6 BARs gathered at the Citizens’ Center in the glorious early July 4th morning for some ruck shenanigans. YHC showed up last (not unusual but a trend I am trying to buck), and prepared to get going.
Thang 1: Pre-Convergence Coupon Ruck
We promptly distributed 130 pounds of coupons in the form of two 40 pound sandbags and one 50 pound former-fire-hose-turned-sandbag. For the uninitiated reading this, “coupons” are the term for any additional weight that must be carried by the PAX during a ruck workout. Sandbags, pain sticks, towing chains, logs, cinder blocks, empty kegs (gentle reminder there to @Schlitz), etc. After a half-hearted disclaimer, we began with the Pledge and also sang Happy Birthday to America.
We made our way down to the earthen dam and up the stairs to the Lake Trail. There we paused for a second to take in the beautiful sunrise before heading around Bond Lake. We took turns carrying the coupons so that everyone got to enjoy some of the fun. The mumblechatter was plentiful, as we weren’t going super fast. Some of the matters discussed / overheard:
- The proper way for your wife to greet you when you get home from work
- The recent developments around Nike, the Betsy Ross flag shoe, and Colin Kapernick (hence the image for this post)
- Banjo negotiating a deal with Carvana to purchase a CRV
- The stiffness of Carvana’s fire hose
- Whether it is advisable to try to complete an Ironman with little to no training, and what techniques would be utilized if one were to attempt to complete an Ironman with little to no training
We took turns as the point person, whose main responsibility was to call out upcoming obstacles, but more importantly, to catch spider webs with their face. Banjo taught all of us a new technique of waving a stick in front of him while walking to try and knock cobwebs out of your way (TYFYL!) which basically made him look like a shaman blessing the trail ahead of us. We completed just under 3 miles at a 19 minute / mile pace, which is quite good considering the terrain and coupons. We returned to the Citizens’ Center where cars were pouring in for the Convergence workout. At this point, Bartman changed into his ‘Merica shorts, we did some brief recovery, and most of the ruckers joined the Convergence workout. So it was just YHC and Carvana to do
Thang 2: My 07-04-1776 Inspired Ruck workout
- 07: Ruck our same route back to the base of the stairs by the earthen dam for Sevens, ‘Mericans at the top (because, ‘Merica), squats at the bottom
- 04: We did Four Corners (while internally laughing at the Convergence guys doing 11s on the dam), starting at the top of the stairs with 17 overhead ruck presses, ruck across the dam, stopping at the end of the dam for 19 four count flutter kicks (for those of you good at the maths, there are 76 movements in 19 reps of a four count exercise), followed by 17 Ruck Rows at the corner of the path. We heckled the Bruisers regarding the size of their rocks, which was met with sniper-like return fire from Smokey. We completed the four corners with 19 LBCs (again, 76 movements).
- 1776: See above on the Four Corners. Also, just as I had planned out on my GarminConnect route planner, we hit 1.77 miles just as we got back to my car, so I went an additional 32 feet in order to hit 1.776 miles on the nose
We enjoyed an early start to 2nd F with one of my favorite beers – the Singel from Hardywood Brewery in Richmond, VA, (sic semper tyrranus to my friends from the Commonwealth), joined the Convergence for the abbreviated Mary, and dove right into 2nd F.
NMS
Thanks for joining me this morning, it certainly was a great way to start off the celebration of America’s birthday, and I was humbled to lead such a great group of HIMs!