Mischief

I have mentioned that Luke invited me to join he and his friends for a workout and that I had no idea what that would lead to. Accepting that invitation has lead to a whole new chapter in my gym experience. The one invitation lead to an open invitation, which has now become my Friday routine. Luke writes all our workouts, and he has a twisted imagination when it comes to thinking up things for us to do. There are 6 of us: Luke, Scotty, Jason, Josh, Audrey, and myself. Whoever is available comes each week. That means there have been weeks that it was just Luke and I, and there have been weeks that we have had some newcomers. We are gym rats. In Scotty's words, "we are a special kind of crazy." We push ourselves and each other - HARD. No excuses, no backing down, no quitting. We feed off each others energy. We are community/family. We are a pack. I was curious one night what a group of gym rats would be called. Google told me that a group of rats was a "pack (which i suspected)" or a "mischief". I loved the idea of being a mischief of gym rats. Once I told everyone else about, we started calling ourselves "The Mischief"...it had a nice ring to it, it stuck. I know if I am every frustrated, all I have to do is spend a few minutes with my mischief and I will get all the support and encouragement I need. When I came back from being sick, I had lost some of my strength and so much of my endurance. I was getting annoyed with myself. Throughout the week, leading up to our workout, each member came to me individually to see how I was feeling, let me know they had missed me, encourage me to be patient with myself and not push too hard/too fast because they didn't want me getting sick again. During one of his (frequent) pep talks to me, Luke said, "Give yourself time to recover. I know you are frustrated now, but you are a fighter. You will be back soon." Then he told me about a whiteboard that he keeps motivational quotes on. At the top it says "How bad do you want it?" The only thing that limits your goals is you. When you want something enough to sacrifice for it, when you crave it as much as you do oxygen, then you will achieve it. This has now become our motto. More than once it has been written on the floor, once Luke even taped it to his arm, "H.B.D.Y.W.I?" So naturally we had matching t-shirts made:

With it being summer, all 6 of us have not been together since we got the shirts. We are hoping to get a group picture soon. Until then, here is 4 out of the 6 of us. 

Left to Right: Scotty, me, Luke, Jason