The Gladiator Men Get Hard

Preamble:

Couple of disclaimers before we get started here. First – Vertigo is not writing this and is no way responsible for its content other than the ringer that he put us through this morning. Second, please don’t sue the ghost writer. Annnnd…action!

The scene begins with 3 brave PAX that purposely changed the pre-run route after a dizzying discussion about whether F3 becoming soft. Our heroic pre-runners then set off on a quest to conquer the beast: a 2.5-mile out and back on Branch Valley. Aren’t you hillseekers jealous that you don’t have such wonderful hardness so close to your AO? Honestly, I haven’t done Branch Valley or Six Branches in a while, and it made me nostalgic for the quiet mornings of Stroller dragging me up and down hills on the south side of Martin’s Landing. Miss you buddy.

After reaching a max heart rate of one million bpm, our heroes moseyed up to the parking lot to set up the flags. Nay, mosey is too soft. DC made us SPRINT up to the parking lot.

With our OG leader still sidelined with a stupidly stubborn back injury, the real hero of the morning, Vertigo, stepped up with a wonderfully succinct disclaimer. And we were off.

Warm-O-Rama:

Warmup was of a standard variety. Picking weeds, straddling our sides, billing hills…you know the gig. Then the PAX moseyed to field #1 of the morning.

The Thang:

In hindsight, what follows was a super simple pattern, but my soft brain just couldn’t get a handle on it.

Starting at the baseline:

• 1 Mercan (not soft merkins)
• 2 Squats
• 3 American Hammers (super-hard alpha count)
• 4 Flutters (super-hard alpha count)

Then, run to midfield and double each rep (2, 4, 6, 8). The run to the other baseline and double your reps again (4, 8, 12, 16), and keep repeating until your first rep of Mercans are 16.

Somewhere in the first round of this, BlackBox went down with a bum ankle/Achilles.

So we shot him.

The rest of the PAX, getting harder by the minute, modified, rinsed and repeated. This time instead of sprinting half the field, we bear crawled to the top of the box, then again to mid field (sorry y’all…it’s a soccer field).

Next up, our fearless leader had us mosey to field #2, and ho-lee-cow. We circled up with 15 minutes to go for a 15 minute plank. You read that right. FIF. TEEN. MINUTES. If one of us put our butts in the air or our knees on the ground, we owed escalating burpees (one for the first infraction, 2 for the second, etc). We got to 19.

He also started making us do escalating Mercans at each minute. Copy and paste that into your next BD. Woof. Also, beach season.

Saved by the bell, we moseyed back to the flag for Mary, COT, and coffee.

COT:

Most important part of the morning: we prayed and continue to pray for Chad’s dad (Dreamer’s friend), Mrs. Vertigo’s aunt & Mrs. Vertigo’s family, Speedo’s dad’s surgery and recovery, DC’s Heel/Plantar Fasciitis, and BlackBox’s achilles and subsequent gunshot wound.

Announcement: Convergence Saturday at the Norseman @ 6:30, 5:30 if you want extra work.

Naked-Man Moleskin:

I freaking love this group. I will put the Gladiator PAX up against anyone else in F3 Nation in any category: our gazelles are the fastest, our meatheads are the strongest, our sunshine bazooka is unmatched, our mumblechatter is the best, our half pushups are fast, and our full ones are strong. And when shit hits the fan, you won’t find a better crew to hold you up, laugh with you, find you a job, or pray with you and your family. Come throw down if you want a challenge. Or come and do 10 of the 20 assigned burpees.

But don’t come calling us soft because there’s no room for that in East Roswell Park.

Scratch-Off, out.