“Give me your tired, your poor, your kankled masses yearning to breathe heavy.”
OK, maybe that’s not exactly what is inscribed on the pedastal of the Statue of Liberty, but it is what was offered at Gladiator this morning, at least in spirit. It was a post-Murph morning hovering in the mid 40s with clear skies and a bright full(ish) moon lighting the not so gloomy gloom. YHC arrived with 5 minutes to spare, uncertain anyone would come out to support me given my sporadic attendance at this worthy AO. I was rewarded with 7 other men willing to see if I would satisfy. At 0530 we set out to see if I could.
First up was the standard Blackbeard disclaimer: “If you don’t like my offering, you can do burpees instead.” (Once again there were no takers so I assume my plans did not disappoint.) Next we circled up for our first warm-up exercise because running first is so cliché.
Somewhere between mountain climbers and toy soldiers (for the latter YHC was corrected by Toxic for trying to wave my hands in the air like I just don’t care), a white car pulled up and loitered beside our circle. After a few seconds it drove away, circled around and loitered a second time on the other side of the median. Was it an undercover cop? Was it the pastor of the church? Was it a hot tomato checking out our posteriors? Nope, just Titan trying to decide if he could hang with us for the last 40 minutes of the workout. I guess he overcame his fears because he finally parked and joined us for the end of CoP.
Next we had to get to the far corner where all the toys were but we had The Count with us. He previously tried so show off with the Heavy006 ruckers at QRVI by rolling an ankle and then continuing to ruck with it for another couple hours on questionable terrain before admitting that might be a little too CSAUP for a grown man with family responsibilities. To accommodate him, I thought we could do a three-legged bear crawl. Like most ideas in F3, it seemed like a good idea. In theory. In reality, it sucked — unless you were Travolta or Soprano each of whom tore down the lot like they had eaten Scrappy’s breakfast beforehand. The rest of us limped to the finish line just like you would expect a 3-legged bear to do.
Instructions were simple: grab two cinder blocks and assemble at the corner of the lot. Taking turns, each man calls out an exercise to be repeated 15x IC while the next man in circle takes a lap around the median (approximately 150 yards). The exercise could employ 1 or both blocks, the pull up bars or none of the above. I guess the Murph took its toll as the pull up bars were never used. However, these men must have felt bad for the blocks as they used them for almost every set.
Titan edged out Toxic for the dumbest exercises this morning. The two-block lawnmowers were terrible as was the plank on blocks where he had conspired with The Count to take than necessary. Speaking of The Count, he took the option of farmer carrying two blocks instead of running. Another idea I thought was kind, but as the workout wore on, I realized he may have gotted a bum deal. Well, it’s not like he didn’t know YHC was a bum. Toxic once again played the Block Webb card which sucked as usual. I guess he likes kneeling on asphalt. At least it wasn’t a 4:1 ratio between merkins and block presses!
Not to be outdone, the MQ invented some dumb exercises too. Thankfully there were no blastoff merkins, but there was an LBC with block and a W with block, each making 15 reps seem like torture for the abs. YHC added some Jane Fondas which took some flak and opened the door for others to go beyond the 15 rep instructions as well. Amen closed out our third round with an entire medley of Mary exercises.
With five minutes to spare, we put away the blocks and lunge-walked back to the cars. We had just enough time for some downward/upward dog before calling recover recover.
A poor mole lost his skin so YHC could bring you the following:
- Not to toot his horn, but Amen made it the entire workout without soiling himself. He made up for it post-CoT. He even squatted to amplify the burst.
- How is it possible that The Dragon is not on the website. Poor fathering is my guess. I added a tag, but that young man needs to register if he’ll be home from college for the summer.
- Speaking of poor fathering, Outlaw is hosting a discussion based on the book “Raising Men” by Eric Davis on Sunday, May 6 at 7:30 PM. Free beer and no requirement to have read the book, although it is a fairly short read. RSVP to Outlaw if you would like to attend.
- Happy birthday to Lawn Dart. If you missed his Q today at Fallout, you can catch him at Fission, Cauldron or Estate later in the week.
- Thanks to F3, I appear to have a Starbucks addiction. I stopped at Birkdale for my go to morning caffeine where I ran into just one other F3er. Where is coffeeteria on Tuesdays??
- Gladiator takes a hiatus next week in favor of the Vern launching from 131 Main. Travolta claims it offers all 3 Fs — something must have changed since I last attended and was breathing too heavy to think of 2nd F.
- Thanks to the calendar on this site for allowing me to sign up effortlessly to Q a workout. I encourage each of you to fill in a hole on the Q calendar. It’s so easy Mooch can do it. And you should too.