March 3rd, 2012, Tornado warnings and heavy thunderstorms throughout North Carolina. A carload of crazies from Charlotte drove up in the middle of the night, and 7 crazy people from Raleigh woke up and appeared at the park in the middle of the rain storm. That was where it all started, and was labeled The Initation.
The next week at the Pullen Redux 13 Raleigh PAX rolled out of bed (6 who showed up the first week and 7 FNGs). We blame the weather for the good turnout, as well as a good dose of laying down the EH from the 6 who were repeat offenders. That is really the start of it all. Out of the 13 who showed up the second time, 8 are showing up a few times a week 7 months later and 2 others have been to dozens of workouts yet have serious injuries or legit schedule conflicts to not post regularly. Here is where we started:
Howard was the one who got the ball rolling by contacting F3 and figuring out how to get a workout started up here in Raleigh. Wendell Gee did a lot of the recruiting magic to bring in some dedicated PAX who would not only post many times each week, but recruit new PAX like crazy! The other guys who continue to post are just as important as they set the stage for welcoming FNG’s, picking names and giving the rest of us more excuses not to fartsack. The end result: 44 PAX who love F3, post at least once a month and the Mule.
We have grown and continued to bring FNG’s to the mix. Our core group of faithful PAX grows by a couple each month and our workouts have expanded to 6 days/week! After half of the Raleigh crew trekked down to Charlotte to attend the Goat, we realized that we have a lot to offer between our different locations (as well as potential locations). Welcome the Mule:
What about the Mule, if you read the details of the downPAINment, you will see that it was an awesome event, sort of goat like, while being something doable with a few surprises thrown in. We used the Mule to showcase off some of our ‘stereotypes’ or ‘favorites’ from each site.
At Pullen park we did the tunnel of love, look at Big Sproles loving the tunnel:
If that doesn’t look like fun, over at Fletcher park we have some great shots of us making use of the terraced hill for merkins:
This picture just looks awesome, being there was even better. A few months ago we had a new member of the Raleigh PAX show up: “mama junk”. This member even recruits other FNGs (just like Wendell Gee) except has been the unfortunate cause of a few injuries and nightmares as the weeks have gone on. Here is a picture of Tooth Fairy (our War Daddy), “mama junk” and her friends:
Seriously, this was Tooth Fairy’s first time meeting “mama junk” and he finally was able to flip her before we left. This is the site where we do Heavy Metal on Thursday with “mama junk”, kettlebells, medicine balls and random other items. I bet Tango Delta would break a sweat if he showed up for a Thursday downPAINment. It really helps to have a couple PAX who live across the street from this park where “mama junk” and her friends can fartsack the rest of the week.
One thing that has been constant is about once a month we start up a new workout. Today we started our CORE workout thanks to Wonk for initiating that and taking the Q. During the Mule we explored new territory in and around the state capital. If you have seen the Raleigh F3 shirts with the “Capital Punishment” slogan, there is a reason for that. After 2.5 hours of a downPAINment during the Mule we all have enthusiasm:
Many of the PAX in the COT noted how awesome it was to see the American Flag being carried around while we moved from site to site. If you haven’t experienced this first hand, you are missing out on the awesome. Unfortunately our current government has problems agreeing on things, we thought we would settle it once and for all with a game of Tug of War:
When was the last time anybody has played Tug of War? For me it was probably in middle school. After everybody gave it 100% for 2.5 hours, they continued to give 100% to pull. One team had a cadence count of 1,2,3- PULL. I can think of no better activity to finish off an event and really boost the Fellowship part of F3.
