The Adventures of Fluffy

A Beautiful Day For A Ride

Today was Bill’s workout. I was told to be at Shaeffer Farm in Germantown at 7am. Shaeffer Farm is the mountain biking park in the area so I assumed that we would be doing some mountain biking. I don’t have a mountain bike so I was pleased to see that Bill brought one for me. We did a little over an hour on the trails stopping periodically for burpees, of course. The trail was beautiful and it became a gorgeous day. I have not done much mountain biking but I really enjoyed it. The big lesson I came away with was that running into trees is considered bad form.

Dragging Fluffy Through The Woods

Tight Squeeze

After we stowed the bikes away, Bill handed me a length of climbing rope and took one as well. We headed back into the woods, this time staying off the trail. We found two decent size logs, tied the ropes to them and dragged them through the woods. I named my log Fluffy. We spent a few hours going up and down the steep slopes on either side of a small valley, always dragging Fluffy behind me. There were plenty of thickets and obstacles to make the trips difficult. When we got to either the top or the bottom of the slope we did 25 push-ups, crunches or other calisthenics. We made the push-up more challenging by keeping our feet on the stream bank, our hands in the water, and requiring our faces to go in the water each time down. The one rule we had while pulling the logs was that if there was an opportunity to go under a fallen log, we went under rather than over. There were quite a few tight squeezes.

Can't Go Over It, Must Go Under

Before long, we came to a turn in the creek. Here Bill wanted to build a dam in the stream. We collected rocks and did a decent job. This was simply a test in accomplishing something that was just tedious and made no sense at all, similar to some of the tasks in Death Race.

We went back to dragging our logs again which was good because I don’t think Fluffy enjoyed dam building. We came to another turn in the creek. Here Bill pulled out two math problems that Irene had created. They involved calculating the percentageof calories supplied by the protein in an energy bar (Irene is a nutritionist). Sad to say, we both got the problem wrong. More face-in-the creek pushups. 

Pushing 400 lb Log Up A Big Hill

Bill looked around, pointed to an 18’ log and said we were going to try and get the log up the slope. I corrected him and said we were going to get that log up the slope. There is no try, just do. I released Fluffy back into the wild and we slowly moved the big log across the stream and started up the hill. We guestimated that it weighed 400 pounds. Slowly, foot by foot, we made our way up the slope, going around trees, slipping on the leaf humus, and just holding on for dear life lest the log roll back down the hill, flattening us in the process. This was no easy task but after an hour and a half, we succeeded.

Satisfaction At The Top

After resting for a few minutes, we headed back through the woods. On our way, we both picked up new logs to carry the couple of miles back to the trailhead. No Death Race workout is complete without carrying logs.