MABA finale: The greatest bunco night story ever told
Or at least the greatest that contributed to 3,276,435 burpees. Thanks to you all for making January awesome.
This was the greatest bunco night in the history of bunco nights.
The FiA ladies of Hampton Roads gathered Friday for their regional social night, which coincided with the last night of MABA—Make America Burpee Again, the annual challenge in which participants do 100 burpees a day every day in January.
Present were seven of the top 200 MABA participants—Marathon, Tats, Backroad, Solar, River, Wave and Zin. And two of those—Marathon and Tats—did 1,776 burpees apiece Friday alone to finish in the top 5 nationwide.
It was supposed to be bunco night.
It turned into burpee night.
“In between rounds, we would all be doing burpees. Small little competitions within the group plus extra challenges for losing a round, which made the last night of agony a little bit more bearable,” says Ashley “Zin” Kominsky, who did 270 burpees just during bunco, 670 for the day and 4,000 for the life of the event.
The final day of MABA generates the best stories.
In Tornado Alley—the champion in per burpee production—made a beautiful sunrise even more glorious with a beatdown, a cold plunge and then breakfast with their wives and kids.
In Blue Ridge, two men did the unfathomably difficult burpee mile: burpee, two steps, burpee, two steps, for four laps around a track. This sucks bad enough when you’re fresh. On the last day of MABA, it’s brutal. Blue Ridge’s Katniss, who sits near the top of the MABA list every year, logged 1,528 burpees on Friday and 17,943 for the month.
In Tennessee, FixerUpper led the men of his AO in a game of burpee bingo as lightning flashed across the dark morning sky. When the beatdown ended, he caught his breath, wiped the sweat from his face then wiped the burpee count from his scoreboard, donating 13,606 burpees to Waldo, a literal application of MABA’s theme of Fall down. Get back up. Together.
As for me, a local Pax named Brent “3rd Wheel” Callahan and I finished January 30th tied. He challenged me to a final day burpee competition: Loser had to go to the winner’s AO and provide coffeeteria.
Frankly, I’d rather lose that. That sounds like pure joy. The only thing I love more than making breakfast for men is doing burpees while making breakfast for men.
I accepted his challenge.
I already planned to put up a big number, both by Qing our local finale and by doing more after. My guess was 3rd Wheel was going to put up 1,000, so I would literally one up him by doing 1,001 …
Then I thought if I was thinking about 1,001, so was he …
… So I did 1,007.
I wasn’t going to tell him my total until after the final bell.
Then he posted 1,042 to the scoreboard.
Prick.
I went outside, did 35 burpees to tie him while our mail lady put a box on our porch (Mornin’! Burpees are full!), and hoped he wasn’t sandbagging me (he wasn’t.)
And thus ended Year 5 of MABA.
For me, at least. Some of you lunatics kept going deep into the night, bunco and otherwise.
The official tally as of 10:10 am Central time Saturday morning: 1,236 participants completed 3,276,435 burpees; both records in the five-year history of MABA.
I was a sportswriter at a national magazine for 13 years and I still write about sports a good deal, so stats fascinate me. A few things jump out at me this year.
The participant count jumped slightly, from 1,227 to 1,236, not even 1 percent. But the burpee total jumped by 6.1 percent. We got after it!
The scoreboard shows 525 completed the challenge (it’s actually a handful more than that, as a bunch of people, but I don’t know how many, donated many, many burpees to Waldo (125,555), so I’m just going to leave it at 525.)
69 participants doubled the challenge (same).
22 did at least 10,000 (same).**
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A special callout to Lucian “Drug Up” Nevatt. He joined F3 two weeks ago. He showed up unannounced and uninvited (which we LOVE LOVE LOVE) after seeing a post on social media (which I guess technically was an invitation but whatever). He kept coming back every day since, even though every beatdown was a sufferfest of burpees.
I Qed our finale, and he was there. I cajoled the men to log their burpees (as I frequently do). I knew he had not signed up … so I might have been standing right in front of him and looking right at him and directing my comments to him (hey, he was new, he didn’t know he could sign up late.)
Anyway, that’s how he became MABA 2025’s final sign up and added 1,200 to our total.
I’ll leave the scoreboard on. I’m going to try to average 100 a day all year, and I invite you to join me.
Waldo is being treated at a facility in Chicago. The F3 men of that area are already showering him with love. Let’s not forget: We need to shower him in love for months and years, not days and weeks. Donate to his GoFund me here.
One final set of numbers.
163,821.
2,730.
114.
That’s how many minutes, hours and days we spent burpeeing together this month.
That’s nuts, right? We spent 114 days building stronger relationships, stronger bonds, stronger muscles, stronger communities.
Thank you all for participating in MABA.
Thank you for the notes and the stories and photos and encouragement.
Thank you for falling down.
Thank you for getting up
Thank you for doing both together.
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That’s truly amazing. Congrats on another successful January MABA!