PAX: Maneater, Teravanilli, Roxbury, Goose, Coyote, Duke, Bam-Bam Jackknife
AO: The Peltch
By: Goose
YHC had an interesting idea for this substitute Q Saturday, and there was no real telling how it would go, but it seemed worth the experiment.
Equal parts adult and 2.0 gathered around the flags for the typical warmups including maestros or whatever we’re calling those wrist exercises. Then, YHC led us to the entrance gate to explain the Thang that would take up most of the hour.
YHC has appreciated the unique gift of muscular endurance that F3 provides. Sure, it makes you stronger, leaner, and more popular, but it’s the ability to burn out on a particular exercise and then get right back at it after five minutes of doing something else that makes growth in F3 unique. That’s what we’d be celebrating this morning.
YHC explained that we’d be walking from the entrance gate on the road all the way around to the exit gate. But, the catch was that each step had to be purchased with a merkin. You could do this however you wanted, but however many merkins you did, that’s how many steps you could take, no more.
All started with a nice, high number, and TV leapt his first 25 steps like a young stag. Most were taking as long a stride as possible at first, but it didn’t take long for the merkin rep counts to drastically drop with each stop. Another rule was that you couldn’t take breaks with your merkins–if you have to stop, you stand up and take however many steps you purchased.
Most of the PAX settled into a grueling 5 merkin/5 step routine, and things slowed a bit. Some PAX were given permission to double up on steps so we could all stay relatively together, and YHC started to implement some core work every 75 to 100 yards or so. We’d stop and do 20 wife pleasers and 15 Jane Fondas on each side–this way, all the other foot traffic at the park would know that we were serious business.
After we made it around the Thunderdome, YHC increased the general ratio to two steps per merkin (3 for those already modifying) so we’d make it before time ran out. This seemed to boost morale a bit, though blisters forming on the hands and the 2.0’s already at the gate farting around didn’t help.
Once we finally arrived, it was time to give the pecs a break, and we gathered in the chimney field. YHC was gonna use the coupons in his truck parked out there, but given the time, we just switched to Big Boy Situps as currency, and lunge walk steps the product purchased. We traversed about fifty yards before heading back to the flag to get some solid Mary in. YHC didn’t feel like skipping, and walking would take too long, so the PAX loaded into the back of the truck, and YHC drove us around to the flags using extreme caution given the average age of the adult men back there. The “respect”-level PAX still complained about the break-neck speed, but all were in one piece as we disembarked and gathered around the flag for about 7 minutes of Mary, which included the following: static wife pleasers, regular wife pleasers, flutter Jane Fondas, regular ones, Nolan Ryans, slow penguins, Lil’ Manny Crunches, Lil’ Baby Crunches, and maybe something else.
COT and Rox prayed us out.
It was an interesting experience, and YHC may come back to it in some form, especially if it’s last minute planning and we need to kill some time but still get a killer workout in. These pecs are gonna be sick!
SYITG,
Goose