KYP

A hearty 8 1.0’s and 2.0’s made it out to October’s rendition of PuppyPile. After an all night Nor’easter and a legit threat of rain in the area, the normally robust group of 2.0s and 1.0s shrunk a little bit…mainly because most of us exercised the sports adage–KYP. Know Your Personnel. You see, I know my personnel (AKA, my 2.0s) and rain and low 50s wasn’t going to make anyone happy. For us, “Push Yourself, don’t hurt yourself” is a challenge, a badge of honor, a motto to get us to do one more Merican or Burpee. For 2.0s, well, it doesn’t mean the same thing.

That said, the thought of TYA or Swirly or anyone giving me a hard time for not showing up for a Q was too much to take, so I found myself 2.0-less but out there at 7:05, ready to roll with 7 others who’s personnel has no problems whatsoever with a little rain and cold weather.

The THANG

Moseyed to The Carrillon bricks and got into the COT.

15 Side Straddle Hops
11 Helicopters
8 Don Quixote’s
15 Arm Circles (forwards and reverso)
Burpees OYO (either your age or 1/4 or your age to the nearest even number)
Hillbillies

We then had a quick demonstration on how to do the following exercises…
Monkey Squatters (verbiage cleaned up for 2.0)
Polar Bears
Bear Crawl

The Pax then moseyed to the activity trail (not sure what the name of that trail is that we did the race on last month) and started at the two chin-up bars. The goal was to do exercises that got us all around the trail, one full lap.

We started by doing “Relay 11s”

Pair Up (fortunately, Sippy has two 2.0s at the Q, so I grabbed Blue Collar as my partner)

One Partner Does 11 Mericans while the other broad jumps (or bunny hops) down the trail. Once the partner catches the jumper/hopper, they switch off. 2 sets

The Combos–
Monkey Squats / Broad Jumps
Mericans / Lunges
Burpees / Polar Bears (3 sets)

The Burpee / Polar Bear combination was surprisingly brutal. Could possibly have taken it to a new level for a 2.0 workout.

From there, we did an Indigenous Person run for about an 1/8th of a mile. Following that, we did the same thing while carrying their partner. Hat tip to Tyson, our 13 year old 2.0 of Sippy, who carried Sippy for that 1/8th of a mile.

After gathering back up, we did a ‘still trying not to get really wet’ version of Touch a Tree. But this time, we used the exercise stations on the trail which included, but were not limited to…

-climbing up and over bars around 8 feet in the air
-parallel bars
-squats while holding on to a pole

More indigenous running until we happened upon monkey bars. The Q traversed those with ease.
More indigenous running until we got to a wall. We all jumped over the wall with relative ease.

Back to the flag for the Burpee Shuffle. Kudos to our FNG Gamer for calling out three burpees on a day where we did quite a few. Very much throwing down the gauntlet in his 4 1/2 year old 2.0 way.

After looking at Big Data, Vinny remarked how Puppy Pile, pound for pound, gets the most attendance each time we have it. And he’s right. We have been averaging around forty or so each Saturday that we do it. That number, with the rain and the cool climes, will take a bit of a hit after this weekend. That’s ok, however, as all of us don’t have to worry about sniffles or sick days because we followed through on “push yourself but don’t hurt yourself.”

Here’s to the weather looking good at the end of November for us to continue Puppy Piles into the winter.