Lovely Trees and Grass

7 Pax weren’t scared off by Jekyll’s twitter warnings that there would be lots of pain and grass (and most assuredly not the dry kind).  Weather was low 70’s and humid. Speculation swirled that the low attendance was due to F3Dads camp and the “Run Your A– Off August” contingent that had likely posted to TheYard.  But what we lacked in quantity, we more than made up for in quality of Pax.
YHC had the first half, so I issued the disclaimer and then asked everyone close their eyes for a brief period of time.  Upon opening, pax were remind that the word of the month is “presence”, and to think about where their mind was during the 30 seconds of eyes being closed.  Did their mind stay present, in the here-and-now?  Or where they thinking about the past, or the future, or just some other place or problem?
We moseyed to one of the Spring parking lots for some warmup:
  • SSH x25
  • Mountain Climbers x15
  • Dips x10
  • Peter Parkers x10
Mosey to row of trees across 160 (beside old 21).  Pax found a small stack of cones at the “first” tree, and we stopped there for a few moments.  YHC discussed more on “presence”.  The exercises with the trees went as follows.  By the way, YHC stole this idea from CSPAN who did this about 3 years ago at this same location (and a different topic).
  • Top cone pick from stack.
  • Pax held Al Gore while YHC read a question regarding “presence” (from the word of the month document).
  • Exercise read from the cone and pax performed one rep of the exercise at the first tree
  • Pax ran to 2nd tree and did 2 reps, then 3rd tree (3 reps), 4th tree (4 reps), and so on.
  • At 12th tree, after 12 reps done, pax planked until 6 arrived.
  • Together we ran back to the first tree.
We repeated thru 4 exercises before we ran out of time.  Here where the exercise and question pairs.
  1. Flying Squirrels – What memories do you have of your parents and your time with them? Were they fully present? How did their presence or lack thereof make you feel?
  2. Squats – Do you have any memories of a special person in your life that was fully present? How did that person make you feel?
  3. Crab Jacks – What distracts you most from being present?
  4. Run Stance Switch – How have you learned to be more present in your relationships? What have you learned about being present with God?
Quick follow up thoughts about “presence”, then hand off to Jekyll.
Mosey back to WEP, to the bottom of the hill famous for ladders, so that we could do….(drumroll please) some ladders.  But first, we did a review of the 5 core principles.  Just for fun, Jekyll had us do 5 burpees after the first principle recited, then 4 after the 2nd, 3, after the 3rd, then 2, then 1, and then back to 5 burpees.
The ladder work then began:
  1. Ladder 1: Squats and Donkey Kicks (to/from 11) with normal run up and down hill
  2. Ladder 2: LBCs and Merkins (to/from 7) with uphill run being backwards
  3. Ladder 3: pax choice:  American Hammers (thanks Mary Lou) and Bomb Jacks (thanks BandCamp) (to/from 7) with uphill climb being bear crawls
And just when we thought we were all completely smoked, Jekyll wrapped it up with 3 rounds of Makhtar N’Diayes (10x, 10x, 15x), with plank series in between each set.
Naked Man Moleskin
Very strong showing by all pax today. As I mentioned at the workout and on Twitter following, Jekyll did not let up as we neared the end of the workout.  Rather, with 5 minutes left, he gathered us to encourage a strong finish.  It certainly was not what any of us wanted to hear, but it’s what we needed to hear, and we are all better for it.
Long Shanks earned extra credit by running in and running out to the workout.  The workout mileage itself was north of 2.5 miles according to Strava.  T-claps also goes to Youts for digging deep to finish strong.
TClap |
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