F3 Backblast: Soggy and Splendid Saturday

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Sounds like the first happy hour was a big success – thanks to Commish for organizing.  Please let us know if we’re on for round two this week!

 

NAKED MOLESKINS

We had a great morning stomping soggy ground.  Group of 9 was solid, and everyone gave 100%.  Thank you again for letting me run 3 min over!  My first Q – next one will finish on the dot, promise.

We got extra friendly with the cinderblocks today, thanks Speed Limit.  Turns out, those things get darn heavy in the back half.  Exertion measurement was old school (did anyone track HR??) –breathing, perceived exertion and Facial Sweat Volume (can FSV become a new subjective difficulty measure?) were all high.  I think we clocked somewhere north of 150 merkins in total, plus lots of good shoulder work.  By the end, we were all ready to drop to one knee.

We welcomed one FNG (Hancock – Herbie Hancock was his first concert, what a refined fella!), and he did great.  Thanks, Quagmire for bringing him to the team.

 AO: Blackout (Booker T. Washington Park, Charlottesville, VA)
Total Time: 60 minutes

 

WARMUP CIRCLE OF PAIN (COP)

One lap around the field

High knee jumps alternating, back & forth over field

Carioca back and forth over field

Mountain Climbers 20

Merkins 25

Little Baby Crunches (LBCs) 15

Swimmers 10

 

THANG

Partner Wheelborrow uphill

Suicide, finish with 20 merkins

Bear crawl suicide,10 burpees at end

Atlas Lunges: waiting team member does 20 merkins, then planks, other lunges w cinderblock overhead, plank team mate runs to other team mate, switch.  Repeat from beginning.

Partner leg toss 2×25

 Pull-up / cinder block squat 8x / 20x

 Clockwork Horrid: on hill, hill is clock face. 15 merkins at top at 12, complete plank until last person done, then to 3, repeat, 6 and 9. Always facing outside, like hands on clock.

 Triple Check: group of 3, hill run, burpees, and WWII situps, each person does once

 Mary

– Starfish crunch 20

– Weezy Jefferson 20

– Box cutters 20

– Penguin crunches 20

 

 CIRCLE OF TRUST (COT) / BALL OF MAN (BOM)

At the end, we shared an excerpt from Teddy Roosevelt.  For those interested, Teddy was a fascinating man, really a force of nature.  He probably would have also enjoyed Speed Limit’s stoic talks J.  His life was masterfully captured by Edumund Morris in The Rise of Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, and Colonel Roosevelt.  The first two are stellar; if you’re seeking biographies, go read them or borrow mine.

Teddy was our youngest president (amazingly only 42 when he assumed office after McKinley’s assassination) and he shaped modern America.  He was the first president to invite a black man (Booker T. Washington) to dine in the White House.  An avid hunter and outdoorsman, he gave us our national parks.  He established the US as the dominant force in the Western Hemisphere, and curbed monopolies to ensure everyone got a “square deal.”

Teddy was a tireless man of action.  He summarized his drive by routinely encouraging himself and and team to “get action” and he loathed idle talkers and the “spineless,” those unwilling to take a stand for what they believed in.  Some found him obnoxious, but nobody could doubt his drive or results.  Teddy’s speech below captures the core of his ethos, and serves as a pep talk for all of us, particularly those trying to accomplish hard things, maybe things at which we could fail.  Teddy would tell you to go get dusty and bloody!

Teddy Roosevelt, Citizenship in a Republic Speech on April 23, 1910. Delivered Sorbonne in Paris, during a tour of Europe after he completed a scientific expedition through East Africa sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

 Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride the slight of what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary.

 There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heath and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who “but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier.”