So, last year when I was serving F3 as site Q at paradise, @Bellhop and I came up with this idea for Tobacco Road to do a beatdown that is both Dook/UNC heavy with a basketball theme.

Yesterday was supposed to be the day for this. I booked the Q and was ready to roll. I packed up the Vicemobile with stuff and left my home in chapel hill to travel to Durham ready to go. This date also coincidentally and inconveniently coordinated with a Winter Storm. So, no one showed yesterday at Tobacco Road. Personally, I was also struggling, as yesterday's date synched up with my daughter's boyfriend's birthday who passed away in October. They dated for four years and they were talking about getting married this summer and he unfortunately passed away in due to an accidental drug overdose. This kid was a great guy who graduated from UNC and was working in New York with a successful career in banking. I wanted yesterday to be about the Rivalry but the reality was I was struggling with his sudden death and his first birthday after his passing. My wife even asked me that morning with the thunder rolling, you are going?? Yeah, I am because Austin can't and because people are counting on me. When no one showed up, I was crushed. God and I were crying and the thunder was screaming and so God and I were then screaming at each other. It wasn't a good morning and after I pulled out all the stuff out of the car to setup I didn't push through and do the workout alone. I packed up my car, drove around in the car and listened to some music and cried a lot.

But F3 being F3, I shared a little piece of my discomfort and displeasure with the dudes not showing up and Brotox reached out to me. He shared with my that he lost his brother Lee to a heroin overdose when his brother Lee turned 27. And, he asked me to come bring my Dook/UNC themed workout to the Wall. I hesitated at first because honestly I wasn't sure I wanted to. But after a little convincing and hearing about Brotox's brother, it felt better knowing I had a second chance at both life and a second chance to Q.

Here is the actual workout:

Typical Warmarama: Only catch is 26 SSH to honor Austin's last year of life.

Dook/UNC Basketball theme workout- with 4 quarters. Each quarter you need to new partner.

First Quarter: Makthar Njaies and Basketball rebounds. Partner one does 10 MNs, while partner two does rebounds. 3 rounds of each. Then 10 prayers (prisoner squats) for the team while partner two does overhead passes left and right with the ball. 3 rounds each of that.

Second Quarter: DORA, there have officially been 249 meetings between the Dook Mens's bball disastrous intramural group and the UNC elite basketball flagship program. 113 times DOOK has narrowly snuck out a victory and 136 times UNC has been victorious and left the Dookies going home crying like Coach K's last game and the final four amazingness. WIth a new partner, traveling across the parking lot was bear crawls, defensive slides and back pedaling with a sprint. The exercises are Bobby Hurley brick shots, Dook's slap the floor and pretend to play defense and some SSH.

Third Quarter: The Coach: With a New Partner- one partner helps coach the pullup guy to his max number while completing as many merkins as possible. Flip-flop back and forth until 5 minutes is up. It doesn't matter who your favorite coach is or was. Make Dean/Roy/K/Davis/Scheyer proud by pushing hard during the third quarter of our game.

Fourth Quarter: Getting Buckets: Bucketball is played using a weighted ball passing it down a people's chair line until final person runs to shoot a shot with a mini-basketball and put the weighted ball in the bucket. Our team won and then we headed back for Mary.

Mary: We did 13 X's since basketball is about the X's and O's. 13 on the right followed by 13 on the left. Then we did 27 Os. This again was to honor Austin and Lee.

COT: There is a great lesson about success and leadership from studying the way that buffalo and cows respond to storms. In the Rocky Mountains, what a lot of people don’t realize, however, is that the state is divided almost exactly in half. And to the eastern part of the state are the great Kansas plains. Because of that unique topographical landscape, we are one of the few places in the world where there are both buffalo and cows in such close proximity. When storms come, they almost always brew from the west and roll out toward the east.

What cows do is very natural. Cows sense the storm coming from the west and so they start to try to run toward the east. The only problem with that is that if you know anything about cows you know they aren’t very fast. So the storm catches up with the cows rather quickly. And without knowing any better the cows continue to try to outrun the storm. But instead of outrunning the storm they actually run right along with the storm. Maximizing the amount of pain and time and frustration they experience from that storm!

Isn’t that stupid?

Humans do the same thing all of the time. We spend so much of our lives constantly trying to avoid the inevitable challenges that come along with the difficult circumstances that our very own choices have led us to be in. People who are in debt constantly try to find ways around paying their bills. People who are unhealthy make rationalizations for why they can’t do anything about it or why it doesn’t matter. People who are struggling in their marriage are often trying to avoid the difficult but meaningful conversations that need to be had to reconcile that relationship. Salespeople do everything to try and avoid making a sales call.

And the key insight that ultra-performers have made that not yet necessarily everyone else has is this: Ultra-performers realize that problems that are procrastinated on are only amplified.

Waiting always makes it worse. What buffalo do on the other hand is very unique for the animal kingdom. Buffalo wait for the storm to cross right over the crest of the peak of the mountaintop and as the storm rolls over the ridge the buffalo turn and charge directly into the storm. Instead of running east away from the storm they run west directly at the storm. By running at the storm they run straight through it. Minimizing the amount of pain and time and frustration they experience from that storm.

Notice how it’s the exact same storm. It’s such a great metaphor for all of us because all of us are dealing with the same types of storms.

We all have some relationship issue or health battle or financial struggle.

And we don’t always get to choose whether or not we have storms. The only choice we get to have is how we respond to those storms.

And more specifically here, when we respond to those storms.

This buffalo mentality is very representative of the Take the Stairs mindset of ultra-performers and Multipliers.

Upcoming events: Cloudbuster tonight, YMCA run, 5K for CHCCS educators and possibly a beer mile on 3/18. April has the run for Malawi and the Chatham massive beatdown at the end of April. I forgot what Chum called it but make sure you are there.

Again thanks for everything fellas. Yesterday was tough, today was better and thanks to Nitro for the silky smooth black silk.