Four Flushes

November 27, 2017

WHEN: 11/27/2017
QIC: Adolphus, Coco, Shooter
PAX: Stevie Ray, Band Camp, Pedialyte, Au Jus, Sweats, Bouche, The Stroud, Avalanche, Vandelay, Wuerffel, Right Swipe, Hux, Peppermint Patty, Sir Mix A Lot, Eddie the Eagle, Deep Dish, Rudy, Ocho, Spooky, Misery, Timber, Slug, Bunyan, Shake It, Gordo, Beano, Prancing Horse, Teo, Ribar, Amphibious, Ito, Knoxville, Oozy, Cheese Splint, Bushwood, Dueling Banjos, Closer, Red October, Marky Mark, Fish & Chips, Boyardee, Dean Wormer, Skynyrd, Foghorn Leghorn.

The Fall of 2013 saw the seeds planted for F3 in Chapel Hill.

Rameses was christened on Sept. 18 on Wednesday mornings at the Outdoor Education Center just to the east of the UNC campus, the site Q being a UNC Law student named Cowden Rayburn, a.k.a. Rodeo, who had learned of F3 from friends in his hometown of Charlotte that summer. Among the eight PAX at that workout were Alex Miller, a.k.a. Adolphus, who had posted for the first time in Raleigh and welcomed an F3 presence in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro community, and YHC, who had begun F3 that February on Saturdays at Duke’s East Campus with Riggs, Doogie, Floyd and others who would become mainstays of the F3 Churham community.

Rodeo, Adolphus and YHC remained regulars at Rameses that fall, that your’s truly survived a nasty Jacob’s Ladder on the Big Effing Hill that first day a miracle in itself. Adolphus believed Chapel Hill a fertile territory for rapid F3 expansion and launched Bastille on Fridays at Southern Village Park on October 25 and followed a month later with Fetzer on Mondays on the UNC Campus. The first Fetzer workout was November 25, 2013, and Andrew Cocowitch, a.k.a. Coco, posted for the first time at the second Fetzer workout.

From those meager beginnings have sprouted 17 workouts in Chapel Hill/Carrboro alone. There are 10 in Durham and two in Hillsborough. It has been most gratifying over four years to have numerous PAX to have remarked about their first F3 experience coming on Monday mornings at Fetzer.

Two of the most energetic and hard-working leaders of this remarkable growth over four years have certainly been Adolphus and Coco. And thus it was quite appropriate that they take the co-Q Monday for a four-year anniversary workout of Fetzer, which evolved into Kenan earlier this year with the temporary loss of Fetzer Field and the surrounding facilities to construction. PAX from The Thicket, Pleasantville and The Eagle converged, providing a lively gang of 47 on a crisp November morning.

The Thang:

Warmup: SSH x 10, seal jacks x 10, prisoner squats x 10, windmills x 10, merkins x 10, Carolina dry docks x 10, burpees x 10.

From Kenan Stadium, Coco leads the PAX to UNC Student Stores and the adjacent stairway, which conveniently has four aisles separated by railings. In a fit of evil not seen since Norman Bates and Michael Myers, he commands the PAX to crawl-bear up the first aisle of stairs (probably 20 total), then bear-crawl down the adjoining aisle, repeating on the next two aisles. Meanwhile, we’re doing 40 burpees OYO while not retching and heaving on the stairs.

Adolphus then takes the reins. We partner up and do two sets x 12 of dips and merkins—or Perkins, in the latter, case, for perfect merkins—back flat, butt down, head up, and then mosey back to Kenan Stadium. Inside the stadium we use the rock walls as bases for dips and more perkins—partnering up and keeping each other honest with precise form. Quite honestly YHC lost track of the rounds and counts—but likely three sets of 12 each.

Ever the stickler for form, Adolphus then leads the PAX through an exhausting round of Mary: flutters x 10, Gene Kellys x 10 and box-cutters x 10.

“The good news,” he says before each round, “we’re only doing 10. The bad news is, we’re only doing 10.” Meaning that each flutter or motion is performed deliberately and held for the duration of such a slow count that PAX were seen bending over and clutching their mid-sections four hours later.

True to form, Adolphus wraps the proceedings up by encouraging everyone to headlock their friends, neighbors, colleagues and random dudes off the street.

“We’ve got a lot more room to grow,” he says.

No telling how many AO locations there’ll be in F3 Churham in four years and how many PAX will be using the structure, discipline, focus and camaraderie taken from F3 and applying them to their daily lives.