Inspiring MABA PAX: 'No one gets out alive'
Also burpees at 30,000 feet, drive-by burpees on my lawn and pushing through the second half
Sign up and/or log your burpees here. Fall down. Get back up. Together.
This week’s winner of the “That Sounds Dirty, But It’s Not” MABA Text Award goes to Tinkle (F3 St. Charles). “My co-pilot caught me in the act and was rendered speechless.”
We have reached the halfway point of MABA. I can’t help but think of second halves other endurance events I’ve entered. The most memorable, by far, came at GrowRuck, a cross between an adventure race, an overnight hike, a beatdown and a leadership seminar.
Around 3 a.m, 81 of us gathered at a park after hours of hiking through a river during a rainstorm. On a drenched soccer field, we completed an endurance test of 110 thrusters and a 1.5 mile run.
As I caught my breath, I asked one of the leaders of the event, known to his many fans as Cadre Danny, to describe the telltale signs of exhaustion among the men. What does a man look like when he has nothing left, I wanted to know. He didn’t answer. I asked again. He gave me a confused look. I tried Cadre Shredder next. That man scares me (or used to, I should say; I discovered later he’s a peach when he’s not a cadre). He didn’t answer either. I gave up and went back to where I had left my backpack.
As I stood there, I realized I was the answer to my own question: I was so exhausted I wasn’t asking the question the way I thought I was. I walked back to them, re-asked the question as carefully as I could, and they answered it.
Then Shredder blindfolded me, and I had to ruck like that through driving rain.
I had no choice but to rely on the man ahead of me and the man on my right to guide me. I think about those miles often for how awesome and terrible they were. For an essay I wrote about that night, click here.
After we covered about two miles in 45 minutes, someone tore the tape off of my face. When the sting faded, I regained my bearings. We were in a park, with a wooded section in front of us, an idyllic respite from the storm, even though it was still raining.
Here was my chance to finish strong! Here’s what I did: Once I could see, I promptly got lost in those woods. Later, as the sun rose, the temperature was in the low 70s, but I was shivering with cold from hiking all night in the rain. Complete strangers rubbed my back to try to warm me up. When the event finally ended, my arms spasmed while I showered. I tried to sleep in Kramer’s car on the way home but because of adrenaline or nerves or who knows what I repeatedly shook myself awake.
The good news is the second half of MABA won’t suck anywhere near as bad as that.
On the other hand, the second half of GrowRuck was only a few hours, and we have 15 more days of MABA, so who knows.
You ain’t nothin’ but a burpee in the sky**
Fulton (F3 St. Louis) did burpees on an airplane and sent video proof. He explains himself:
At roughly 30,000 feet, just before our descent into the Tampa airport, I asked the Southwest flight attendant if I could do a burpee on the plane—a Boeing 737. It was tight, but there was ample room for a very small jump. Normally I wouldn’t ask, but with heightened issues with travel, I didn’t want to ruin our family vacation by being detained by the TSA.
Her response was “what’s a burpee?”
I went on to very briefly explain F3 and MABA and that we were challenging each other to do burpees in odd or unusual places. Her response was, “Let’s do it before we hit turbulence.”
So a single burpee was done at 30,000 feet.
I walked back to my seat. My wife was shaking her head and my kids (9, 6 and 5 years old) were laughing—I’m still a fun dad in their eyes.
I would have never done something like this just a year ago. Thanks F3 and Ralph for teaching me to challenge the status quo.
**First PAX to contact me correctly identifying this reference gets a hearty congratulations.
Burpee drive by
A new standard in MABA-ness has been set. Just now, a minivan pulled up in front of my house. Out of it climbed Merengue and his four-deep brood of ankle-biters. They proceeded to do burpees on my front lawn. “Burpee drive by!” he shouted as he returned to his van. “Tag, you’re it!”
IT IS SO ON.
Meet 9-Lives, the PAX who keeps cheating death
Have you ever had one of those coffeeteria’s where you sit slack-jawed, your coffee becoming ever colder, because the life story spilling out of a PAX is so compelling you forget to drink it? Meet 9-Lives, a relatively new member of F3 St. Charles who jumped in with both feet … but only one of his own kidneys.
1. Your nickname came because you’ve had cancer, a stroke and a kidney transplant, and that’s just what I know of. Am I missing anything? Why aren’t you dead?
Kidney failure came first in 2014, out of the blue, a random test found it, which was the first time I almost died. I had dialysis for three years—2016, 2017 and 2018.
In 2017 they decided to remove my left kidney for cancer reasons, the surgery was a success, but subsequent infections kept me in the hospital for 21 days. I had two blood transfusions as well—the second and third times I flirted with death. I had a kidney transplant at the end of 2018.
During dialysis in late 2017, I vomited blood from a polyp in my stomach. In early 2021 that polyp turned into cancer. At the same time they did a routine colonoscopy and found 11 polyps, with one of them being the stage right before cancer.
Six months after transplant, I was diagnosed with a melanoma on my leg, which was directly related to the transplant meds.
In 2021 after I complained about headaches, doctors did a scan and found that I had had a stroke. Unable to find the reason, they placed a Linq monitor in my chest that downloads to a unit next to my bed each night looking for irregularities.
Currently I fight regular urinary tract infections, and some of my doctors believe the other native kidney needs to come out. I am working with infectious disease docs to see if we can find an alternative to another major surgery.
Part of my motivation to workout is that I want to be in the best shape possible if surgery becomes inevitable. I have several other smaller surgeries for the many catheters I have had, and I still have the fistula in my right arm from dialysis. They won’t remove that unless there is an issue.
2. What’s the weirdest part about having someone else’s organ in your body?
That I don't know anything about them. The family of the donor gets to decide if they want to respond to “our” letters. So far they haven’t, so I don’t know who they are. I say “our letters” because I know the person who got the donor’s other kidney. The day of the transplant and those that follow are a strange emotional event, one of the best days in your life, literally receiving the gift of life. At the same time, it is the absolute worst day in someone else's family. It truly motivates you to do good things.
3. You told me at the MABA launch that however many burpees you did that day would be that many more than you did in 2021. How many do you hope to do in January?
Burpees are a struggle for me as they are not an exercise I normally do. I am a big fella at 285, so quick and agile are not in my current skill set. I have had to modify quite a bit, doing more merkins than anything. Since I am so new to this, I am shooting for 1,000.
4. You’re going to compete in the next transplant games. Where/when will they be, and what events do you hope to enter?
The Transplant Games of America are at the very end of July this year in San Diego. You can compete in one event per day and any of the track events. My hope is that I can play for the team in basketball and volleyball, then compete in tennis and golf. For track my son Weston, who is on a track scholarship for javelin, believes I can bring home gold in shot put. It will be an amazing atmosphere to be surrounded by so many people who share this odd commonality of an organ transplant. I know I have a way to go. It has been a physical battle just to get to where I am, but my goal is to go to the games in the best shape of my life somewhere between 240 and 250 pounds.
The added challenge is the medicines that keep you alive have many adverse effects, like the cancer (I’m not on that medicine any longer). I now have steroid-induced diabetes, and although my cholesterol is OK, I take statin, and it messes with my muscles, especially my legs.
On a side note I really enjoy F3 so far. I look at these guys and think, they are doing the right thing, right now. No one gets out alive, something will catch up with you, but by being there in the morning gloom, they are preparing for the battle to come. Every workout is adding that 1 percent to their survival rate and I intend to make this a permanent part of my life.
The do burpees in weird places competition is heating up
Do burpees in weird places, send me proof, and if it’s deemed the weirdest by our esteemed panel of judges, I’ll buy you a MABA shirt. Roof-pees are solid. So are plane-pees. We also have double-respect ice-skating burpees, PAX doing burpees at work and a tattoo parlor and another who convinced strangers to do them in multiple places now. I have a bunch of videos of shorties doing burpees and even one dog doing them.
Deadline for submission is January 20. I have two burpee scenarios I’d like to see: From the altar/front of the church during a service, and in a hospital/doctor’s office while wearing gowns as a patient when you’re there to have work done.
If you’re nervous about keeping pace with 100 burpees per day, toggle down. The point is not the burpees. The point is the relationships you build and strengthen with the people you do them with. MABA is a physical challenge AND a relational challenge.
You’re not going to do a month of burpees and NOT buy a t-shirt, are you? Order your shirt here.
AV of F3 UK has tied his burpees to a charity that uses horses to help people who need healing. AV’s son is a client there. To donate, click here.
Mark your calendars: Join us for the MABA finale
At 5:30 a.m. Central time on Monday, January 31, F3 St. Charles will host the MABA finale. It will be broadcast live. See future newsletters for details.