• When: 2018-12-08
  • QIC: Hustler & Fountainhead
  • The PAX: Eldric, Misfire, Gaston, Cesspool, Staccato, Hustler & F'head


One Cold, Wet Morning in the #Battle Trenches

They claimed it would be in the 40’s… like a warm winter day in F3Columbia.  And there was a 40% chance the rain wouldn’t start until after the #Battle clock expired.  The 7 pax who posted, however, were unperturbed by the rain drops they could hear from their fartsacks that morning nor dissuaded from making their way to AC Flora when stepping into the miserable wind that whipped the winter wetness through layers of wicking nylon.   And if the weather couldn’t defeat the souls of these seven, then the Q’s had little chance of doing any worse.

Conditions:  Wet with a wind chill in the 30’s.

TheThang:

F’head was roundly reprimanded the last time he Q’d #Battle and pulled a page from the IronPax challenge… and so the same book of business was called upon again in hopes the #Battle AOQ would finally leave his name off the next Q rotation.  This time it was the IronPax Week 3 workout called with modifications that provided for the first 30 minutes of the morning.  As Gaston and Staccato would attest, it was complicated but this is the gist of it:

  • 15 Burpees to start a descending ladder with each of the following in cycle
  • 50 Mercans, the first of three rotating exercises within each cycle
  • 10 yard broad jump and back again
  • And with each rep, run the covered stairs down to the parking lot, back up following the ramps, between the gym and the main AC Flora entrance (about 70 crooked yards).
  • 14 Burpees
  • 50 Squats
  • 10 yard broad jump and back
  • Run the Stairs & Ramps
  • 13 Burpees
  • 50 Iron Cross
  • 10 yard broad jump and back
  • Run the Stairs & Ramps

From there we went back to the 50 Mercans in the 12 Burpees cycle, Squats with 11 Burpees, Iron Cross with 10 Burpees, etc.  Most got in six rounds with a few of the strongest getting started on seven.

With that brutal introduction to the morning, Hustler commented, under his breath as we ran further onto campus, “Well, this is what you get when two Q’s don’t coordinate the workout ahead of time…”  Heading to the covered main entry, Hustler proceeded to call only three exercises taking up the remaining 30 minutes

  • Some call them inchworm pushups… whatever they’re called, they consist of walking one’s hands out to a plank, doing a Mercan, walking the hands back to one’s toes and then raising the roof from the squatted position before repeating the walk out again.  This was done for 30 seconds before a 20 second break between each set, Tabatta style.  Except this was done for 10 sets instead of the customary 8 sets.

At this point, most pax had done about 100 Mercans, 75 Burpees and between 60 and 80 inchwork pushups.  ‘Hold that thought.

  • Then came the old basketball favorite, gorilla slides left to right across the breezeway.  Again, this was a 30 seconds on, 20 seconds (or 10) off for 10 reps.
  • Last came the coup de grace…  Hustler Merkins, #Battle style.  For the uninitiated, that’s 1 Mercan followed by 4 overhead presses, 2 Mercans & 8 overhead presses, 3 Mercans & 12 overhead presses… etc to 10 Mercans and 40 overhead presses in ladder format.  The #Battle variation adds in the entire ladder back down from 10 to 1 on the Mercans and 40 to 4 on the overhead press.  Tally it up and that’s another 100 Mercan’s and 400 overhead presses.

With just a few miserable minutes left, the pax scraped together their discarded attire and moseyed back to the shovel flag.  Cold?  Rain?  Weather?  By that point no one cared.

COT & BOM.

NMM:

  • For the second time in two weeks, YHC came right to the edge of spilling merlot.  There’s just something in the air at #Battle.
  • Details about the F3Columbia Christmas Party is on Facebook as well as the Preblast.  There you’ll find the Potluck signup list and a link to vote on this year’s superlatives.
  • Speaking of superlatives, it was noted that Gaston needed to be nominated for several… “Most likely to break into a school”, “Most likely to grow something in facial hair” and “Most likely to get confused by a Q”
  • Noted in COT, change is coming to #Battle in some form or fashion to keep things interesting.  Apparently, Hustler and YHC just aren’t interesting again.  Maybe I really will need to start spilling merlot to raise the bar.