- When:05/23/16
- QIC: Tiger Rag
- The PAX: Prohibition, Alf, Fault Line, Iron Mike, Sundancer, Talk Box, Silent Bob, High Tide, Stone Cold, Utah, Egypt, Ductwork, Laettner, H. McHorseArse
Close Encounter
Fifteen benchmarked their hill readiness under the double full moons at this morning’s Blue Ridge Prelay. The reputed home of the CLT Running Co’s BRR hill training is really a tale of two courses. The front half (from the base of Blue Ridge) to the back side of the loop (at the top of the Blue Ridge cut through) gives you all the hills you can handle. The back half (Wilby to Mountain View) is a nice recovery to get your head (and legs) right. There are plenty of options for each runner to choose his own adventure.
After a half mile mosey, the recommended course for today:
- Start at the Base of Blue Ridge and Old Bell
- Right on Mountain View
- Straight onto Wilby
- Left on Mountain View
- Right back down Blue Ridge to start/finish point.
Rinse and Repeat until 6 AM. This is the Mt CLT Strava Segment but I added a descent back down Blue Ridge (seems like an incomplete loop to me…).
At 6 AM we gathered at the Bottom of Blue Ridge to run to the Yucca plant at the top of the Old Bell dead end. Then dealer’s choice: for the frisky, hill repeats up and down Blue Ridge to sweep the six. For the rest, head back to gravel lot on the flat and speedy Old Bell Rd.
OLD MOLEY
- I think we can all agree on two things: the course is as tough as the name is bad. You can blame the name on me but as Patton said: “A good AO name, violently executed now, is better than a perfect AO name next week.” If you’d like to give your opinions of the course to Horsehead, email him at ForeheadMustache@gmail.com.
- Not sure how many intentionally modified the descent down Blue Ridge each lap, or if they “accidentally” missed it. Seems a shame to leave that out of the loop. I mean, if you are coming for hills, go big.
- Speaking of….Laettner continues his obsession with hills and smelled of mashed potatoes. He made good on his premeditated refusnik and ran repeats from the dead squirrel to the yucca plant most of the morning.
- If that’s not weird enough, somewhere around Lap 4, Stone Cold saw what he claimed was a “man wearing nothing but a sweatshirt” at the corner of Wilby and Mountain View. After Soul Glo’s “Bunny” encounter, I am a bit more skeptical of these types of reports, but I’ll be doggone if I didn’t see the same thing coming around for the next lap. Except is wasn’t an old man without pants–it appeared to be a young man in a peach Speedo skulking around the back of the house like Gollum. By the time I rounded the corner and peeked down the driveway, (“it’s hideous, yet I can’t look away) he had moved parallel with me, to behind the car. The mouth-breathing and foot-dragging had alerted the torso-clad biped to my presence and, in considering FIGHT or FLIGHT, I chose the latter sped off at a blistering 9 min/mile pace to safety of the Pack. A close encounter, indeed.
- Old Horsey MCUniBrow had originally planned for this to be a once-a-month endeavor but I think it needs to be every week. Once a month is good for bench marking current hill training but if it’s used as the training tool, it needs to be every week. Either way, it will have rotating Qs and will be largely tweet and meet. Not sure if there will be another running next week (Memorial Day) and, if so, who will Q. So put something out there if you’ve got an itch for hills, or to get a glimpse of the Speedo Guy. Keep an eye on Twitter and the website.
Tiger-Rag author
Random observations and opinions;
The extra 15 mins were fantastic. I think I died three times total, but two of them were in the final 15.
Somehow missed Weirdo McNopants. Somehow not mad about this.
I did step on the dead squirrel while Inwas already throwing up in my mouth. Didn’t help.
Did Laettner have on an official Strava shirt? It looked important.
Sundancer is even slower than Kirk said he would be. #potkettle
Somebody please rename this thing.
It defies all comprehension that anyone posting this often to running workouts remains slower than a clock during jury duty. But to his credit, he still shows up at these asinine events, keeps his head down (especially while puking) and his mouth mostly shut (again except for the puking thing and random obscenities). Befuddlement abounds.
It’s a yin-yang thing we have.
I plan to make it out next time, even if it’s in a TD / Belk capacity, i.e. sitting in a foldout chair with coffee “counting” and encouraging.
I walked the stairs to my office on the 5th floor this morning after “running” several loops around this course. For those keeping score at home, that’s now at least two terrible decisions so far today, and it’s still only 11 AM. The one saving grace was the fortunate decision to remain tethered to Fault Line as he pulled me around the loop, which meant that the only times I ran up and down Blue Ridge were at the start, finish, and that painfully stupid “finisher” to which TR subjected us at the end.
Not that my opinion matters, but Laettner is obviously suffering from altitude sickness from all the hills he’s run this month. Pretty sure the guy in the speedo is also suffering from altitude sickness on account of living at that elevation.
See y’all next week.
I swear the dude was naked from the sweatshirt down. My high-powered beams set that moon a glowin’. Who buys and wears a peach speedo at 0545 and moseys around their car in the moonlight. YHC is glad TR got a closer look and confirmed I was not delirious from the lack of O2. BTW, the next time I saw #chester, it was a frontal shot, thank goodness my lamp was off….pace increased significantly. YHC likes Double Moon Mt Or Chester’s Peak for AO nanmes.
It was good to see some of the Metro pax join us. Laettner was on a mission fo sho.
I’m torn on the name. All the green lights and the Yucca plant have me favoring Mr. Yucka. I haven’t seen that many Christmas lights since well…, Christmas. Luckily I did miss the guy in the speedo, or not in the speedo. And really, who are we to criticize as weird after running that route at o’dark thirty on a Monday.
Good to connect with a couple of the metro crew as well.
Wow, I’m not used to this much chatter on my sadclown Everest ascents. 10,162 vertical feet so far, 1,286 to go.
That Mtn View > Old Bell spike is legit, 14% grade in places. Here’s the segment: https://www.strava.com/segments/12162872. The KOM is the guy who sometimes wins the Thunder Road Half. Apparently no one ever runs it like we did. Of the 12 total on the leaderboard, 10 (11?) were us, this morning. Until you’re able to change that segment name, a workout name change is futile.
What’s the official record for ratio of comments by non-posting pax to pax who actually did the workout?
Wow…that’s a lot of scrolling through comments…now I feel obligated. The reality is even if the name is “officially” changed, it will always be referenced as McHorseyArse or whatever. As mentioned earlier, it’s futile to change it. As for the workout itself, great track for sure, the roads were surprisingly smooth and the hills are legit. I stuck to repeating the same loop with Silent Bob as we synched strides early; I didn’t know if I was doing the small loop or big loop…the dissertation at the start didn’t stick. The final romp up to the hilltop Yucca was a nice touch. Thanks TigerRag.
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