How To Not Make Friends…March Madness Style

Preamble:

Though the 2021 NCAA tournament technically began yesterday, we all know the play-in games don’t count and that today is the real start of the tournament.  So what better way to kick it off than with an F3 themed beatdown?

Spoiler alert…things didn’t go as planned

Warm-O-Rama:

Yesterday on Slack, Nomad asked if anyone wanted to pre-run…crickets.  So he didn’t show up for his own pre-run, but Zohan did!  So Zohan had Windjammer all to himself for a pre-run of his choosing.

Also we had a first time Windjammer today!  TMI came down from the Norsemen for a visit…he probably won’t come back for fear of being arrested (more on that later)

To start we did the usual mosey on over to the dam for a quick warm up (nothing floating in the water this morning):

• SSH
• Hillbillies
• Weedpickers

Another mosey on over to the boat dock.  We had a basketball game in our near futures and we needed to warm up our legs.  So we did a little four corners action (throwback to Dean Smith’s favorite offense):

• 50 monkey humpers
• 50 squats
• 50 sumo squats
• 50 calf raises

But there was a catch.  YHC has never seen any basketball team warm up without music, so we had to do the same.  We listened to the basketball classic “Pump Up The Jam” by Technotronic.  And because this is F3 we have to add some exercises to our music.  So in addition to the 50/50/50/50 four corners, every time Technotronic said a word that rhymed with “jump” we did a jump squat.  We did quite a bit of jumping.

The Thang:

With our legs severely taxed it was time to mosey on over to the basketball court for some competition.  But first we took a little detour to each pick up a rock.  Once at the court YHC explained our game.

YHC had left previously put one bball on each end of the court.  We broke up into two teams the goal was to make 5 shots per quarter.  First team to make 5 shots wins the quarter.  While one teammate was shooting the other teammates were doing the following exercises:

1st quarter – Overhead triceps

2nd quarter – Curls

3rd quarter – Bent over rows

4th quarter – Shoulder press

Now F3 isn’t the type of place where we don’t have winners and losers.  So after each quarter the winning team got to choose their exercises while the losing team ran everyone’s favorite basketball drill…suicides.  And as astutely pointed out by Surely, we didn’t run on the bball court but instead up and down the hill next to the bball court.

Sounds fun right?  Seems like a good way to have some friendly competition while also getting in a good workout in right??  Well apparently we upset the neighbors.  Turns out that at 6:00 in the morning not everyone is as jovial and upbeat as the PAX at an F3 beatdown.  Someone could see how much fun we were having and yelled at us that “The park is closed right now!”  in hopes to shut us down.  Now in fairness to this person it was like 6:15, and we were dribbling some basketballs across from their house, and we might have been yelling a bit…ok we were yelling a lot.  I guess that is what happens when the competitive juices started flowing.

Now instead of letting Grumpy Gary over there damper our spirits and kill our vibe, we audibled.  YHC had also brought a Little Tykes hoop that some of our less skilled teammates could use in case they were having a hard time making shots into the big boy hoop.  Turns out we were lucky we had a quieter option.  So we were partway through the 2nd quarter when Grumpy Gary decided to test out his buzzkill skills and so we all lined up next to the Little Tykes hoop and shot there instead.  One team was on one side and the other team was on the other.  We used our inside voices and got through the rest of the game.  YHC, False Start, and Zohan dominated on our way to a 3-1 victory.  Then it was a quick shuffle to return our rocks and a mosey on back to the flag.

In hindsight, our new BFF who likes to yell might have done us a favor, because we were displaying some truly regrettable basketball talent.  There were certainly more air balls than made shots and some of us were out of breath from just chasing our misses.  But we will blame it on the gloves and the fact that it was so dark we could barely see the hoop.

COT:

Prayers for Zohan and his family

Prayers for Nomad’s wife who has two weeks left until her due date.  Congrat Nomad!

Good times for Surely and his wife who are getting vaccinated today.

Naked-Man Moleskin:

This was one to remember.  Thanks for coming out and having a good time with me.  I used to play basketball at least once per week but that hasn’t happened for a year and I really miss it.  I really enjoyed getting out there and hooping with you guys.  Thanks for being flexible and playing along with a goofy workout.