YHC arrived at the mothership, the back of my SUV brimming with various. Bogey was there, stretching limbs that maybe wished they were still in bed. Then came Tool, followed closely by Squints, Bongo, and finally Smooth, who lived up to his name, arriving with the elegance of a gazelle. I was hoping for a larger turnout since the plan required splitting the PAX into two teams. Fortunately, Cheesesteak, Vagabond, Fracsac, and Catfish also joined, rounding out the group. Bongo quipped about expecting less running since YHC was leading, but the day’s agenda did include a fair amount of running, though others ended up running more than Bongo.
Following a lackluster disclaimer, as Bogey pointed out, we headed to the Peristyle for our warmup. We circled up and did grass grabbers, windmills, imperial walkers, side straddle hops, and 10 burpees, all in cadence. Afterwards, we went back to my SUV to grab our gear.
We retrieved our tools for the day: the 60-pound sandbag (lovingly referred to as Sandy), an 80-pound sand medicine ball, an assortment of jump ropes, egg weights, a bisected bosa ball that became an object of anatomical humor, a frisbee, a lightsaber (because why not?), a speaker, and the pivotal red die. We took everything to the edge of the great lawn, where we divided into two teams by counting off in alternating “1”s and “2”s, which took a few tries to get right.
Group 1 started with tabata stations on the great lawn while Group 2 began their runs to the bridge by Café du Monde, based on the roll of the die. The tabata exercises included pushups on the bosa ball, deadlifting the heavy sand medicine ball, speed jump roping, burpees with the lighter sandbag, shadowboxing with egg weights, and using the heavy jump rope. The runs were determined by the die: rolls of 1 or 2 meant one trip, 3 or 4 meant two, and 5 or 6 meant three. The goal was to keep the runners’ duration secret from the tabata group, but this rule was frequently broken.
The roles switched after the runners completed their laps, with the tabata group rolling the die and setting off on their runs. There were suspicions that Group 2 might have rerolled a few times, hoping for lower numbers. As time ran short we stopped the rotation with Group 2 getting an extra turn running. YHC called for a round of core exercises—big boy situps, flutter kicks, and American hammers—and threw in an early “recover,” which was met with some groans and hesitations.
We concluded back at the flag where courtesy of Heisenberg — not the meth cook from TV or YHC, but the physicist. I tied in today’s workout with a physics lesson about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle from quantum mechanics. It states that in quantum mechanics there is a limit to the accuracy with which certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, can be simultaneously known. In other words, the more accurately one property is measured, the less accurately the other property can be known. So you were either doing tabata (fixed position) and uncertain about the runners (momentum) or you were running (momentum) and uncertain about what was happening in the fixed position group.
We ended with a Circle of Trust, giving thanks for the day’s efforts and for all the “boobs” in our lives.
Addendum we also learned about the concept of entanglement and may have formed a qubit when Catfish from Group 1 was simultaneously running with Group 2.
