Author: Rudy

YHC woke up to the sounds of thunder and lightning hoping it was closer to midnight than it was to 6am, but upon looking at the phone to assure me it was hours before we would be heading to the Peltch the phone read 5 minutes till alarm time. Not good…the weather would surely ruin any plans to listen to music through what would prove to be a daunting beatdown and the quiet would only add to the despair. Heading to the Peltch did not yield any better result as the rain continued to pour down all it had and YHC drove up to only one other car waiting in the parking lot. More cars started to arrive but each waited in their car as if they did not want to start the painful and miserable process about to begin.

This start ended up being a perfect metaphor for the theme of today’s beatdown and Yankee Jeaux added to the hype with his own epic backblast as he spoke oh so eloquently, he is going to be a Dr. you know, about the path we are all on. How sometimes it seems we are not making progress but if we look back we can see how far we have actually come. This backblast was so good it was turned into hype for the next days beatdown as it applied to the theme. We push through life one day at a time and even one step at a time some days as we persevere through it all. YHC has been reflecting on the Armour of God: truth, righteousness and perseverance. We are called to persevere through life by relying on God and in this case on our brothers alongside us. We see them continuing along the path and this pushes us to continue as well. To persevere through difficulties we didn’t think were possible to overcome before, but we are lifted up by the guys around us in shared suffering to make ourselves better. Better for our wives, our children and our overall community. To do this, we have to put on our Armour of God and prepare for War.

But first, we had to endure some shared suffering, YHC had forgotten his phone back at the truck so sprinted back to get it and the PAX did an assortment of exercises that in no way looked uniform. As if an army not yet trained for battle…

Pre-Thang: Struggler by Brother Isaiah

Side Straddle Hops for duration and a Burpee for each variation of struggle, struggling or struggler. This song lulls you into a false sense of strength and security but leads to a world of asking “when will this struggle end?” All the while, teaching you “every good thing is born of a struggle.”

The MAIN THANG:

The PAX would split into teams and throw 4 axes for points. This would determine the winner of the match; the loser would endure more suffering as a result. The target was set 15 feet away and the scoring is as follows: the black area (which is basically just hitting the board at all) would count as 1 point. The next ring is blue and would count as 2 points, then red as 3 points, and the final bullseye yellow for 4 points.

Teams were as follows:
Team 1:
Cardinal
Paradox
Goose
Duke

Team 2:
America’s Best
Pope
Lil’ Cuz
Coyote / Pikachu

Rd 1 Axe Battle:
Team 1: 1
Team 2: 0
With some very errant throws undoubtedly affected by the 45 mph winds. It was a hurricane folks, nothing to see here.

Round 1 Training:
PAX begin with 20 merkins for the winner, and 25 for the losers
Then a roughly 1/8 mile jog around the baseball field back to the thunderdome.
Then 20 squats for the winners, and 25 for the losers.
Bear Crawl around the thunderdome.
20 Merkins for the winners, 25 for the losers.
Roughly 1/8th mile around the baseball fields
20 Squats for the winners, 25 for the losers.
Lunge Walk around the Thunderdome.

This was originally planned to be done at the Track, but EDW has locked every sneaky entrance we have found into this beloved new field and track establishment that the riff raff is no longer allowed to use. So we improvised by using the ever fitting “Thunder” dome as the rain continued to pour.

Rd 2 Axe Battle:
Everyone was losers with not one axe hitting the target. Horrible display from all, especially YHC who may or may not have spent hours the previous weekend working on technique.

Round 2:
This round followed almost the same as round one but the exercises were mountain climbers and leg raises. All did 35 reps as no team won this round. While jogging along around the baseball field YHC noticed a strange fellow sneaking behind a tree, “What could that man be doing?” I wondered. As YHC got closer it appeared he was urinating all over God’s green Earth in front of God and everybody albeit trying to hide behind the smallest tree he could find. This man shall remain nameless but maybe should be on a list somewhere.

Rd 3 Axe Battle:
Team 1: 0 from 15 ft
Team 2: 0 from 15 ft

Team 1: 4 from 10 ft
Team 2: 3 from 10 ft

Round 3:

Followed the same exercises as Round 1 but due to time we called after/on the second round of jogging. Packed up our stuff and moseyed in the puddles back to the flag while being serenaded by AB’s impeccable Scottish (or maybe Irish) accent. He said stuff the whole way back but no one knows exactly what he said, as in true Scottish (or maybe Irish) fashion.

COT, and Dox prayed us out.

Thankful to be back to leading this group and looking forward to more suffering and perseverance in the future.

Philippians 4:13

SYITG,

Lil’ Cuz