8 PAX rode The Pine. Every train needs a caboose, so I joined the crew this AM. It really was 7 PAX running the Pine together and then one lonely guy pulling up the rear, his only company the 11 solitary degrees to give him warmth on the unforgiving yet salubrious Pine.
An old wrestling coach used to tell me that when you actually start a wrestling match, you forget about all of your training, all of your hardships, and time sort of stands still. He used to butcher Faulkner’s novel, which has nothing to do with athletic feats, saying that all you need is “The Sound and the Fury.” He meant that you just hear the hodgepodge of sound in the moment of combat, the sound of your own inner voice drowning it out, and then the fury you bring to that moment. I thought about it today during the frosty gloom. When you get moving, you forget about how cold it is pretty darn quickly. My M is always amazed that we can work out in the cold, and I think she gives us too much credit – all you have is sound and fury once you get going. The cold does not matter.
I served as the leadoff batter, a dubious title for sure, for Durham Week at Rameses. My first Q in a while, it was just like they say, like riding a bike that you fall off into a giant ditch, unable to get up.
The Thang: Standard warm up
Count off in 3s. Group 1 runs to church and back. Group 2 runs down THWM and back. Group 3 bunny hops/broad jumps around the parking lot. Switcheroo until everybody gets some.
Next, we grabbed a partner and faced him. Burpee for one guy while the other low planks, then the planking guy does a burpee while the other low planks. Time hack for 5 minutes. We did the same for 5 merkins and 5 jump lunges.
Finally, we backwards crab-walked the stairs on the final stretch of THWM before the gate, doing 5 dips at each step, then at the walkway we switched to bear crawl and erkin, ending with a backwards run to the tree line.
Mary: High plank/Low plank; Flutter Kicks, WWIIs and WWII American Hammers
CoT: Prayers to Lo-Pair and Alf