It’s only right to have my VQ at no other place than Padre’s House of Pain. Adding to the fun in the gloom of having a Co-Q with the loud and proud Apache.

The Thang

Warm Up
Apache Started us off
SSH X40
Then a long Mosey around the neighborhood next to PHOP

Let’s explain “The Cards of Pain” 24 cards each card contains a workout. After each sprint at random we pull a card, every Pax completes the Workout, OYO or in cadence.

Return Trip
20 Merkins
Mosey half way back
10 Contra Burpees
Mosey 3/4 way back
20 Squats

Mosey back to PHOP
Continue Random workouts until Cards or Time expired, between each workout sprint to a side of PHOP. Plank after In Cadence and wait for six.

Workout’s in the Cards
Monkey Humpers 20 – OYO
Crab Humbers 20 – In Cadence
Merkins 30 – In Cadence
LBC’s 20 – In Cadence
Carolina Dry Docks 30 – In Cadence
Mountain Climbers 20 – In Cadence
Freddie Mercury 20 – In Cadence
Burpees – 10 OYO
Balls to the Wall – 10 count
Diamond Pushup – 10 In Cadence
Side straddle Hop – 20 In Cadence
Moroccan Night Clubs – 30

Ended with 4 Corners from Apache

Moleskin
Great first Q with a bunch of guys that were willing to stick in there with me until the end. FNG Cobra made the workout easy at his first time out and rolled with the punches. Thanks to Apache for working with me the day before going through the whole deck of cards. Also shout out to site Q Padre for keeping count and keeping us moving.

Announcements
Welcome FNG Cobra!!
Race for the Cure Oct 3rd – Sign up under F3 Turkey Punchers

Prayer Request
We have several Pax that are out with injuries over the last few weeks.
Families, and Teachers back in school.

12 PAX posted to Petra for a Cake Boss treat on the gloomy Friday morning. When you post in Rock Hill you expect a little energy and a little noise and when YHC was tying my shoes and stretching and checking out the PAX I realized something just was not the same. Something was off at The Rock. WHERE’S APACHE?? Our boisterous brother is on the mend and healing up but I know he wants to be out with the PAX in the worst way. Get well bro and see you in the gloom soon!!

The Thang:

Light jog to a Grassy spot (premium at Petra)

COP: 3 rounds of the following exercises

10-Extreme Mtn Climbers

10-Inch worm push ups

10-Clam Shells (hands to instep)

10-buttkickers

10-I surrenders (hands up, down on knees, back up)

Mosey to main parking lot for a little ladder work

Picture 100 yard football field. At one end zone you do first exercise, run to other end zone do 1st and then 2nd exercise and run to other end zone and do 1, 2, 3 exercises for each rep listed and increasing exercises.

1-Merkins

2-SSHs

3-double count flutters

4-Freddy Mercs

5-Burpees

6-Squats

7-LBCs

8-plank jacks

9-diamond Merkins

10-donkey kicks

11-jumping lunges

12-monkey humpers

The PAX did awesome on this work. All finished strong and the encouragement throughout was inspiring.

We finished strong with 50 Side Straddle Hops and then COT

We had a great time and worked hard and had a great Bible and Biscuits session with Padre to follow. Lots of Prayers and praise reports in COT and don’t forget to sign up for Race for the Cure!!

YHC talked about Jonah and his call to be obedient and his struggle with that call and how it impacts everyone around us. We are called to be different than the world, love our wives, work hard for those managers that are tough, be there for our kids (not spoil….be there!) and many other things to be obedient to God’s will for our life. When we are not obedient, the people around us are effected and there are consequences to these decisions. Jonah realized this and we realize this when we drop the ball on how we should live ….how that effects those around us. Be strong, be leaders and rely on Sky Q and your brothers around you to fight the good fight and push through the storms.

Honored and Humbled as always to lead such a fine group and appreciate the opportunity Bogey and love my Rock Hill Brothers!! God Bless you all!

Cake Boss

19 Pax descended on Sullivan Middle and Cherry Park for a brutal beat down.

Mugshot (on his VQ) got things off to a stunning start with the Parris Island Shuffle. Which was worse than it sounded. 50 merkins, sprint across the football field, 50 LBCs, sprint across the football field, 40 merkins, sprint across the football field…you get the drift.

Handed off to Popeye
Zombie Indian Run, which was basically a walking lunge with some sprinting mixed in.
Rollie Pollie – merkin, flip, dip, flip, rinse & repeat until your too dizzy to keep going or get to the end of the curb
The Show: 20 box jumps, 20 incline merkins, 20 derkins, 20 step ups each leg

Handoff to YHC
COP (no workout’s complete without one): SSH, Parker-Peter, Peter-Parker, Windmills, Monkey Humpers
Mosey to Cherry Park
Leg Work: Peoples Chair, calf raises, monkey humpers, peoples chair, monkey humpers
Green Mile: 300 Freddie Mercuries, 200 Monkey Humpers, 100 Merkins
For good measure: Peoples chair, monkey humpers
Sprint to COT, 6 inches, and superman to finish

Announcements: too many to recount, other than our goal to get to 500 PAX in The Fort. Get those EH’s in gear!

Welcome to Daniel-san and Goodfella. Great work out men!

I had overlooked the fact that this Tuesday was our standing 2nd-F Tuesday.

We normally meet at McHale’s, and folks drift in between 6pm and 7pm, as they get off work.

Before I realized this was the 3rd Tuesday, Apache and I had agreed to try a new thang: The “Legal Remedy Brewery” (LRB) in Rock Hill is kicking-off weekly group runs, starting today. They claim to have 3,4,5, & 6 mile routes mapped out.

Starting time is 6:30 at 129 Oakland Avenue in RH.

So… If you’re up for it, join us for an informal 1st-F at 6:30 at the brewery.
Regardless, stick around for 2nd-F at the Legal Remedy Brewery.

POSSIBLE ADDITIONAL AUDIBLE: As of yesterday, LRB did NOT have it’s Certificate of Occupancy (that’s how new it is!). So… If the doors are shut at LRB, look for us at McHales!

This workout has been brought to you by F3 Nation and inspired by Catawba Bingo!

Petra is meant to be a moderate bootcamp workout, modeled closely after our sister workout, Slow Burn, in The Fort.

I figured BINGO couldn’t be that hard … right??

COP for a bit of a warm up with SSH, Imperial walkers, merkins, CSPAN’s (A.K.A. windmills) with a slow mosey over to Popeyes for the game of the day.

The lap was up the side ramp, through the drive-thru and then down the other side. The idea sounded great when I was planning it out, but Google Earth doesn’t provide smell-a-vision yet. Just so ya know, grease traps at 5:30am in early August smell AMAZING!!

Everybody partnered up and completed the following with cumulative totals.

B – Ballerina Squats x 100
I – Inclined Merkins x 100
N – No Chair Sits (Peoples Chair) – Hold it while your partner takes a lap 2X
G – Groiners x 100
O – Wheel-O-Merkin x 25 – Omaha from 50

After we completed our quick game of BINGO, where we were all winners, we took a long mosey to see what wares the stores had to peddle and circled up back at the shovel flag for 5 mins of Mary led by Sgt. York. (BTW, Sgt. York, you’ve gotta get on the Q rotation brother – you’re way to fit to not be leading!)

We wrapped up with a quick passage read by The Riddler and he took us all out in the BOM.

Great work gentlemen, next time we’ll lap somewhere else!

As always, it’s an honor to lead the PAX!

Catfish … out!

Breaker Breaker, This One Bad Mother Trucker rolled into the Ballroom to prove that trucks aren’t always slow. Glad to see 9 other PAX heard my “Got your ears On” call. Quick disclaimer as we headed off to COP. On the way to COP, one PAX was releasing some toxic fumes that eventually caught up to him…see below

The Thang:
Mossy to end of industrial drive to parking lot for COP:
14 Good mornings (somewhere during this exercise Decible had to run behind the pillar…it smelled)
20 IW
25 SSH
20 Moroccan nightclub squats

Mossy to Industrial drive and partner up. Time for a AO classic: Dora 1-2-3 as Smokey the Bear rolled by to check on us
75 Burpees
200 squats
300 LBC
Run up Industrial Drive to first driveway entrance and back

Fast walk halfway up, run backs second half to first industrial building parking lot

Line up against building
Lunge walk with a 2 sec count in down position to other side of parking lot, climb walls to Roasted Oven roadway and run back to building
Rinse and repeat 3 times

Get on the Big Round Ball for:
20 box cutters (Raleigh favorite)
Protractor (lots of mumble chatter so Q kept going until Bombjacks were necessary)
Flutter Kicks

Climb walls to COT

Lots of announcements (hope I caught all of them):
9/11-12 BRR
9/12 Camp Care 5k and Pre-mature ocktoberfest (See weekly newsletter, Stang and Decible for more info)
9/18 3 year anniversary celebration at Anne Springs Greenway Pavilion
10/17 fastest 5k relay – 5 man team for relay sprint in Rock Hill with finish line at Legal Remedy Brewery
12/19 Fort xmas party

Medical Prayers to Cake Boss, Stang, and Truckers Families. Teachers and students who went back to school yesterday.

Always a privilege to lead an AO workout as these opportunities are becoming less frequent due to work commitments in Raleigh. Honored to be apart of F3 and everyone of you push all of us to be better men, husbands, and leaders. Till next time,

Catch Ya On The Flip Flop

With the first day of the new school year, excitement for being back on a schedule was in the air for those men with school age 2.0’s.  Three BRR enthusiast showed up early for the 30 minutes of running.  Personally, I enjoy watching them come in from their early run and know this will slow the IL young guns down a few steps.  Hats off to Geranamo since he didn’t have a KB, One-Niner provided his light weight 35lb bell.  Geranamo took the challenge and didn’t trade off when given the opportunity!!

Since there were no FNG’s present a modified disclaimer was given and then we were off and a mosey around the parking lot for a warm up lap.

Warm Up:

• 25 – SSH IC
• 15 – IW IC
• 15 Mountain Climbers IC
• 15 Peter Parkers IC
• 15 Parker Peters IC
• 20 Morrocan Night Club IC

The Thang:

Mosey with bells to the back of the school for a series of excercises and sprints.  Sprint distance was set at 3rd light pole.

Round 1:

• 20 KB swings run light poles then 20 merkins then run back to start
• 20 Shoulder Press (10 ea. arm) run then 20 jump lunges return
• 20 curls (10 ea. arm) run then 20 squats return

Round 2:

• 10 partner plank hops (demo by Ringer and YHC) run then partner merkin claps – return
• Decided to repeat since the plank hops were new to everyone.  Practice made better!!
• 15 Russian Twist with bell – run then 10 Burpees (what’s an F3 workout without them?)

Mosey back to the front of the school and drop bells by the flag.  From the flag to 3rd column bearcrawl, gator merkins for 3 more columns, lunges to the rock circle.

At the circle perform 20 dips and 20 derkins, rinse and repeat for 15 count.  Sprint backwards to flag for Sally.

• 25 LBC
• 20 Freddie Mercury
• 15 Hello Dolly
• 10 Makhtar N’Diayes.
• Lap around parking lot and join for COT.

COT –

Announcements for the upcoming 3yr birthday party, 5 man 5K and Mud Run.

Prayer & Praises –  request for C3PO , Opie and new school year.

Thanks to Ringer for putting me on the schedule to Q.  It was an honor to lead and I enjoy being a part of a great group of men, dedicated to getting better and strengthening each other.  The final thoughts were about our witness to others and are we the same person 7 days a week and not just Christ centered on Sunday.  If you were on trial for your faith is there enough evidence to convict you?

Apache, Catfish, Italian Job, and I got in a quick 2 miles prior to workout… sounds like this will become a regular occurrence…

Disclaimer (statement witnessed by many…no FNGs)

Fusion on VQ:

(Apologies that I was unaware this was a VQ, he did such a great job – he performed like a vet #HIM)

Very short Mosey to soccer field

VQ COP was well executed with plenty of #mumblechatter

Trail running sequence with plank-o-rama on either end of the trail…more mumblechatter

Popeye and I played tree trimmers along the way…#stickwithyourdayJOB

Mosey back to soccer field

#Horrible DORA 1-2-3 sequence

#1 Popeye is a smart man and got the ol’fake Burgandy as a partner

#2 I am smarter than I look and got ol’Kenyan Posh as a partner

Note to self…don’t sprint against Cheeto…#sillyfast…when Posh and Italian Job warned me… I felt I had to give #HIM a go…I can’t imagine playing #HIM in basketball…needless to say I would foul #HIM until I had none to give…or in other words #HACK-A-CHEETO

Obviously Fusion has some great Q potential…all Rock Hill Site Qs get #HIM on the schedules

CSPAN on Q

We used the 4 corners of soccer field area as our 4 corners points (about 2 soccer fields in length and width)

3 laps with 25 LBC per corner = total of 300

Meet at center field for Superman sequence = 6 picked us up

1 lap with 20 Flying Squirrels per corner = total of 80

Meet at center field for plank-o-rama = 6 picked us up

1 lap with 25 CDD per corner = total of 100

Meet at center field for ABLAB-o-rama = 6 picked us up

Long sprint series to close out our morning #PatriotisFIT

COT (circle of trust)

Prayer & Praise, BOM, and a good discussion, and fellowship post workout.

15 of us went to move the Fort Mill Family Care Center post workout…Fusion was the QIC, great works, and leadership from a bunch of #HIM

Moleskin:

I had been working on a sermon for the last few weeks. The first topic was about men who complain about burn-out…so I am calling “Bull$hit” on that…We are men of a higher calling, and we are meant to wake up early with F3, go to our jobs and work our “tails” off, ride home, sit in the driveway (for a few minutes) and pray for the Holy Spirit to give us the energy and strength to be the #HIM leader of our family and we should go to bed each night “wore out”…I also need to include being the spouse your wife needs you to be (most of us are still working on that…and keep working on that, always think of her as a gift from GOD)…#ramble #SoundedBETTERonSATURDAY

The other topic is about facing ridiculous challenges in your life…those are your opportunities to pray for strength, and let Jesus strengths come through you rather than you/me/us stepping away from a challenge…Step up #HIM…it is who you are designed to be…

We are not meant to go to bed at night with idle minds and a rested body, we are meant to lead by example, especially in our families letting our faith lead the way… be a man and get involved…let your tired body be your badge of honor…it is how it is meant to be #HIM

Be a better man today than you were yesterday,

CSPAN – over & out

Warm up
15 SSH
15 windmill
15 IW
15 MC

Mozy to Freedom center steps

Singles at steps
Reverse bear crawl steps

Mozy to Parking deck

Level 1
Carry partner to next level
Level 2
10 Burpees, 20 jump squats, 30 jumping lunges
Carry partner to next level
Level 3
10 Burpees, 20 jump squats, 30 jumping lunges
Carry partner to next level
Level 4
10 Burpees, 20 jump squats, 30 jumping lunges
Carry partner to top

Run to level 1

Rinse and repeat with other partner

Run back stopping at wall in alleyway for some long People’s chair counts while waiting on the 6.

Spoke on Matthew 16:24 when Jesus said “if anyone wants to follow me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
Many times we find that we can bring ourselves to deny ourselves (as hard as that is sometimes), and we can say we follow after Jesus, but we forgot the most crucial component, which is taking up our cross. As part of the workout, each man had to carry his partner up each level of the parking deck on his back. The idea is for us to visualize what Jesus did for us over 2000 years ago and to understand that we too must carry that same cross. A cross was said to weigh around 200 pounds. For some of the PAX today they carried 200 pounds, for some they carried less, and for some they carried more than 200 pounds. Although crosses in biblical times didn’t vary in weight as much as the PAX, it is a good reminder that sometimes the cross we carry seems lighter and sometimes it seems heavier depending on the circumstances of life. That being said, we must understand that our cross is not our circumstances in life, but our “voluntary participation in Christ’s sufferings as He carries out His redemptive purposes (Philippians 3:10).” (Experiencing God Day by Day, Loc 882)

It was a honor to Q today and participate in something that hopefully allowed all of us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the One that bore the shame and pain of the cross, so we can understand that we too must carry the cross as an outward expression of our inner desire to follow Jesus.

The fourth installment of the Gladiator Games was the best yet.  Not only did YHC prolong his dynasty, but I got to meet some really great PAX who were brave enough to run though what they will probably say was the most satisfying 6 minutes they had experinced since prom night.

The course this year was undeniably brutal.  Have a look at F3 legend and calf model Cake Boss from Ft. Mill conquering the first run.

If you are watching thinking you can do better, you should post next time.  There always room for one more in the gloom

Here are a final standings (min:sec)

Pebbles 5:20

Bounty Hunter 5:56

Lemur 6:17

Voodoo 6:20

Beast 6:23

Chanel 6:39

General 6:40

WWL 6:46

Brown 6:47

Nephew 6:50

Dredd 6:54*

CSPAN 7:01

1-9er 7:09

Dark Helmet 7:06

Cake Boss 7:17

Co-Pay 7:53

Ringer 8:13

Zima 8:40

(If I missed your time, I apologize, please let me know and I will make the required edit)

*Dredd decided to time himself and ended up with a 4:48 due to a equipment malfunction. The listed time reflects his time on Strava while covering the distance of the course.  He probably did slightly better.

Major props to the men who completed a Jekyl beatdown for 60 mins before tacking the course (ringer, 1-9er, Zima, CSPAN.  It looked pretty terrible from behind my clip board. Uber Major Props to Lemur who, according to Dredd, when from D1 baseball, to couch potato, to jekyl beatdown, to bronze in the GG IV.  Hope to see you out again soon.

Looking forward to the next one!