The Anniversary Q

You always remember your first time.  The nerves, the heavy breathing, trying to have a gameplan but realizing that you really, ultimately, don’t know what you are doing.  And it’s over long, long, long before you thought it would be.

Yes, the VQ is something you will never forget.

Little did I know that one year ago, at a client lunch with the leading heating and air company in the Continental United States, it would be me that would be convinced to try something to improve my life, not the other way around.  But that is exactly what happened and after one year of free loading on Thursdays with other stalwart leaders Qing 45 Minutes of Mary, I decided enough was enough and it was time to step into that ring…that ring of men that surround you on the corner of West Moreland and Grove and are looking at you to deliver them a 45 minute workout that gets their day off to a good start.

The Q

Quick run around the school and we circled up for warm-up exercises…

Good to see Razor and Hardywood in the circle…you know its going to be a good Q when you see fresh faces around the circle.

Little known fact…after a miserable freshman season at UVa wearing #30, I asked the coach if I could change the number.  #30 was actually a pretty cursed number as the guys that wore it before me all had terrible careers.

Anyway, the only other jersey available was #24…the problem was that #24 was just retired because it was worn by Jim West, the former baseball coach at Virginia.  So our pitching coach sent the jerseys to his mom in Chicago and she ripped off the #2 and #4 and reversed them for me to wear #42 the rest of my career.

While I never set the collegiate baseball world on fire, or even a dull warmth, I had a much better season as #42.  So it became my favorite number.  Then, in the early part of the 00s, professional baseball decided to honor the race barrier breaking player Jackie Robinson by retiring the #42 in all of professional baseball.

I can tell you, it is a ton of fun telling my 8 year old that Dad’s number is retired in every professional baseball stadium in America…and it’s proven by “Robinson” being above the retired jersey in outfield walls across the country.

Unfortunately doing 42 Side Straddle Hops is a lot…as is doing 42 Mericans and 42 Burpees, so we conveniently shaved 20 to do 22…

SideStraddleHops (22), Don Quixotes (10…arms flailing), Arm Circles Sippy Style (12…do not let your arms down…front, back, front).  LBCs (22), we then turned around and did 22 Mericans…someone started singing “Turn Around Bright Eyes” by Bonnie Tyler,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcOxhH8N3Bo and that song was actually stuck in my head throughout the Q.  Click on that link…you are welcome. We finished with a dozen Burpees on our own.

Somewhere around October, Loose Goose, who we all agree we miss and need to figure out where he’s been, introduced the Lucky Horseshoe to the 2nd Thursday of each 45 MoM. The point was that you could use it as a bench mark to see how you are improving from month to month.   It was a brilliant idea because it served as tremendous motivation to work hard and consistently come out to the Q.

The problem was, the Lucky Horseshoe sucks.  It’s really hard and somewhat mind numbing. By February, we punted this tradition.

It was brought back today in a modified style, termed “Golden Horseshoe” in honor or Loose Goose and hoping to wax nostalgic about Thursdays gone by.

Mericans (10)

Mericans (10)  Storm Squats (10)

Mericans (10) Storm Squats (10) WWII Sit Ups (10)

Storm Squats (10)  WW II Sit Ups (10)

WWII Sit Ups (10)

Five laps around the track were mixed in.

A year ago, at my very first F3 experience, Loose Goose Q’d and brought a frisbee.  To honor that day we tossed the frisbee down the field and did an exercise to that frisbee.  First one there got to throw it next.  Highlights…

Hardywood’s Lunges…could be the greatest lunges of any F3 workout.  Ever.

Hardywood’s toss after that…which went right to Bleeder.

Sippy, by far, the best frisbee tosser of the morning.  This should come as no surprise as Sippy is a very good athlete with tremendous leverage in his right arm.

Since we had a frisbee and we had a field and F3 is the ultimate workout, what would be a better collaboration between the three of those than a 5 minute game of ultimate frisbee?  In hindsight, the teams should’ve been split up by shirt color (dark vs not dark) but instead we just counted off and split the teams into two.  This posed all types of problems considering we are all pretty similar looking dudes wearing the same thing.  Ultimate Frisbee is a bit half baked in terms of a workout, but I think that it has true potential.

We finished by doing the run of the indigenous people back to the flag where we honored TYA, a 45 MoM hall of famer, by doing 1 minute of American Hammers (formerly known as Russian Twists.  It was around mid January we ratified the unspoken rules of 45MoM that Russian Twists would become American Hammers).  We finished with :60 of Alabama Prom Dates as called by Bleeder who was that client that invited me one year ago to F3.

It’s always good to see everyone driving, biking or walking in from the Gloom.

We need to check in with Loose Goose.

MARV