13 angry pax pushed through pain to honor Blake McLendon to kickoff Memorial Day weekend.
US Navy Senior Chief Cryptologic Technician David McLendon, 30, of Thomasville, GA, assigned to Naval Special Warfare Group 2 Support Activity in Norfolk, VA was killed September 21, 2010, in a helicopter crash during combat operations in the Zabul province of Afghanistan. McLendon is survived by his wife, parents, brother and sister.
In an effort to switch things up a bit at Red Friday, YHC searched the internets looking for something not in our current rolodex of Hero WODs. McLendon surfaced and even though it involved handstand merkins, YHC thought it would be a fitting test. After running it by Meter Maid and committing to it on tweeter, YHC discovered that it was in fact one of our listed WODs but named Blake instead. Drats!! After trying to recruit several folks and having a few more HC for their first RF, YHC began to worry about those darned handstand merkins. The standard modification has been decline merkins that each pax tries to get as vertical as possible. Looking at prior results for this WOD strictly modifying to the decline merkin, left YHC wanting to extend the downpainment just a bit. Suddenly, this morning in transit to the Epicenter it dawned that for each rd with modified exercises the pax have to complete a whole additional rd. YHC thought that certainly this would keep someone from taking the easier route trying to finish first. And so it went a little bit like this……
Conditions
-Perfect 70 degrees clear skies and not completely humid
Disclaimer
-Given in the parking lot
Mosey to the coupon cage, grab one, and then off to the center of the wagon wheel complex. Shovel Flag planted, directions delivered, and off we went.
BLAKE
4 RFT
-Walking Lunges w/Coupon in Rifle Carry x100ft
-Box Jumps x30
-Thrusters x20
-Handstand Merkins x10
COT
Counterama
Namerama
Announcements
-Houston LEAP
-F3 Dad’s workout 0800 @Fury
-Fury Saturday time change to 0600
Prayer Requests
-The fallen members of our Armed Forces and our great Nation
#22Kill Merkins – Tclaps to Sour for calling them out since they had completely slipped YHC’s cluttered mind.
NMM
-Tclaps to Polly for showing up to push it the last few Red Fridays! And also for doing a little EH’ing on Judge Hairy.
-Tclaps to Thumper and Judge Hairy for posting to their first Red Fridays! YHC would like to assure the both of you that they are not all like this!
-13 pax at Red Friday! Now that’s the kinda stuff that will create a surge of transforming impact here in The Wood. Meter Maid said it pretty darn well this morning, “Keep pushing past your limits and you’ll soon find [that] they are further away than you originally thought.”
Pushing the limits is something that YHC speaks of quite often. The saying “get comfortable being uncomfortable” is a mantra for success in all facets of life. With this Hero WOD, YHC was trying to both push the limits of the pax and the “perceived” limits of Red Friday. All too often we think that success is the only measurement of trying something new. It’s more apt that failure is where the truest successes and learning’s occur. Today YHC learned a lot about himself, mainly centering around his need for better communication and leadership skills. The workout turned out to be less glorious than had been envisioned. There was confusion as to what determined a modification, and when multiple pax started inputting their thoughts, confusion led to chaos which then turned into negativity and ultimately anger. It was by far the least supportive F3 workout that YHC has been apart of, and for that I am truly sorry. Even with the negative mumblechatter, every pax pushed and worked for 45 long hard minutes. All got better physically and hopefully each learned a little from how NOT to lead a workout. As always, especially today, it was a pleasure leading(used in its loosest sense) such fine men.
JKS – Alpo