MABA and the marrow of life

Ice up, son, because MABA 2022 will be here before you know it.

Make America Burpee Again (MABA) was a nationwide CSAUP in which each of us tried to do 3,100 burpees in 31 days. Fall down. Get back up. Together.

Joy, sorrow, MABA and the marrow of life

I almost cried at an F3 beatdown Sunday. Not out of physical pain, as would have happened when I first started F3. No, I choked up during COT at the MABA Finale on Sunday (watch it here, 20 of us did 318 burpees apiece) because my heart was overflowing with that mystical combination of joy and sorrow that is the very marrow of life.

The joy of what MABA has given me was made possible by the sorrow that my mom’s death on New Year’s Eve—the day before MABA started—gave me. The joy didn’t replace the pain. That’s not how it works. Instead, they were marbled together, side by side, each omnipresent, each clamoring for my attention, each intermittently running to the front of the line as if I snapped my fingers to summon it.

As I’ve said elsewhere, my mom would have thought 3,100 burpees in a month was crazy. But she would have loved the deepening friendships that have resulted because of it.

MABA exists in part because I have her personality. When she was dying of cancer, she’d get on the phone with a nurse or drug company rep, and talk to the person for 30 minutes just about whatever. Even after 52 years of witnessing stuff like that, my dad would still sometimes think she was talking to a friend because she was just that good at it.

It’s because of a lifetime of witnessing my mom talk to strangers that I can invite hundreds of men I don’t know to do 3,100 burpees in a month.

The texts, emails, calls, whatever, from PAX I’ve never met, from friends, from people in-between, telling me how much they loved doing MABA … those sustained me. Every time I got one, I thought, “I got that because of my mom,” followed quickly by, “I got that because she’s not here.”

Gentlemen, I’ve written often (and thought even more) about shared suffering, that strange phenomenon that makes horrible things great. Or at least makes us think horrible things are great. And while MABA was indeed shared suffering, for me it was shared suffering sliced right done to the bone. It was foundationally different than garden variety CSAUP shared suffering.

CSAUP shared suffering is self-inflicted, self-chosen, and, in a sense, fake. By that I mean, in any beatdown—GrowRuck, long bike rides, Kramer Qs—the suffering is in a controlled setting and you could walk away if you wanted. The fact you choose to say does not diminish the suffering, necessarily, but it does make it different. You can avoid shared suffering by sleeping in, not HCing, not doing the Lion King burpees, etc.

This month (and next, etc.), though, I had no choice but to walk the path God in his mercy set before me. And that made MABA and you MABA maniacs all that much more powerful and important.

My suffering came with me whether I wanted it to or not, and there was no quitting this. But with you guys with me, enduring it was … easier is not the right word. I think edifying is right word. The suffering was meaningful because you shared it with me.

There is something wrong in F3 The Capital

And I mean that as a high compliment. On Sunday, four PAX—Jenner, Traveler, Major Payne and Nano—did 500 burpees AND ran five miles, and they were done before 9 a.m.

Now what?

Good question. The individual MABA goal was 3,100 burpees in the 31 days of January. According to the count on our spreadsheet at 10 p.m. last night, an amazing 165 men hit that. The collective MABA goal was 1 million burpees. We did 898,102. We’re going to keep going until we hit it. If you want to help us, keep logging your burpees, with one caveat: From now until we reach 1 million, burpees only count if they are done with at least one other person—either at a regularly scheduled beatdown, a two-man black ops or some other weird way you yahoos come up with to do burpees with somebody else (Ms and 2.0s count!) Fall down. Get back up. Together.

The newsletter frequency will likely taper off, but I will update you on the progress.

Log your burpees here.

MABA 2022

Of course it’s happening. Send us thoughts on what we did well, what we could improve, what we could add or subtract. I wish we had figured out a way to make this a fund-raiser. It was too last-minute for that; we’ll be more prepared next year. F3 The Capital suggested donating a penny per burpee to a charity of your choice. I’d encourage you all to do that.

A few burpees short of 400

A winner will be announced in the WEDNESDAY newsletter in the contest to do burpees in the weirdest place. Deadline to enter is noon Monday.