4/12 ToG Backblast-With Friends Like These….

Q: Captain Insane-o (YHC)

Pax (29, 1 FNG): Abacus, Loco (welcome back; happy early birthday), Double Down (R), Scratch, Cold War, Lamp, Piggy, FloJo, Scuba Steve, Red Roof, McAfee, Little Jerry (R), Bo Schembechler (DR), Slippers, Steerage, Noxeema Jackson, Pope, Kilo, OJ, Gillespie, Diablo, Star Child, Trump, Rudy (DR), Honeysuckle (DR), Nugget, Wham!, Sparky (FNG),CI

Conditions:  58* and dry.  Thank you.  Finally.

Gearlander:  Gray Dri-fit White Claw/F3Louisville Shirt, blue Nike Pro running shorts, Features running socks (blue, orange, reflective), New Balance 1400MR running shoes, F3Louisville Hoorag

This Backblast could be short.

COP was 20x IC of SSHs, Grass Grabbers, Copperhead Squats, LBCs and Hamstring and Quad (actual Quads) Stretches.

The Thang was 100 burpees, 1 mile run, 50 burpees, 1 mile run for a time goal of 32 minutes.  Then, some Mary for early finishers who also picked up the six before COT.

You can stop now if all you’re interested in is that.  Totally cool.  But that’s not really the story of the workout.  This is the story….

In spite of myself, I keep making friends in F3.  All friends in this Backblast will remain anonymous in case you don’t want folks to know; I get it.  One of those friends told me about today’s Thang.  According to him, it’s often seen at GORUCK events, and it is hard.  Well, a bunch of us have done/will do GORUCK events, including an upcoming GROWRUCK in Toledo, so YHC figured what better way to test our readiness than to do this.  I shared this with some friends who are doing the GROWRUCK.  They didn’t blink (not true at all.  They cried like babies.  “I’m gonna puke.”  “That’s crazy.” “You can’t do math CI.”).

The Thang is a modified Crossfit set called a Riley (much respect for this Hero).  The difference is immaterial, but if you’re interested in how hard it’s perceived to be, those Crossfitters like to post times and grunts more than we F3ers do.  So Google away.

I ran this workout past another new F3 friend of mine.  He laughed (digitally) and said “it suck[s]”.  He’s a stud (as is my other new friend), so now I was really going to do it.  The line that stuck with me, though, was the justification for doing the set:  “Running is a life skill.”  I agree.  So are burpees.

Now, I like to think I have a lot of old and new friends here in the F3Lousiville Pax.  But as it goes, I’ve heard some folks don’t really like my workouts.  To each his own.  I don’t apologize, but I also get it that sometimes I go a little overboard.  Just know, it’s only because I know you all have it in you, and I want you to get better every time.   But to avoid losing any more friends, I thought to myself, “what better way to be a friend than to be completely transparent with what we’d do.”  Hence, my preblast.  I laid it out there. All of it.

Couple of things about the preblast, which most guys read (and 28 still showed; sorry DR guys.  Next time, check the website).

First, it had a subtle call out.  Basically, I said if you don’t come, you’re scurred.  That wasn’t cool.  But again, I don’t really GAF because I knew this would be good and hard and fun.  Memorable.  I also have zero doubt in this Pax.

Second, I shared it with Zoolander.  Zoo is the site Q at the Extender at the Mutt, which is the sister Thursday workout to the Temple of Gloom.  Due to a hack by Russian Bots, Zoo’s Extender Q got obliterated and he was left holding the Q with no weinke.  This gave me an idea.  The way I figured, some guys may jump ship from the ToG to the E when they saw my preblast.  Trump literally tweeted this.  Well, Zoo is almost (I say almost because he was equally transparent despite my suggestion that he surprise everyone at the E dressed in a smedium with a Hoorag as CI-lander and drop the set on them) as horrible as me and simply yoinked my concise but brutal weinke for the workout at the E.  Good stuff, Zoo.  Strong to quite strong.

When I got up this morning, I kept thinking of the title of this Backblast:

“With friends like these, who needs enemies.”

I was thinking this as I drove to the O.  I was thinking this as I drove past the assembling, swole Pax.  28 HIM.  Woof.  I was thinking they’d soon be thinking this about me.

Bo Schembechler was there.  Love that guy.  He shared with me before we started that he’d just done this set in F3Columbus a couple of weeks before.  That told me two things.  First, the Pax was not there uninformed.  He didn’t check the site.  Someone told him.  They knew and came anyway. And, two, if they’re doing this is Columbus, it must be good.  What was even more awesome about Bo’s presence is that in COT he shared he didn’t finish this last time, but did today because of the energy in the group.  I will admit, the energy was palpable.

After COP, I confirmed my suspicion by asking how many had read the preblast.  Almost everyone except the DR Pax from Tennessee (sorrynotsorry since they crushed this thing.  They were sub 28 min for sure), raised their hand.

29 of us were there to get better.

For those of you wanting to know how you did, we started the Thang at 05:37:40 on the dot.  Larry Birds included:  Pope, McAfee, Rudy, Honeysuckle, Little Jerry, Diablo, Kilo, Abacus (honestly, there may have been more, but my brain was fried when I finished).

After the workout was over, I got a note from another of my friends in F3.  This friend I’ve known a long time, but have really gotten to know because of F3.  My gain.  He said he really liked the set.  I agreed, but told him I wasn’t sure it was fair.  You see, lately, I’ve been trying to give guys outs on workouts, not requirements.  This is a free, peer-led workout with no rules after all.  No reason to crush a man’s soul.  Today was a soul crusher.

His response:  “[That] workout pushed us… it’s the only way to get better.”

Aye.

CI out.