F3 New Orleans

Tag: Gear

  • Geared Up Bridge Park BeatDown

    4/14/17, 5:30am.  The gloomy Bridge park welcomed  several guests this morning and gladly watched while several implements of fitness started to appear from the backs of their vehicles.  A 25# set of dumbells, several kettlebells and a heavy bag hit the dirt near the shovel flag.  The Pax gather around the iron and leather, wait for a sleepy Chipper to arrive, then head to the flag to get started.

    Warmup

    20 SSH IC
    20 LSS
    20 Peter Parkers
    20 Parker Peters
    10 CW Arm Circles
    20 Arm crossovers
    10 CCW crossovers

    Mosy around the ball field to the pull-up station – Carioca x2, with a brief POW Run. Plank and wait for the 6

    2 Rounds
    Timer is the man doing 5 burpees
    Pull ups
    Box jumps/ steps
    Horizontal Rows
    Al Gores

    Mosy back to the flag for a pre-beatdown, beatdown
    1-10 Merkins / 2-20 Air Presses

    The Thang
    15 minutes of rotating stations of:
    Good Friday F3 style, “Burden Carry” Heavy Bag carry across the parking lot
    KB swings
    Goblet Squats
    DB power cleans
    Decline Merkins
    Incline Merkins
    Stations rotate when the heavy bag reaches the other side.

    Mary:
    20 x Bicycle Sit-ups IC
    20 WW2 Sit-ups IC
    10 Around the World Planks IC

    C.O.T.
    Intentions for our nations leaders
    Thankfulness for Good Friday and Easter Celebration
    Reformers Easter Community Outreach

  • Beware of Loose Shorts and Fat Tires

    Last week I added the Coastie to the Q sheet and jumped on the first available Q.  After today, you may not want that to happen again.  To prevent it sign up to Q here, dates are available for the rest of the year.

    So I rolled in with my cargo shorts, fat tires, spoke lights, and safety vest ready to lead a group of guys that actually know what they are doing on a bicycle and look the part.  Much to my pleasure, one of my own was there waiting for me.  JV must have heard that a fellow fat tire had the lead today and came out to show his support.  YHC started things off with the COT – cause that’s how we roll at the Coastie.  After counting to 7 and providing our names, YHC reminded the Pax that today is Valentine’s Day and in that vein shared a part of DREDDs Q-source on the M.  The point that I stressed is that in our relationship with our wives, we are either accelerating or decelerating.  If we consider ourselves in maintenance mode, then we are decelerating.  “The Q never thinks of maintaining his marriage. He always focuses on Accelerating it.”

    The Thang

    Warm up – Ride to Causeway (1.75 miles) and then re-group for further instruction.  At least that was the plan, but not well executed by the Q.  At Causeway we happened upon a barricade.  Da Parrrrrrish surmised that it must be for vehicles and not bikes, since there was just enough room for a bike to pass.  This seemed like perfect logic so we pressed on.  As we came to the top of the levee we saw two lights that we thought might be the POPO.  It wasn’t, just two fellow bikers.   They warned us of another barricade at Cleary (how you know where Cleary is while you are on the lake?  I’m not sure.)

    Tabata on Wheels – after regrouping I instructed the pax to do 4 minutes of Tabata – 20 second sprint and 10 second coast; repeat 8 times.  I planned to start this at Causeway, but while we were talking to the Not POPO, JV took off, fat tires and all.  So the first part of the workout became catching up to JV.  By the time we caught him we figured we were close enough to Cleary that we should pass that barricade before starting Tabata.

    Once we finally started it was glorious.  7 bikers sprinting as hard as they can for 20 second intervals on a narrow lakefront trail in the dark while passing bikers and runners both ways.  At one point, one of the oncoming bikers called one of us by name.  It must have been a birth name, because I didn’t recognize it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSC3Z1a-sbg

    I adhere to Tool’s philosophy that we should try anything once (except folk dancing and incest).  I think the Tabata on wheels is worth trying again, but take that with a grain of salt.  I also think working out with the Police Barricades and doing Yoga are worth trying again.

    For the rest of the workout, it was everyone at their own pace to the casino.  At the Treasure Chest YHC met up with Da Parish, Triple Shift, Woz, and Moped.  Apparently Bongo and JV turned around earlier, or were arrested by the POPO, or beat up by some other bikers….I don’t know.  Triple Shift and Woz carried on to the next parish, while the rest of us headed back toward Bucktown.

    Thanks for letting me lead and remember – if you enjoy the Coastie, sign up to Q.

     

     

     

  • Now Accepting Entries for the Official 2017 F3 Race Jersey Logo

    Inline image 1

     

    The F3 Marketing Team will soon select and unveil a new national Official F3 Race Jersey Logo for 2017. PAX from all regions are invited to submit ideas for this year’s design.

    Like previous years, we plan to keep the standard F3 logo on the front, uniting us as one F3 Nation, and feature a new design on the back to commemorate this year of F3. As before, the logo will be retired at the end of the year with no additional printings, so you can always tell who has been putting in down-painments the longest. The official yearly F3 Nation Race Jersey has become a cherished collectible for PAX across F3 Nation – a reminder of your years in F3, suitable for framing retired jerseys above the mantle as trophies to your manhood.

    This year we are encouraging the use of Google albums for posting your ideas and enabling comments on them.  Images can be fully developed or just sketches that need refinement.

    Link to Google Photo Album To View Entries and Submit your own:
    https://goo.gl/photos/pP9nhp9p4JQmyA568

    You can also comment to applaud the creativity of others, or voice your opinions.  Remember that this will be the fleeting image that countless sadclowns see passing them by on the course or track next year – make it memorable. There are no design requirements this year, meaning you do not have to incorporate the f3 URL or twitter handle – just make is something that unites us across all F3 regions and nomad groups.  F3 Marketing will be making a final selection before the end of February, and then get some shirts going for Spring races.

    Thanks and good luck. Aye!

  • A Big Leap for F3 Gear: MudGear Shirts to be Built in the USA

     

    MudGear Built in the USA
     

    MudGear is a company born from the F3 experience. In 2012, a FEBA-filled Malkovich and a small crew from F3 Charlotte Metro stepped up to take over F3 Gear ordering responsibilities from OBT, who had grown weary of handing out shirts from the back of his car.

    The operation nearly failed to launch when the first print order under Malko’s watch arrived with a huge 7 inch F3 on the front. (These misprints have since become OG collector’s items.)

    The team quickly recognized that gear sales would be an important part of the F3 growth strategy and began adding a few bucks to each shirt to fund operations. After a few successful orders, sharp legal minds advised that reselling shirts would require collecting and remitting NC sales tax to keep F3 out of trouble. Malko offered to set up a separate legal entity to manage the gear sales and remit a logo royalty to F3. He had always dreamed of starting a small business anyway, so Malko filed papers with the state and county and MudGear was born.

    The first big leap for MudGear happened later that year. Still filled with exuberance and unhappy with the existing choices for fitted performance shirts, we decided we could manufacture our own version, specifically crafted to withstand the abuse of a mud run and the daily pounding of an F3 workout. After months of fabric testing and fit prototypes, “The Horse” in Charlotte helped to bring this to life with his industry background and production capabilities in India.
    Sundancer in v1 MudGear
    F3 Sundancer in vintage v1 MudGear
     
    In Dec 2012, we launched our first web store that allowed PAX to make individual orders rather than collecting money, and we figured out a fulfillment system to ship orders to each customer instead of requiring a guy to tote shirts around to each workout.
    The first F3 Gear Store circa Dec 2012
     

    In 2013, MudGear moved all printing and embroidery for F3 Gear to Mooresville, NC where F3 Chief owns a full-service screen printing company. (Yes, we can definitely help you with shirts and gear for your non-F3 companies and groups!) Malko moved the entire inventory of F3 Gear in Rock Hopper’s 18 foot open trailer. There may still be a few F3 shirt boxes in the woods off the highway.
     

    F3 Chief and Screenprinting
    F3 Chief hard at work on the heat press and an F3 Crossroads logo screen
     

    F3 Gear had become (and still is) the largest source of funds fueling F3 Expansion. We were blown away by the number of F3 logos and regional teams we were seeing at the Ultimate Challenge Mud Run convergence in Columbia. The photo that year underscored the growth and potential.
     
    F3 takes over the Ultimate Challenge Mud Run
     

    MudGear was growing in its own right as well. MudGear socks were designed and produced in Hickory, NC to combat the nasty gashes that our guys were suffering at the mud runs that year. The socks took off and soon the sales on the MudGear website started to outpace the F3 Gear sales. A MudGear Pro Team of professional Spartan Racers was launched and the social media buzz of MudGear on the race podiums fueled additional growth.
     

    MudGear Pro Team
    MudGear Pro Team Members Laura Lunardi, Brakken Kraker, and Robert Killian
     

    Things were going great, but this is where we veered off course. We chose to follow the well-worn path of the sports apparel industry to Asia to learn how to make inexpensive gear for import. We navigated a production round of v2 MudGear shirts from China that arrived by boat smelling like gasoline. We had to unpackage and air-dry every shirt for a couple days to get the smell out. Continued communication problems and delays caused us to break ties with that factory and begin a new search for manufacturing closer to home.

     

    We found the difference between working with Asian apparel manufacturers and US manufacturers to be striking. Chinese factories, especially government-owned ones, value full employment, so they have lots of manpower, including many account reps working to get and keep your business. It seems they will do and say anything to get your orders in the door then figure out how to make it work afterward by changing some small details you may not notice like um… sewing quality. American manufacturers, on the other hand, have been in survival mode for the last couple decades. The remaining ones are only in business because they have been ruthlessly efficient and extremely selective about who they’ll work with in order to not waste resources. Luckily, many of these survivors are here in North Carolina where the history of making quality apparel in the USA runs deep.

     

    With our past order history and proven market of loyal F3 and MudGear customers, we were finally able to get the attention of two NC-based manufacturers and have reached an agreement to make the next round of MudGear shirts, boxer briefs and arm sleeves here in the USA. This will bring us to over 95% of all MudGear products being made domestically. We’re incredibly excited about the quality of the new prototypes and love having the production closer to home.

     
    MudGear shirt development in USA
    v3 MudGear shirts currently in development in North Carolina
     

    What does this mean for F3 Gear?

    We think this move is a long-term gain for F3 Gear with some short-term pain. We expect to run out of stock of several sizes of v2 MudGear shirts before the next version arrives. We are already out of stock of the MudGear boxer briefs and most sizes of the padded arm sleeves. We apologize for these delays and will have other brands of gear available for F3 shirt orders to fill the gap. Additionally, we’ve had to consolidate our fabric purchase to a single color dye lot which means we will be going back to all bad-ass black in MudGear shirts for most of this year. With continued growth, we hope to be able to pick up other colors of American made MudGear soon. Nothing else is changing at this time. Our high level of customer service for F3 PAX and expert F3 printing by Chief and crew all stay the same.

     

    What does this mean for MudGear?

    A high-quality US manufacturing partner is a huge deal for our growth. Better communication and faster turn times should help us build great gear that is responsive to the needs of our customers. The future is bright. After 4 years of plugging away, Malko has left his day job to pursue growing MudGear full time. MudGear was recently the Official Sock of the OCR World Championships in Ontario, Canada and we just announced several new sponsorship deals including becoming the Official Sock of Savage Race for 2017. We’re looking to push into specialty running stores and hybrid gyms this year as well. Our socks continue to pick up accolades and were voted the 2016 product of the year by Mud Run Guide.

     

    Finally, with this milestone, I want to take the opportunity to again thank all of you in the F3 community for your support and patronage of the F3 Gear Store. Your support (and purchases!) have been incredibly meaningful and allowed us to fuel lots of F3 expansion activities. MudGear would never have been created without the power of F3 to reinvigorate dormant leadership abilities and foster the iron-sharpening of many brothers along the way. A huge FEBA to you all.

     

    As always, you can reach us with any concerns or questions at support@mudgear.com.

     

    Aye!

    Malko
     
    Shop F3 Gear

  • Now Accepting Entries for the Official 2016 F3 Race Jersey Logo

    The F3 Marketing Team will soon select and unveil a new national Official F3 Race Jersey Logo for 2016.  Winning designs have originated in the F3 Columbia region for the last 2 years, but the depth and breadth of competition has increased greatly this year with expansion.

    Like previous years, we plan to keep the standard F3 logo on the front, uniting F3 Nation, and feature a new design on the back to commemorate this year of F3.  As before, the logo will be retired at the end of the year with no additional printings, so you can always tell who is a legitimate OG.  (The last of the #ISI shirts are here, and a few of the past logos are still available on mugs and pint glasses). The official yearly F3 Nation Race Jersey has become a cherished collectible for PAX across F3 Nation – a reminder of your years in F3, suitable for framing retired jerseys above the mantle as trophies to your manhood.

    Please use the comments below to submit a slogan idea.  Images can be fully developed or just sketches that need refinement.  Posting to twitter or google drive and sharing the link here seems to work well.  You can also comment to applaud the creativity of others, or voice your opinions.  Remember that this will be the fleeting image that countless sadclowns see passing them by on the course or track next year – make it memorable. There are no design requirements this year, meaning you do not have to incorporate the f3 URL or twitter handle – just make is something that unites us across all F3 regions and nomad groups.  F3 Marketing will be making a final selection at the beginning of February.

    We’ll keep taking ideas until the end of Jan, and then get some shirts going for Spring races.

    Thanks and good luck. Aye!