We had two different ECs rocking and rolling this morning: MLP and the Rameses Everest crew summiting Everest by way of THWM, and the Heavy Drop crew doing Heavy Drop stuff, which today included mostly burpees and sit ups. It sucked.

I believe we are in a Golden Age of Churham. You can’t sit still without wondering to yourself, “Does this count for X challenge, charity, or cause?” You have multiple ECs each day. We have so much stuff available, for free, for guys to get involved with, that it has pretty much become a problem. A good problem to have.

It’s important to realize how far we’ve come, and we would not have gotten here without each other. A few years ago, EC was run by Te’o and was shrouded in the encrypted mystery of Whatsapp. For EC, a few guys might get together for some pull ups and sit ups. Just over a year ago, we trained for a GORUCK Heavy by pretty much exclusively going on a few long rucks. And maybe until you joined F3 or rediscovered your love of running through Spartans, you were probably dragging your sorry ass out to run by yourself. Durham didn’t even have a Tuesday workout until 2016. Briar Chapel was a few studs in the ground until last year (probably more but I’m taking some literary license).

And look at us now. We run in packs of 5, 10, even 20, and we seek the toughest terrain and tackle it again and again. We train diligently, tethered together to the completion of ambitious goals. We ruck fast, we ruck long, and we throw weight around with a cavalier confidence gained only through added muscle and collateral attitude. We post not to just one F3 AO, but all of them, all 35+, throughout the region. We do pull ups and merkins, sprints and kettlebells, Spartan courses and triathlons. We know guys who work in almost every profession, and amazingly, not one guy we wish we didn’t know.

It takes me 20 minutes to give you all props on Strava, there are so many of you kicking ass and doing awesome stuff.

All I ask is this: remember how we got here, and let’s make sure others want to join us. We all started somewhere, and the important thing is that we felt welcomed enough to continue. And now look at us!

Time for the work:

Find a ledge:

• 20 cadence dips
• 20 derkins
• 20 box jumps

Then the following ratios of 15:15:15, and 10: 10: 10 of the same exercises.

Over to Hooker, where we lined up and performed the next few exercises from goal line to about the ’18:

10 buddy squats (with guy on your back), partner carry to ’18, 10 more partner squats, partner carry back. Switch.

10 merkins, partner wheelbarrow to ’18, 10 more merkins, partner wheelbarrow back.

1 half lap around field.

15 burpees, bunny hop to ’18, 15 burpees, bunny hop back.

10 dry docks, bear crawl to ’18, 10 dry docks, crawl bear back.

Back to Kenan for Mary: 50 flutters, 25 Russian Hammer.