Day 5 of Frisco Terror(ible) Q week.
Nugget of Wisdom on designing Ruck workouts.: Everything sounds better the night before with your feet propped up, a beer in hand, and no 30lbs pack on your back. When I was actually lugging around the ruck and calling merkins, knerkins and squats I cursed my arrogant stupidity. My best hope that morning was that someone would hold my hair when YHC finally worked himself into a frat-boys-have-nothing-on-me bender merlot explosion.
I was with Skipper and Bartman so I figured a 25% chance one of them would help me out and a 70% chance they would just pull out cell phones and take selfies with me merlot-ing in the background. (I wasn’t concerned about the 5% since Ma Bell wasn’t there…)
We met up with the GT boys. Quite a few who had obviously failed to Q shop were looking back and forth between me and Prodigal, the GT Q. Torpedo in particular was looking extremely forlorn. So I tapped out in a secret code to him: “Don’t worry you can fake an injury and join us after warm up”. Apparently, they must have started teaching Morse Code in the Navy at some point because Prodigal tapped back: “I am going to rub your face in dog poop, Frisco”. So I decided it was time for the ruckers to move off for our warm up. YHC led with Run Very Fast followed by Hide Behind The Wall.
Eventually, the GT guys moved on with Prodigal dragging a kicking and screaming Torpedo by the arm and Theismann massaging his temples.
Warm Up:
We started with a round of Good Mornings, calf stretches, runner’s stretches (thank you, Skipper, for pointing out the difference) and then switched to a walking warm up with Sir Fazio’s backward and forward, real Seal Claps, Liverpool Seal Claps, Michael Phelps. We tossed in a few merkins for good measure at light posts.
Thang 1:
We were walking at a pretty good clip when I spied our first place for Shenaningans. I had done a prelimary walk of the site with Skipper earlier and had had a great idea. Wouldn’t it be fun, I thought, to have us all crawl through the high grass with our rucks on. They’ll love that! So I called a zombie crawl through the high grass. Skipper deferred mumbling something about being “allergic to stupid”. Bartman however had leashed himself to the ruck he loaned me (apparently these book bags cost real money) so he was stuck following. Thus is was that Skipper missed out on the gift that kept giving through the rest of the itchy workout.
We traveled up the road a ways. There was a hill where Skipper had shown me we could do 7s or 11s but in my Q-drenaline I passed right by it. It was dark so Skipper pulled out his headlamp. He apparently didn’t realize how bright it was because he kept looking up at me, blinding me–even when he was talking to Bartman.
It was time for the 1st-ish Thang.
At BH the day before I had called Lt. Dangers which is Lt. Dan (1 squat / 4 lunges) with ascending merkins also added in after the lunges. See my note above about a ruck making everything more terror(ible).
We did 4 rounds then went back to a fast walk. We alternated 20 squats vs. 20 one-legged curb calf raises. We found some benches and alternated dips and irkins (25ish).
Eventually we made our way to The Gazebo.
Thang 2:
The Go-Ruck website Skipper sent me the link to had a few ruck specific exercises on it. We circled up in the Gazebo and did 20 squats and walked around the sidewalk back then into the Gazebo. As I was about to call overhead squat presses Skipper called “Pass your ruck to the left”. Skipper was carrying 40 lbs so wisely I decided to skip the overhead presses and stay with squats only since after all of the merkins I wasn’t sure I could lift a ruck 25 times (Skipper introduced me to control squats on the last 5). Repeato and we kicked the number up to 30 then repeato and 35 (last 5 were control squats).
Note: If you want to make 30 lbs feel light, wear a 40 lbs ruck for 5 mins.
The Long Road Home:
It was 6am which Skipper’s RS map had very clearly stated was “leave to make it back for COT” time. I struck out toward the shovel flag only to be told that the route I was taking would get us back to the school on Tuesday if we were lucky (stupid roundabouts!). So we altered course and headed back.
At one point we met a dog walker who asked why there was only 3 of us “backpackers” (since apparently it’s normally 4). Then he muttered something about it being a Frisco Terror(ible) Q and hurried on. No clue what that was all about but it is nice to see my reputation preceeds me.
Mary:
We made it back in time for Prodigal to call low slow flutters (ruckers with rucks up). I think we did 500-1000 with Prodigal saying “just a few more” every ten reps or so. Getting back by Tuesday didn’t seem like such a bad idea now, huh, guys?
COT (Ruck)
Count-a-rama: 3 Mehs for Ruck
Announcements:
Odyssey 10/5
9/11 Stair Climb on 9/11
Prayers and Praises
Prayers for continued patience and the faith that things would work out as they should in his job search for Skipper.
NMS:
Q-ing a rucking workout was a new experience and actually fun. I would definitely recommend it to new Qs since the ruckers carry their current training weight which does half the wear-out work for you 🙂
Thanks for letting me lead today, gents.