Rain… Some guys really hate posting in it. I get it, it’s wet, cold, stuff starts sticking to you and riding up in places you’d rather it not ride… But for me, that’s part of what taking the Red Pill is all about. When you are in the dark, dripping with a mixture of sweat, mud, tiny bits of gravel from the parking lot, and whatever is falling from the sky… that’s Gloom…
Moments in those conditions are real bonding moments. The personal and collective suffering is amped up a little, and it makes a man push a little harder, try a little more, encourage his fellow man to do a little more… That said, whereas the rain usually causes a fair amount of Pax fartsacking, 16 of us told Cantore that he wasn’t the boss of us. So we disclaimed in the usual fashion, and off we went…

Warm up:
Mosey around the lot:
– Knees to chest
– Frankensteins
– Side shuffles (don’t make fun of my arm swings)
Mosey to front of Middle School and circle (rectangle?) up:
– 15 windmills
– 15 Imperial Walkers
– 25 SSH
– 10 Perfect Merkins

The Rest of The Thang:
This will be an AMRAP workout : Go as many as/as long as you can to failure, then run laps (last guy should only run one lap – rest plank for him)
From the front of the Middle School:
1. Balls to the wall
2. Dips on the bench
Mosey to back of school (grab a block and a partner – size will matter):
1. Curls (two arms)
2. Overhead Press (two arms)
3. Partner Leg Press (you had to be there, but one Pax gets on 6 with legs up in press position,
partner takes block and leans forward onto first partners feet. First partner presses to
failure…)
4. Bent Over Row (two arms)
5. Partner Squats

This was fun. At least for me. You could focus on form and just pushing yourself versus trying to hit some stupid number of reps. We worked to failure, whenever that came. And we discussed a little about what failure is. You can choose to see failure as a place to quit, or you can see it as a new benchmark to beat next time you face a similar challenge. My daughters (especially Oldest) sometimes get very concerned over missing questions on tests or things like that. I like to remind them that a test is merely a snapshot of the amount of information that you could recall at a specific time under a given set of circumstances. It’s not complete failure to miss a question. Heck, it’s not complete failure to miss all the questions! It may be for that test, yes, but it is not failure for you as a person, as a Daughter of God, as my daughter, or anything like that. It’s a new benchmark for you to crush the next time you face a similar challenge. I don’t know about you, but I used to be terrible about that kind of thing. Small failure? Ditch the whole project. Miss the goal? Scrap the program. Not as often any more, though.
Now, we sometimes need to abandon things when we know there isn’t a reasonable chance of success given the effort that would be required to accomplish it (diminishing returns/risk and reward and all that), but I believe that if we can hold failure as a benchmark rather than a life sentence, then we have a better chance to succeed when it counts.

That is all…