Fifteen HIM gathered today for a warm winter morning beat down at Phoenix. Some of you may have heard or participated in the Walk to Bethlehem challenge put out by Ma Bell and Term Paper to accumulate 96 miles (the estimated distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem) in any activity over the 21 days of Advent.
As a tribute to the 96 miles that Joseph and Mary traversed, today we focused on the number 96 and the Christmas story.
Warm-up:
-Ran down to the lower parking lot, with some karaoke along the way.
-96 SSH, yes, 96 SSH in cadence, followed by 32 plank jacks in cadence, 32 mountain climbers in cadence, and 32 merkins (32 x 3 = 96).
-Moseyed through the woods to the great Bond Park field, stopping right at the edge of the woods so that the Kiosk was somewhere “over there” on the other side.
Thang 1: Joseph and Mary
-With a partner, each pair was to do a total of 96 lunge walks (step w/ the left, then step w/ the right = “1”) toward the Kiosk and after every 10 lunge walks do partner merkins building from 1 up to 9 reps as the total number of lunge walks counted up; at the end of 96 lunge walks each pair ran the rest of the way to the Kiosk.
-Then, I pointed out that no where in the Bible does it actually say that Mary rode on a donkey for the trip … maybe Joseph had to carry her some, who knows? So, we did partner carry back across the field to the woods.
-Once back at the woods, I mentioned that it is possible that Mary did ride on a donkey to Bethlehem, and so we did wheel-barrows and / or bear crawl back across the field to the Kiosk. This proved to be a painful task, but Joseph and Mary didn’t have it easy, either.
Thang 2: Shepherds
-From the Kiosk we ran over to the lake where there is a rock pile and picked up non-traveling rocks as our “sheep.” One partner worked on a total of 96 curls, 96 overhead presses, and 96 rock rows, while partner 2 ran up the hill and did 3 angel jumps (star jumps) before returning back down and switching.
-We all did 10 more reps of each exercise at the end for good measure before throwing back our rocks and moseying back toward the flag. Before getting to the flag, though, we stopped at a stop sign and remembered how Joseph and Mary had to flee to Egypt, so we did a sprint from there back to the flag with everything we had left.
Thang 3: Wise Men (ran out of time)
-It’s too bad Phoenix is only an hour because I intended us to get into groups of 3 for the wise men and have each person do 32 burpees (32 x 3 = 96). Instead, back at the flag we did 7 burpees together as a group (7 x 15 = 105) and time was done.
Announcements: All AO’s closed Monday on Christmas; on Tuesday at 7 am at Full Metal Jacket, the Murph!; New Years Day convergence at A-Team from 7 am - 8 am.
Praise / Prayer: Pierogi’s mom with good reports; Sosa’s 12 month old son with fever of +104; travels for WWW and others over the Holiday season.
NMS:
- The PAX was strong today, no matter how much I tried to dish out, they ate it up and never complained (well, almost, never)
- Pierogi was making Pierogis today as a Christmas tradition … seemed fitting
- I was very honored and humbled to lead such a fine group of men. Thank you, gentlemen.
- Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!