MABA: Red Turtle's radiant, overflowing joy
And other benefits you can only get doing burpees at oh-dark-thirty
Log your burpees here.
In this newsletter: The HIM bringing MABA data to the masses howls in delight, a look at the MABA stats and a MABA soundtrack that will have you tapping your feet and struggling to catch your breath.
Make America Burpee Again (MABA) is a nationwide CSAUP in which each of us is doing 3,100 burpees in 31 days. Fall down. Get back up. Together.
Red Turtle comes out of his shell
Silver light fell from street lamps. It shimmered on the far corner of the subdivision pond, the barest sliver of color in a black and white pre-dawn world. Everything about it was fake, manufactured, unnatural, but it was beautiful nonetheless. High above, a shooting star streaked across the sky, west to east, long enough for an observer to gape in amazement. At last it frittered out.
Meanwhile, Red Turtle turned the corner at the west end of that manmade-but-still-gorgeous pond. His heart pounded in his chest, his lungs heaved there, too, and his legs pumped and pumped and pumped some more. He was a third of a mile from the end of a MABA beatdown (100 burpees/run a mile/50 burpees/run a mile), and this relatively new F3 PAX was accelerating in every sense of the word.
As he ran toward the hint of the rising sun, glimpses of purple emerged in the sky. The sight of that pushed him over the edge. A rumbling built up in his chest. What a blessing, he thought to himself, to be out here destroying my body and restoring my soul. The rumbling in his chest grew stronger until at last joy shot upward from his inner depths and came out of his mouth as he howled in delight. “A war cry,” he called it, and his fellow PAX heard it a block away.
Red Turtle is a veteran, a father, a HIM, and one of the men behind the scenes who has made MABA accessible for PAX across the nation. Without him, there’d be no scoreboard, no running totals, no way to know that a beast named Disco Ball is on his way to 10,000 burpees. Also, there’d be pre-dawn silence because his joy wouldn’t be there to break it.
Hey MABA-boy, are we going to hit 1 million or what?
Through Friday night, MABA-maniacs had submitted 612,985 burpees. From the outset, MABA’s goal was to hit 1 million burpees. With nine days left, we’re on pace for 863,751. Of the 393 who signed up, 129 are on pace to hit 3,100. Absent a massive push by existing MABA maniacs and/or the arrival of a bunch of new ones, we’re not going to make it. Individual totals are here.
But MABA is not ultimately about numbers. It’s about community. It’s about resilience. Fall down. Get back up. Together.
A few burpees short of 400
We challenge you to send photo/video evidence of yourself doing burpees in a strange place. Whether that’s because you’re a few burpees short of 400 and need to knock them out wherever you happen to be or because you’re just a weirdo doesn’t matter. Whoever submits proof of himself doing a burpee in the weirdest place wins a MABA t-shirt. Right now, I’d say the leader is Frogger, who sent pictures of himself doing burpees in the snow next to the plow he drives.
Preblast: 2 p.m. CT, January 31:
A MABA convergence on its final day, live from STL
There will be burpees. Lots and lots of burpees. So many burpees. All of them broadcast live on our Facebook page.
How to look good doing a burpee
MABA t-shirts are available. Order here. Patches to come soon. They’re beautiful—easily the greatest design commemorating an idiotic attempt to do 3,100 burpees in 31 days I’ve ever seen. Many thanks to Short Circuit for the design.
A non-MABA note: Come GrowRuck with us!
You should come to St. Louis and GrowRuck with us. All the cool kids will be here. I’ll be there with bells on. And hopefully also a blindfold. Dates: July 16-18. Sign-up starts in February. Follow us on Twitter for details.
I bet we'll do middle-of-the-night burpees. Bartles and Jaymes, a MABA maniac from Naperville who is on pace to complete the second-most burpee total nationwide, told me GrowRuck’s burpee fitness test is 100 burpees, run a mile, 50 burpees, run a mile, and the standard is 31 minutes. I have tried twice and failed twice, both by less than a minute. Try it, and send me your score. Best I’ve heard is 24:59 by Sheldon.
A MABA rerun
If you missed the last newsletter, you need to check it out. Click here to get to know the banjo-playing, coupon-curling fighter pilot who coined the phrase Make America Burpee Again. CFIT gently corrected me that his epic and harrowing stories of nearly crashing fighter jets involve F15s, not F16s as I said.
Millions of burpees, burpees for me
Do you want to do 277 burpees in 42 minutes while liste—HEY! COME BACK HERE—do you want to do 277 burpees in 42 minutes while listening to music? Check out this playlist from a recent beatdown Qed by a Last Stop HIM named Brick.
Song/artist/trigger/burpee number
Last Caress (Green Hell)/Metallica/"Hell"/18
Flower (B- Sides)/Moby/"Sally Down"/30 (Sally Up adds 30
Tubthumping/Chumbawamba/"Knocked Down"/27
Black Betty/Ram Jam/"Black Betty"/15
Peaches/The Presidents of the United States/"Peaches"/24
Roxanne/The Police/"Roxanne"/36
Get Back Up/Toby Mac/"Up Again"/13
This is Who I Am/Third Day/"Who I AM"/12
Thunderstruck/AC-DC/"Thunder(struck)"/34
I Got You Babe/Sonny & Cher/"Babe"/12
Up - Down/Morgan Wallen/"Up-Down"/30
Red Solo Cup/Toby Keith/"Cups & Ups”/26/Party adds 21