GasHouse 4 Year Anniversary Convergence

Sister Act wanted a memorable 4 year convergence. Knowing he couldn’t be there due to a previously scheduled haircut and manicure, he asked Freight, ToolTime, and me to be the Qs for our convergence. We gladly accepted and like true experienced F3ers, did not discuss what we would be doing until about 4 or 5 days ago then came out with something totally different than we discussed (at least for Freight and me)….more on that later.

We moseyed to the tennis courts and started with a quick disclaimer then we jumped right into the warmup with (what else???) SSH by Freight then Merkins by Whoopee (17 which may or may not have been the number of points Auburn beat UNC last night in the bball tourney). In true sportsmanship, JJ stepped up and took his verbal whipping like a real man-props to him. He might be the most reasonable UNC fan in NC (where were you Dr. Feelgood????). It was ToolTime’s turn and he announced we would be doing Moroccan Night Clubs……as a collective sigh/whine/eye roll was loudly noted. We did MNCs for the next 83 minutes until ToolTime decided he had enough fun. Freight wanted to see what goofballs would look like with this many pax, so we did a few hundred goofballs. That. Was. Good. At this point we split off into BootCamp (Freight/ToolTime/Whoopee as co-Q) and PainLab (HIPAA as Q).

The BootCampers moseyed to the horsetrack for Freight’s part of the workout. Earlier in the week Freight had discussed doing “hill work” and “NUR” and “Joe Hendricks.” Now if there is a flatter part of Folsom in the area, I would like to know where. There was not a hill in sight. In my head I was shuffling around my workout, but then just said WTH, let’s just go with it. I found out later Freight actually scouted out the area the day before and the hills were surrounded by construction work so he changed plans. Freight had us partner up for a workout for a “specified period of time” although no specific time was actually specified. That, my friends, is what you call an attention getter. Another collective whine was produced from the crowd as Freight had us partner up. P1 would do various exercises while P2 ran the straight-a-ways and bear crawled the turns between the cones/markers. The exercises were 20 Merkins followed by 20 Squats then 20 LBFCs. Golddigger called me out multiple times on my form but in my defense, my form was bad due to bad form. Again, in my head, just roll with it. It will be over soon. Well, this went on for a very….long…..time. There was a lot of bitching, I mean, mumble chatter. Freight looked over at me and ToolTime and gave us a few minute warning before handing things over to ToolTime.

ToolTime started off with a little ab work, then moved on to ab work. Once we finished with that, we did some ab work. Not to make things monotonous, ToolTime got crazy towards the end of his time as Q and did some ab work. From the best I can recollect, we then did some ab work. I received a detailed list of the exercises from ToolTime and here is the order of our ab work: LBCs, Crunchy Frogs, Freddy Mercury, Fred Mercury, Bobby Mercury, Enos Mercury, Hilda Mercury, Uncle Remus Mercury, Shamus Mercury, Buford T Justice Mercury, Frederick Mercury, Franz Mercury, Festus Mercury, Testacles (that’s TEST-uh-klees, the Greek God of Ab work) Mercury, Frederico Mercury, and then finished with Francisco (say the first name multiple times like Buddy from Elf) Mercury. All in all, I think this part just flat out sucked. Abs are not something I work on as much as I should so maybe I will make a better effort at this in the future…….maybe……maybe not…….

At this point, I am pretty sure about 4 or 5 doves flew out of the middle of our group of men as ToolTime handed over the keys to Whoopee (that’s me). I believe I also heard angels singing a George Strait song in the background. In my head things were all messed up….no hill, grumpy pax after the blah-blah-blah mercurys we just did, and I had a millennial calling me out on my (lack of ) form. Again, in my defense, my form was bad due to my bad form. I quickly consulted my electronic Weinke…”Mosey to Hill.”  Again, flattest part of Folsom. Not a hill in sight. Flatter than my tire when I was 17 years old with my girlfriend that time when……oops, forget about that story. Time to improvise while I re-work the Weinke. Start with Tabata, everyone LOVES Tabata, right? Actually, ShortSale loves Tabata, but everyone else…..not so much but that’s ok. We can do Tabata for 25 minutes, right? I think we made it 2 minutes before the natives started getting restless. We did 20 seconds of exercise with a 10 second break. We did Merkins, Squats, LBCs?, and I think I saw someone pull out a shank at this point (we are in Folsom, remember?). I quickly called for burpees to give me some time to think. This appeased the said-shanker noted above. Next I pushed the crowd back against the wall with partner work on 11’s with Merkins and Bobby Hurley’s (gut punch just for JJ). This lasted for about 3 or 4 rounds before I saw another shank (could have been JJ). I needed something quick or someone was going to get a wig snatched, and I mean fast-that’s what my wife and 3 daughters say to each other at home and if you have more than 1 daughter, you probably know what I mean. If you happen to be like Dr. Feelgood and have 72 boys at home, you should ask me later.

Like Moses parting the Red Sea, the next idea came to me-Partner Carry’s. Everyone HATES this. This is perfect. I pushed them back against the wall again and told the PAX to partner up with a different partner. P1 and 2 were to circumnavigate the circled square with only one pax on the ground however they wanted-partner carry, fireman carry, piggy back, chicken fight position, whatever. Make a lap with above rules. I gave the Pax a break on lap #2-walk with partner like 3 legged race-basically this was a recovery lap for me. We got back to start with no shanks in sight. For good measure we swapped partners and did another lap with partner carry rules noted above. Once completed we headed back to start for some Mary with the PainLabbers.

thanks-Whoopee

It was my 2nd year in a row that I was able to Q PainLab at the GasHouse Anniversary convergence. Unsure how many I would have YHC decided to create 18 Pain stations. To my surprise, once the bootcampers took off I was left with 21 willing to step up their soccer arm game.

The Thang:

18 Pain Stations

1 Minute AMRAP

30 second rest

Due to the number of PAX, some PAX paired up and swapped a station exercise with a body weight exercise about 30 seconds through.

Stations:

Jump Rope

Worlds Worst Merkins (Wide Arm, Normal, Diamond – That is 1)

LBC’s

BattleRope #1 – Single Arm Wave or Clap

Man Makers – 15Lb Dumbbells

BattleRope #2 – Double Arm Wave or Figure 8

Man Makers – 20Lb. Dumbbells

BattleRope #3 – SSH with Rope or Side to Side slams

Man Makers – 25Lb. Dumbbells

Core Tire Drag – Tire wasn’t sliding well so some opted to modify this

Slam Ball – Overhead Slams

Sledhammer – Tire Strikes

Turkish Get Ups or Curls – If you’ve never done a TGU do Curls

Tire Flip

KettleBell Swings

Kettlebell Overhead Tricep Press

Kettlebell Chest Press

Kettlebell Pullovers

We had various sizes of Kettlebells for all to try out.

At the halfway mark, or 9 stations, I took the PAX down to the 4th tennis court for something I call “Beep Beep, I’m a Jeep”. Get down in a squat position, hands out front like you are turning a steering wheel and then squat walk. When I yelled “BEEP, BEEP” the PAX responded with “I’M A JEEP”.  we did this for roughly 80 yards.

Return to your stations and lets do the other 9 stations.

Recover.

Now everyone grab either a Kettlebell, Dumbbell, slam ball, cinder block or sledgehammer.

AMRAP – Curls

AMRAP – Overhead Press

AMRAP – Curls

AMRAP – Overhead Press

Recover.

Fresh off the P200 I still had relay race on my mind. Time for a tire flip relay race.

Two tires, Two lines.

1st PAX flips tire 2-3 times then runs to the back of the line and does one burpee then falls back into line. Rest of PAX are to follow behind by bear crawling.  We went 125 yards total distance. Both teams finished at the same time.

We then joined the Bootcampers for some MARY. After doing an absurd amount of Flutter Kicks, Dark Helmet calls out a very strenuous exercise called the “Body Destroyer”! All honesty I don’t know what’s worse, that or Neckies??

RECOVER!

Playlist – Becasue whats PainLab without music??

1st set of 9 rounds – All Megadeath

2nd set of 9 rounds – Motley Crue Playlist

Aye!

HIPAA

BOM – ToolTime took us out

#1 Coffeeteria in all of F3 Nation was held at Country Kitchen. We shut it down!

Special thanks goes out to the TRUEbadours. Thank you for taking the extra time out of your day and spending it with the HIM of F3 Gastonia!

Dark Helmet

Ponytail

Italian Job