I pulled up to the AO with the smoothest asphalt in all of Durham and was immediately greeted by SoDu legend Pallino shouting, "Hey, Mr. Q!" That immediately got me pumped up. Thirstay let me know that one of my headlights was out, but smoothed my fears by saying it would be a simple fix. "All you need to do is replace the bulb by lifting the hood," Thirstay opined, "Unless you need to remove the whole light…or if you need to remove the bumper…or you might need to totally deconstruct your car into a million pieces and put it back together again. Don't worry, there's a YouTube video and it's easy." The thought of all this work got me even more pumped up. Red Tape was at StartEx raring and ready to go and I know that I had to a lot to live up to after his perfectly executed Q at Kings Dominion last week. And then a crew of EC ruckers rolled up to Startex. Castaway, Cosmo, Cherry Baked, and Crash Cart came through with their heavy packs, which got me pumped up even more. Interesting, all the ruckers' names started with C or, as I affectionately like to call them, the C-Men.
Swamp inserted the shovel flag, I gave the disclaimer and it was time to begin…
WARM-A-RAMA
Side Shuffle Hops IC x20
High Knees IC x20
Willie Mays Hayes IC x10
Harvester IC x10
Little Baby Arm Circles x 10
Reverse x 11 (I forgot to stop at 10)
Michael Phelps x10
Slow Squat IC x10
THE THANG
We mosey'd over to a median with a lamppost. On this day in 1564, Galileo was born. Unfortunately, he was imprisoned for heresy for advancing the theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun. In honor of Galileo, each PAX became the Earth and the median was the Sun and we did three revolutions around the Sun.
First revolution – Bear Crawl with 7 merkins every 7 crawls.
Second Revolution – Lunge Walk with 7 squats every 7 lunges.
Third Revolution – Reverse Lunge Walk with 7 Freddy Mercurys every 7 lunges because you can't honor Galileo without mentioning the songwriter who name checked him in Bohemian Rhapsody.
After honoring Galileo, we mosey'd over to the coupons, grabbed some steel, and circle'd up. Valentine's Day honors couples, but the day after Valentine's Day is Singles Appreciation Day. In appreciation of the singles out there, we did some exercises.
Single arm rows x15 on both arms
Single arm curls x15 on both arms
Single file Ricky Bobby to the "Sun" and back.
We repeated that three times.
After appreciating all those singles, we mosey'd over to the fountain to do something I have coined the "Reach and Teach" and "Teach and Release," which are the words written on the front of the church at the Kings Dominion. I asked for three volunteers for the Reach and Teach before telling the PAX what the exercises would be. Cosmo, Castaway, and Kia bravely volunteered as the rest of the PAX mumblechuckled about what they just volunteered for. It was all clean fun, though, as we did London Bridges on the fountain as the three legends taught us their origin stories (the unabridged versions!) and we recovered once we learned their complete stories. Next we did the "Teach and Release." Swamp, Crash Cart, and Count Chocula volunteered this time around and we did hand release merkins as these three HIMs learned us their origin stories (super unabridged versions!). It was great to hear the humble beginnings from some of my favorite PAX and can't wait to do it all over again to hear even more stories from different PAX next time.
MARY
Flutterkicks IC x23
Box Cutters IC x23
Hello Dolly IC x10
Inchworm to Downward Dog to Cobra to Downward Dog to Worminch
COT
Prayers to Pallino's uncle as he recovers. Prayers to the people of Syria and Turkey after the devastating earthquake. I had a dream last night that I was Qing and none of the PAX were listening or doing the exercises that I planned. Thank you to the fine men of F3 Churham because you made my dreams come true.