ambiguous duo
24 men decided to skip the half marathon at The Estate and the football game at BRP, and instead take their chance with the duo lead of Shoe and Blackbeard. Had they known Shoe was going to lead with Reverse Pickle Pounders as First Holy Communicants were arriving for Mass, they might have made other plans. Instead, this (more or less) is what they were subjected to.

Shoe started us off with an unorthodox CoP:

  • Cotton Pickers x20 IC
  • Reverse Pickle Pounder x20 IC
  • SSH x20 IC

Next Shoe gave the pax a head start with a few exercises to get us moving:

  • Lunge walk to pull up bars
  • Broad jump burpees towards back entrance

There we partnered off with P1 running to pull up bars for 5 pullups while P2 did AMRAP squats. Flapjack and repeato. The pullups continued with P1 doing CDDs. Flapjack and repeato.

Next was the mosey to the main entrance followed by quadrophelia to along the main drive. At this point we moseyed over to the trash can to bring out the tire. While Shoe man handled the wet rubber into position, the rest of us brought out the cinder blocks for the 2nd half of the workout.

Shoe had us line up, flip the tire twice, do 2 burpees and return to the back of the line. When he saw that we had too much idle time in line, he switched to lunge walking. When it was obvious that was still too low impact, Crimson overruled with running a lap around the lot. The pax was getting a bit unruly by the time they returned the tire to its home and Shoe handed over the reins.

With mumble chatter at a high and complaints of not enough sweat, I ordered the pax to partner up, grab the blocks and head for the school wall. There P1 remained in People’s Chair while P2 took both blocks for a trip around the drop off area. Flapjack. Next, P1 was told to do a wall plank (feet on wall, level with shoulders in forward leaning rest) as P2 took both blocks for quadrophelia up the hill and mosey back. Flapjack and repeato.

Amidst complaints about life not being fair, the pax took the blocks up the hill where each team dropped one block and carried the other to one “corner” of the lot. Due to the number of eager participants, we broke into two groups (the P1s and the P2s) for 4 time bombs, one at each corner of the lot. The P1s began with Set 1 and went to Set 4. The P2s started with Set 2 and wrapped up with Set 1.

Time Bombs (TB)

  1. Shoulder Press TB: hold blocks over head (Zamperini-style). Go around circle with each man going 5 shoulder presses. When halfway through, man to right begins. After 1st trip around circle drop to 4 reps. Continue around circle to 1 rep each. Zamperini while not pressing.
  2. Merkin TB: classic merkin count down (6 to 1), planking while not pushing.
  3. Burpee TB: 5-to-1 burpees time bomb style. Al Gore while waiting for the fun to come back around to you.
  4. Duck, duck, bear crawl: reverse plank (elbows or hands, stomach up); 1st man bear crawls around outside of circle. When he gets halfway around, 2nd man goes. Remain in reverse plank until everyone gets a chance to crawl.

We cleaned up our toys, then circled up for about 5 minutes of MARY:

  • Low Flutter x30 IC
  • Mountain Climbers x15 IC (courtesy of Spice Rack)
  • Mason Twist x15 IC (courtesy of Boar Hog)

Recover, recover.

For our prayer, we all offered up a few moments of silence to lift up Olive and his family in light of the tragic death of his 8-year old daughter scheduled to make her First Holy Communion this morning at St Mark. After the silence, we finished by going around the circle to speak aloud the names of the mother’s in our lives whom we honor on this Mother’s Day weekend.

The Buy-One Get-One Moleskin:

  • I’m glad Shoe started us off. He took the brunt of the mumblechatter this morning although it may have been due in part to a rumor that his weinke included “Circle up” as the first item.
  • Reverse pickle pounders were a crowd pleaser early on. While some refrained from embarrassment with Holy Communicants nearby, Shoe showed us all that at 52, he can still please the M.
  • Several complaints that Red Cedar and I only had one block for farmer’s carry and quadrophelia. I’d mention that we both carry an extra 32# on our frames every day, but the better answer is “Life’s not fair. Suck it up!”
  • The P2s couldn’t understand why the P1s kept catching up to us on the time bombs. We fixed that by assigning them 6-to-1 on the burpee bomb. That seemed to slow then down a bit.
  • Great to see such a large crowd at Mighty Jungle. A special kudos to Red Cedar, Dill and Omaha who I (at least) have not seen in a while. I hope you all keep coming back — we’re all better off with you in attendance.
  • Last but certainly not least, we welcomed Roundup (f/k/a Carlo Durango).
  • Speaking of Roundup, he was our war baby at 21, while Norseman was our war daddy at 58 (RESPECT!)

Volunteers needed:

  • Norseman (Richard Clancey – rclancey@tiaa-cref.org) mentioned a need for parking attendants (25, 4-hour slots) at the Dragon Boat Festival next Saturday on 5/14.
  • Norseman is also looing for donations for a yard sale, collecting donation items on May 18-20. He also needs pick-up trucks to move the items to and from the sale with money from sales going to charity.