Find Your Motivation!

Mileage goal today was a 5k, or ~ 3 miles, with most of this accumulated via a series of sprints intermixed with some calesthenics. And we’re off…

Warm-up
mile mosey
Michael Phelps
Hillbilly
Dirty Dog

AO for the heart of the workout was the second parking lot. The Pax gathered at one end, around an empty 5-gallon bucket. At the other end of the parking lot was another bucket, filled with golf balls. Partner up. P1 does merkins while P2 runs to the bucket at the other end of the lot and takes one golf ball and runs back with it, dropping it in the other bucket. Then switch, with P2 doing merkins and P1 running to get a golf ball. (After we all did two rounds of merkins we switched to LBCs.) Each round trip was a tenth of a mile. We did this until all of the golf balls were moved from the far bucket to the near bucket. Time it took: 10 min, 40 seconds.

So that was round one. For round two, we performed the same workout, but this time we had motivation. Motivation is something that YHC wrestles with in all facets of his life. We can say we’re trying our be good at what we do, whether it’s trying to be a good employee, father, husband, friend, etc. But when we have motivation, our well intended thoughts and intents are turbo-charged by an inner drive —i.e., ambition, desire — that propels us beyond the ordinary course of achievement.

This next point later surfaced in the COT but it seems proper for YHC to note it here, as it is the foundational thinking for what happened next. There is much about F3 that YHC prizes. But YHC confessed today to the Pax that he also gets frustrated as a Q when he sees less-than-full effort out of the Pax. This isn’t meant to point fingers; YHC is guilty of this as well. And YHC appreciates that we are all different ages and levels of fitness, and that getting up at 5am to workout is an endeavor worthy of respect. But one thing we should all strive to give, for this 45 minutes, is full effort. In the role of Q, YHC wrestles with how to achieve this; it’s easy to say “run faster” or “try harder” but the efficacy of such statements is wanting. As humans, we respond to the figurative carrot and the stick (unlike horses, which respond to the literal carrot and stick). Today, in his quest for motivation, YHC brought out the biggest stick in the F3 arsenal — the threat of burpees.

YHC informed the pax that we were going to do the same round of work again — with one distinct difference. If we did not beat our time from round one, we would do one burpee for every golf ball in the bucket — 55 buckin’ furpees.

While this announcement was met with a paucity of alacrity on the part of the pax, it did light a collective fire. Imbued with a fresh sense of — you guessed it — motivation, the Pax leveled up its effort. The round two time: 8:40. So the Pax shaved nearly 1:40 off of its round one time. Ah, the power of motivation.

We warmed down with a jog — a slowsy, as Air Bags aptly put it — and finished up with the counterama and namearama. At the COT, YHC discussed the points mentioned above about motivation. Were we working hard in round one? We thought so. Did we work much harder in round two? The data don’t lie. Motivation matters!

Prayers for those affected by the wildfires in FL and CA. And for clarity of mind to find our motivation!