Backblast: April 22nd, 2026
AO: GrantLand – Rotary Park – Perrysburg, OH
PAX:
Photon – Q
Binford
Bourbon
Echo
Guardian
Huckleberry
Longhorn
Lullabye
Piggly Wiggly
Rumor
Spaulding
Thor
Ukulele
Workout: Put The Tri In Triple
FNG’s: N/A
Mission and Principles:
F3: Fitness, Fellowship, Faith
Mission: To plant, grow and serve small workout groups for men for the invigoration of male community leadership.
The core principles of F3 are that it is always:
1. Free of charge
2. Open to all men
3. Held outdoors, rain or shine, heat or cold
4. Led by men who participate in the workout in a rotating fashion, with no training or certification necessary. You versus you. Modify or stop an exercise if you need to. The most important thing is that nobody gets hurt.
5. Ends with a Circle of Trust
Credo: Leave no man behind but leave no man where you find him
Warm-up: In Cadence
SSH (2 is 1): 244 (It would have been Fossil’s 488th post)
The “Thang”:
This one was for Fossil. At the time when it was created and run, it was supposed to be the final beatdown before Fossil’s “Hero Walk” and passing. In his honor, the PAX ran one final triathlon for him. There was no pool, and no bicycles, but there were reps and heart.
YHC determined how many reps of certain exercises would be required to complete an Olympic-length triathlon of 1.5km of swimming, 40km of cycling, and 10km of running. The exercises used were:
Swimmers (2 is 1): Swim – Required 1500 Total Reps
Freddy Mercuries (2 is 1): Cycle – Required 8000 Total Reps
5 Meter Suicide Taps (2 is 1): Run – Required 10000 Total Meters
The total reps/distances were divided up evenly between the total number of PAX (13) for the reps required to complete the full distances. PAX then paired off and worked together to complete the total number of reps required for the two of them in a DORA type format. One PAX would perform the triathlon reps while his partner would perform 15 up-downs (flying squirrels) before switching off. The up-downs were chosen to represent how Fossil would continue to get up after falling down or getting hurt doing what he loved all throughout his life. The rep counts for each pair of PAX were the following:
Swimmers (2 is 1): 115
Freddy Mercuries (2 is 1): 1231
5 Meter Suicide Taps (2 is 1): 154
When most PAX were midway through the Freddy Mercuries, the up-downs were dropped in an attempt to give PAX more time to focus on finishing the triathlon reps.
Ended with:
Count-O-Rama: 13
Name-O-Rama
The Six – Bourbon
LDP3
Ball of Man
Spreadsheets from the Gloom: While Fossil was a quieter, more of a warm-weather PAX, he had a tremendous impact on The Swamp…especially the Perrysburg PAX. His consistent presence on Tuesday morning runs and Friday morning Bible Studies, in addition to his occasional attendance of Perrysburg beatdowns, provided many PAX with inspiration on multiple different fronts. Seeing someone at his age put in the work at normal beatdowns made anyone in his vicinity want to get better. So when we found out about his accident, it wasn’t even a question that we needed to try and finish one more race for him.
It wasn’t a normal beatdown, of course. No one in there right mind would ever ask a pair of PAX to perform 1231 Freddy Mercuries in a single 45 minute time slot…unless it was for something greater than ourselves. So that’s what we did. Or at least we tried. The honorary SSHs at the beginning of the beatdown ate into a lot of the time, but we all got pretty close collectively to finishing the entire triathlon for Fossil. Perhaps if he had been there with us, we might have just finished.
All in all, it was a good tribute. The work was hard, but doable…especially knowing that we weren’t doing it for ourselves that day. The whole thing would have probably fit into an hour beatdown, or you could skip the SSHs and try and sneak it into a 45 minute workout.
Playlist was crafted to follow a triathlete’s journey through the event, but the time cut some of the running tracks short.
“The Distance” – CAKE
“The Stroke” – Billy Squire
“Nightswimming” – R.E.M.
“Float On” – Modest Mouse
“Bicycle Race” – Queen
“Let It Rid” – Bachman-Turner Overdrive
“Midnight Rider” – The Allman Brothers Band
“Run” – Foo Fighters
It’s always a pleasure to lead the HIMs of The Swamp, but this lead was extra special. Regardless of whether they knew Fossil a lot or a little, I hope that each PAX got a little something extra out of this one. Sorry we couldn’t finish for you, Fossil.