finding the Aerobie.

    It was an absolute pleasure to lead this crew this morning!

  • On the Move @ SOT

    10 Boot Campers & 4 runners emerged from their automobiles and were met with 70 degree temperatures and sunny skies @ SOT this morning. The Boot Campers didn’t run with the runners, but they ran all the same. Here’s what’s rumored to have occurred:

    THANG

    Mosey around Midlo Middle. Lots of mumblechatter regarding amount of running before the lap concluded

    COP: SSHs, DQs, Merkins, Boxcutters (slow & fast), X’s & O’s

    Field Trip Mosey across adjacent shopping center parking lot to church parking lot

    Partner up for BEARimeter: BearCrawl loop around 3 parking lot islands with partner, switch when runner catches up. Repeato with CrawlBear loop around 2 parking lot islands

    Grab a piece of curb for Toe Taps IC

    Mosey back to shopping center parking lot

    Line up to Lunge Uphill for 60s

    Mosey back to Midlo Middle, proceed around back of school and down to track.

    2 lines on goal line for Over/Unders: first guy runs 5 yards then elbow planks, next guy in line runs over elbow planker, runs additional 5 yards then gets in Fudd’s Wife’s pose. Next go goes over, then under, then runs 5 yards and elbow planks. Repeato until you’re the last guy and carry on until the end of the field. Race the other line of PAX. There was damn near a mutiny.

    Lap of Insubordination.

    Stop at bleachers for Tiabattas: Dips x8, then Step Ups or Box Jums x8

    The mumblechatter was deafening.

    Mosey back to VSF.

    30s left, so LBC oyo until time

    COT

    YHC asked for a moment of silence to reflect on the violence in Ukraine and how lucky we are to live where we do.

    Naked Moleskin

    That was fun. It must of been a successful workout because POG was gassed and Marmaduke couldn’t even get any words out. Thanks for the field trips and acting like kids this morning. YHC needed that.