As we get a new post up and running with even more fervor, I thought I'd give a description of what you can find on the hollowed ground that is the Wolf Den. Read through the workout to get to the good stuff below. I promise that you will be amazed and will want to come sweat with us on a Saturday morning to get an appreciation of what you are about to read.
Enjoy brothers:
Warmup:
Do it. It was 30 degrees. 6 men, no mercury to find.
25 IC SSH
10 IC Imperial Storm Squatters
Mosey to the Glory Days Tennis Courts
(Blaze was a high-ranking tennis pro when he was a student at Lincolnton High. We tend to honor his legacy by doing something on these courts each week so that he can hear the crowds cheering and the cars honking as they pass by just like the good old days)
Active Stretches:
Inch worms across the court – doesn’t sound sexy – and it isn’t.
Broad jump burpees – for the broads
Sampson Stretches – Deep lunge with hands high overhead, fingers interlaced, stretching from tip to toe
Kozac Stretches – Deep side lunge to stretch the beer nuts. Wait, or are those deer nuts. Beer nuts are $1.20 and deer nuts are under a buck.
Arm Circles produced too much wind so we changed to huggers because we missed our Ms in those warm beds.
Mosey to the front of Lincolnton High School
(For those of you that haven’t spent time on the campus, there is a really neat architectural feature at the front. It is a 2nd story patio that has a landing down at ground level and a landing down below that. One that grew up in a simpler time (70s and possibly the 80s) could well imagine the porches being used as smoke porches by faculty and students alike. But today we use the five landings to get swole.)
5x5x5 Landing Merkins – Start at the lowest landing and do 5 merkins OYO. Seriously, how hard can 5 merkins be? Now jog the 4-5 steps to the next landing and do 5 more, then up and up. 5 landings, 5 merkins each landing, 5 sets total. 125 merkins and we are 20 minutes into the workout.
Mosey to the tire pad
(The Wolf Den has a huge slab of concrete for no other reason than to make men strong. On and near this slab of concrete are tires of multiple sizes. Huge tractors, huge trucks, and Volvos. Amazing!)
Tire Flip Merkins – Flip your tire 2xs while your buddy does 2 Merkins. Repeato to the other side of the slab and back. Amazing workout. Amazing oxygen being sucked.
Mosey up the hill to the intermediate Steel Gym
(Brothers, this is AWESOME! Pull-up bars and Monkey Bars and dip bars are EVERYWHERE! You have to see it to believe this playground! It was made with a Murph in mind.
Monkey Business: Hang from the pull-up bar for 40 seconds. Drop to the ground, hit 3 squats, rest for the rest of your 20 seconds, then repeato 5xs. This produced an amount of ouch and sore and swole that will make these men legendary.
Mosey to the Intermediate Building:
(There are several schools tucked away on the hill around the high school. Unless you are lost or are taking a tour with the HIMs, you wouldn’t know it, and it would be to your loss.)
Follow the leader Solomon’s Slaloms – zig zag in and around the columns under the breezeway, stepping off of the curb at each post. Gave just enough of a burn on the quad to let you know you were working.
Mosey to the track
(This track with its accompanying stairs is enough to make Skipper salivate with delight. The concrete stairs and steps reach up to the blue sky and go down deep to the depths of the Wolf Den. When you get to this point in the workout, you are ready to stretch some legs and get your afterburners lit.)
Smurf Suicides – At the corner, stand on the outside line and run across the lane to the next white line, (yes, 2 feet) then backwards to the start, then to the outside of the next lane, then backwards. Lots of little choppy steps back and forth, lots of burn in the quads. When done, squat to wait on the others. Then mosey to the other 3 corners for repeatos – taking a “break” by running the stairs at both the home side (stairway to heaven) and the visitors bleachers.
Squat and Swear – Crayola wanted to get the lead out so he sprinted a lap while the rest of the Pax held a squat. Glad he’s so fast.
Mosey back to the top of the Den
By way of the crowd access stairs. How happy! 5 landings with 10 steps between each landing! Start with 5 deep squats and then sprint to the next landing – 5 more squats – all the way to the top. Major swole in the quads.
At this point the route home was relinquished from the Q to Blaze. This is where the real treat on this Veteran’s Day started. He ran the pax down the hill along the road past Ramsour’s Mill. Then he stopped us on the road at a memorial of the Battle of Ramsour’s Mill. We knew that the area had some old-timey buildings on it and we knew that the elementary was called “Battleground School,” but we had no idea what really took place here.
Blaze then ran us to the top of the hill and showed us a grave site of one of the generals and his wife and daughter. Then we moseyed to another place on the hill. This is the burial site of at least 70 unidentified militia men. We will touch on this in a minute. Blaze shared with us that when the county was going to do a school expansion at this site, the dozers were ready to blade this hilltop over and his mom, working as a teacher’s aid at the school, went out and stopped the dozers – explaining that they couldn’t doze there as it was a grave site. Sure enough, the workers backed off and the land has been marked and the battle better memorialized.
There was another memorial area that Blaze led us to and then he couldn’t help himself – more tire flips on the way back to the launch pad.
Reflection:
John 15:13King James Version (KJV)
13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Even though Veteran’s Day is when we honor those who served vs those who died, keep in mind that a bit of every soldier dies when they go off to war. Let us live to lead, live to bless, live to serve.
Now for the History Lesson:
I just couldn’t stop thinking about the hill in downtown Lincolnton so I had to look it up. Here is the history of the battle according to School Bus:
The Battle of Ramsour’s Mill was fought on a hot foggy June morning in 1780. America had declared her independence 4 years earlier and England had quickly disagreed. The battle of King’s Mountain was going to take place in October (when the tide of the war really turned) and Lincoln County had militias that were sizing up from both sides.
One of the leaders of the Tories was a man named John Moore. He had been told by Cornwallis to not organize until the British army could get to Lincolnton. Moore heard that the Patriot Militia General Locke was looking for him with about 20 men. Moore decided to get some guys together and go find Locke. They couldn’t, but word spread that the British were coming to the area so a bunch of men joined with Moore and they set up a camp about 300 yards east of Ramsour’s Mill to be ready to welcome the British army and help them on their campaign to squash the rebellion.
The Patriots had an army that was in Charlotte and they heard that there was a militia of Loyalists that had rounded up a bunch of Patirots and were going to hang them. The Pat General Rutherford sent a note to the Pat militia (Francis Locke) to NOT try and attack on their own, to wait for the army to get there. When does a guy named Francis ever listen and not make history? NEVER!
Wanna know the odds? The Loyalists were camped 300 yards east of the Mill (yes, where we work out) and they had about 1,300 soldiers. The Patriots and a militia of about 400 men including calvary. They gathered 16 miles north east of Lincolnton at Mountain Creek (the rendezvous site is now beneath the headwaters of the Cowans Ford dam system that forms Lake Norman. – yep, you pass it when you drive on 73 and go past the dam.)
The Patirots rode into Lincolnton and to the campsite. There were sentries standing guard and the Pat calvary charged and fired at the sentries. They sounded the alarm and fell back to the main body of the army. The calvary waited for the Pat army to catch up and they charged the ridge – yes, the same ridge we run up and over on Saturday mornings. In the confusion, the Patriots were actually able to overtake the Tory flank and take control of the ridge. Once they got to the ridge though, Locke couldn’t get his men to form a line and he ordered them to fall back. Instead, a Captain in his army sounded a charge and with his men and another Patriot group of sharp shooters giving support, charged while the Tories retreated and were in disarray.
Remember General Rutherfod? The Patriot General from Charlotte? He was on his way to help Locke and was only a mile away when the battle started. By the time he got there it was over. The Tories raised a flag of truce to him to treat their wounded.
There were about 100 men from each side that were wounded. There were about 50-70 on each side that were killed. And here’s the part that I found to be so crazy about the battle. There were no soldiers in this battle. No trained British soldiers, no trained American soldiers. These were neighbors, friends, and family members fighting it out. And the other thing – they were low on ammunition so after a couple of volleys, these guys turned their guns to clubs and started bashing each other’s brains in! There were at least three counts that I found of where BROTHERS charged to the battle because they found out that their own brothers were there fighting for the enemy – whichever side that was depending on the brother.
Check out these two stories:
When the Tories were driven back the second time, and the left of their line became mixed with the Whigs, a Dutchman (of the Tories) meeting suddenly with an acquaintance of the Whigs addressed him, "Hey, how do you do, [B]illy? I has known you since you was a little boy, and I would not hurt one hair of your head, because I has never known no harm of you, only that you was a rebel." Billy, who was not so generous, and was much agitated, and his gun being empty, clubbed it and made a blow at the Dutchman's head, which he dodged. The Dutchman cried out, "Oh, stop, stop! I is not going to stand still and be killed like a damned fool neder," and raised the butt of his gun and made a blow at Billy's head, which he missed, and one of Billy's comrades, whose piece was loaded, clapped his muzzle under the Dutchman's arm and the poor fellow fell dead…
Captain M'Kissick was wounded early in the action, being shot through the top of the shoulder; and finding himself disabled, went from the battleground about 80 poles to the west. About the time the firing ceased he met ten of the Tories coming from a neighboring farm, where they had been until the sound of the firing started them. They were confident their side was victorious, and several of them knowing Captain M'Kissick, insulted him and would have used him ill, but for Abra[ha]m Keener, Sr., one of his neighbors, who protected and took him prisoner. While marching on towards the battle ground Keener kept lamenting, "That a man so clever and such a good neighbor and of such good sense should ever be a rebel." He continued his lecture to Captain M'Kissick until they came where the Whigs were formed. Keener looking around and seeing so many strange faces, said, "Hey, boys, I believe you has got a good many prisoners here." Immediately a number of guns were cocked, and Captain M'Kissick, though much exhausted by loss of blood, had to exert himself to save the lives of Keener and party.
After the battle, wives, family members and children worked to remove and bury the bodies. Remember that there are still 70 bodies buried at the top of the hill? It’s a mass grave of the unidentified. Imagine that. These were men from around this area. How were they not identified? My guess is that the battle was so gruesome that they faces were left unidentifiable.
The Loyalists were rounded up, their property seized, and they were jailed until they took a pledge to support the Pats. They all accepted although 6 years after the battle the sheriff went to one of the leaders and made him help to put in a road from Beatie’s Ford to Lincolnton as punishment for having been a Torie.
I found this to be a compelling story – a history that I had no clue took place right where we love to workout. It’s an amazing AO with an amazing history.
Come play with us brothers.