Conditions: 75 degrees, 81% Humidity, Wind 1 mph from SSE
The Thang
The H8! is the standard measure of F3 NOLA fitness. There are 8 laps. It includes over 3 miles of running New Orleans Hills (aka levees), 550 yards of Bear Crawls, 36 Burpees, and 120 Merkins. It is hard. The H8! debuted on October 23rd, 2016. A lot of familiar names were there that day…Belloq, Tool, Triple, JV, Bubba, Cowbell, me…. all failures. The 2nd running was in March of 2017 and a couple of guys finally broke through. Since then we have held the H8! Semi-annually and seen numerous successes and improvements.
We have also seen the standard become more lax. There was at least one (maybe more) 45 minute runnings. There has been a fair amount of corner cutting…you know that guy…the one in Junior High basketball practice that basically cut across the free throw lane when we had to run laps. Since the addition of the bike lane on Canal, guys have started running in that, significantly shorting the course. There have been shortened bear crawls as guys take a few steps into the neutral ground before getting down on all fours, or stand up and jog a few steps from the end of the neutral ground.
Fortunately, there is new leadership in NOLA and they are not going to put up with any of this crap. I was told very succinctly (and in NSFW words) that today would be a Full Compliance workout and that if I could not make that happen there would be some changes come April.
Luckily, for me I found some cones at Pontiff after War Eagle’s Aggie Tribute. I got to Okwata early and set out cones at every corner. Demonstrations of the overly complicated burp and merk ladder were made. I informed everyone that the running must occur on the sidewalk, and I gave the speech about the bear crawl standard….start the bear crawl with one foot on the concrete next to the neutral ground and do not stand until your hand touches the concrete on the other side.
Showing their personalities, Saban looked at me at the starting line, made a NSFW gesture and proceeded to run in the bike lane. Vagabond on the other hand, to ensure his bear crawl compliance, started his bear-crawl across the street. Had he been wearing his Garanimals workout wear, I could have let it pass, but with a black F3 shirt, it was a definite safety issue.
40 minutes later, we were all spent. Three guys finished all 8 laps (YHC, Catfish, and Biebs) for a 19% completion rate. However, there was a 100% success rate among the 16 men that posted today. Getting out of the fartsack and battling the H8! for 40 minutes accomplishes more physically than what many men do all week, or maybe all month.
NMM
Bones convinced me to get a Whoop. The Whoop assigns a Strain Score to each workout. The score is between 0-21. The higher the number, the harder the workout. Cardio heavy workouts, with very little recovery score high. Here are my highest F3 Workout scores
• 17.3 – The H8!
• 16.7 – IPC Week 3
• 15.0 – IPC Week 1
• 15.0 – IPC Week 4
• 14.9 – IPC Week 2
• 14.5 – War Eagle’s Aggie Offensive at El Diablo. It was a Snot Woggler.
An average workout is around 12-13. The H8! Is not an average workout.
