Author: Rudy

It was a unique morning as Tuesdays are currently in a bit of a transition stage. YHC was not looking forward to two mornings in a row of non-beatdown burpee hundos, and Enron was antsy after fartsacking yesterday, so we decided to do a full-scale beatdown at The Stage. It was chilly as we distracted ourselves with conversation waiting for 5:45 to roll around (just in case anyone else might have trickled in). Pope was in attendance for the first time since flag football season started, and he was grateful to get moving since he’s got less natural insulation.

After a warmup of the usual with the Burptober mountain climbers included and a bumper mosey, The Thang was revealed:

It would be a three way game of Battle (or “War” if you’re a communist) using the Deck of Death. This, of course, wouldn’t get us to our 100 burpees, so we committed to stopping and doing 5 burpees every time a car passed through the lot.
At first, each card was as challenging as would be expected, and the car traffic was low. The high cards were often face cards, which meant 25 of most things, which was a good workout. After the upper body was beginning to burn a bit, Enron won a round with the Queen of Burpees, and things began to shift rapidly. At first, there was verbal thanks that this particular card meant it would be less likely that we’d have to finish with a load of burpees to make it to 100. Then, a car passed…and another, which meant 25 burpees was now 35 burpees. Subconsciously, all three of us labeled that as the likely pinnacle of the beatdown and remarked that it was the most burpees each of us had ever done in a row without stopping. Proud and glad it was over, we went back to the deck to continue the game.

Pride would turn to humility, however, as YHC decided to change the rules so that the lowest card won–I figured we were getting stuck with all the high-rep exercises and may be missing out on some variation. This quickly led to the victory of the 3 of Hearts, the 300 meter sprint, the second worst card in the deck (second only to the 400 meter sprint). Not only that, but it had tied with another 3, which meant two other cards had to be added to break the tie–they were the 200 meter sprint and 16 Bonnie Blairs. Things weren’t looking great for the PAX facing these three cards at the end of what was already a relatively grueling beatdown, and we had already reached our goal of 100 burpees, which meant the legs were pretty shot.
But, we slowly lined up (to sprint to the bumper and then back around to the Stop sign), and YHC reluctantly coughed out that fateful word: “begin”. The legs were jelly upon arrival at the bumper, and we still had 200 meters to go. Letting go of everything but the present moment, we pushed on to the Stop sign only to be greeted by three cars. 15 burpees later, we lined up for the 200 meter sprint but were greeted by 3 more cars. After another 15, one more car got us to 140 burpees total, and 6:30am on YHC’s watch never looked so good.

After COT and prayer, Enron decided to add some reps of squatting card pickers, but underestimated the difficulty of that particular exercise and had to let Pope finish the set. (Those suckers are slick.)

YHC still doesn’t regret the decision to hit The Stage this morning despite being sore from Yankee’s Flora-block-burner yesterday. Tomorrow will be a day of rest (hopefully), and Enron will utilize Thursday to give us one more tune up before our showing at the NOLA convergence on Saturday. YHC is hopeful that the consecutive challenging beatdowns along with a few weeks of 100 burpees a day will give us what we need to make yet another strong statement that F3 Thibodaux is on the map!

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