Communication

The Preblast (PB)

Dredd and OBT had a great idea getting guys to gather in the early hours of the morning for fitness, fellowship and faith, but how would they share the details of the workouts with others? Initially, information was shared by word of mouth where guys in F3 would personally invite friends and colleagues to join them. But as F3 grew and new workouts sprang up around town, it became more difficult to spread the message and get the necessary details to all men.

A website was launched to share the general details, but with a carousel of Qs week to week and new workouts popping up more often, F3 turned to Twitter to share up to date details of their offerings. Typically the Q - or someone in charge of the workout location - would tweet a message including the name of the workout, its start time, who was leading it and what to bring. A Comz Q might retweet the message from a dedicated account which was easier for someone to follow and thereby the pax had an up to date source of what was happening each morning.

As years went by and F3 spread around the globe, methods evolved. Following a starfish model, each region was welcome to manage how they handled their own affairs. F3 Nation introduced Slack as an alternative place to share information not intended for the general public. IT Qs began developing ways to spread the word across multiple mediums. Over the years, various regions have used websites, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Slack, WhatApp, Discord and others to spread the word. 

The Backblast (BB)

F3 began in 2011, but it wasn't until sometime in 2012 that we really got organized and began keeping a record of what we were doing in the early morning hours when most were still warm and comfortable in their fartsacks (aka beds). With only a few regions around Charlotte, F3 had its original website for the nation which offered user accounts. These users were able to login and write a blog entry outlining what they did at the workout along with anything seen, shared or overheard to encourage fellowship.

These early backblasts didn't have a lot of structure. Other than the name of the Q (aka leader) and the region where the workout took place, the entire contents were placed in the body and it was up to each Q what to include. Over time, most guys got into the habit of giving a recap of the workout and adding a "moleskin" that included any non-workout highlights such as things overheard, significant milestones such as an FNGs first post, or announcements mentioned in the CoT.

In late 2015, Isotope became the first to region to offer its own website. F3 Nation was growing quickly and the national website was becoming cumbersome with all the accounts. When f3isotope.com rolled out, it added some enhancements to the backblast. In addition to the Q, there was a unique field for the pax in attendance as well as the workout location. These items were converted to tags to make it easier to collect the data and offer more detail on attendance, leadership and kotters (members who haven't posted in several weeks).

Our website has been through several iterations since 2015 and each time an overhaul occurs, we have backed up our data. Until recently, the older data was inaccessible to the pax. This has been problematic for guys wanting to find an idea of their next workout or to recall when they were first named.

The Archives

April 20, 2006 – Introducing the Archive, a shared directory on Google Drive where the pax can browse PDFs by year going all the way back to 2012. That is just shy of 26,750 backblasts (0.5 GB) for you to peruse. Files that originated on F3 Nation's website include the _f3n suffix and do not follow the same format for content making them more difficult to search (e.g. date is when BB was written; not necessarily when workout occurred).

At present, it is not possible to search the contents of the PDFs within Google Drive. You will need to open PDFs individually to review their contents and find what you are looking for. However, once a file has been opened on your end, future content searches become possible.

This opens the possibility of finding answers to your burning questions such as:

• Who was the first to mention GORUCK in a backblast?
  MiniMe states that Bogey EH's Soprano on November 17, 2012

• How long has The Horsehoe been around?
  Since July 11, 2014 (credited to Freepass)

• How many backblasts for TheVern mention rain?
  22

• When was DragonSlayer introduced?
  EtCh-A-sKeTcH started it at GCC on January 8, 2015

• Who is credited for the first backblast on f3isotope.com?
  Fenway penned a Mad Scientist BB on December 2, 2015

• When was COVID first mentioned in a backblast?
  March 10, 2020 (Sweatshop)

• When did Race City branch off to form their own region?
  2020, Q4

• Which year did Isotope write the most backblasts?
  2019 (2,249)

• When did Popcorn kill Mad Scientist?
  November 10, 2021

• When did Jolly Roger Q his most recent workout?
  August 5, 2025