To yucca, or not to yucca

To yucca, or not to yucca

Pretty awesome morning, weather-wise, greeted the record 18 of us at the greenway parking lot.  What was intended to be a brief explanation of the planned route set the stage for the next hour of anarchy / chaos / free play / choose-your-own-adventure that followed.

Thang

Planned route:

Run into Sardis Hills – Old Bell, left uphill onto Blue Ridge, right onto Mountainview to the base of Mt. Horse’s Arse.

Hill repeats – up Mountainview, continue uphill by taking right onto Old Bell, up to the yucca plant.  Backwards run to the cul de sac.  Run down.  Repeat.

Frasier, TL, and YHC seemed to be the only ones to continue this for all, or even most of the time.  Everyone else did whatever the hell they wanted, which mostly seemed to be run a hill repeat or two, and then add in a short or long loop around the neighborhood to lengthen the recovery time.

Somewhere around 6:10, most of us said the pledge of allegiance at the Griswold flag – must see to believe – and then moseyed back to launch for COT.

Announcements:

• TR reminded about F3 Golf – abbreviated sign-up period, so do it now before it is too late.
• Swiper reminded about the hardest workout on Rea Rd tomorrow:  Pre-blast
• High Tide, in absentia, and to save him time in the comments section, reminds of reflective A51 shirts.  Order by Wednesday.

Moleskine

As promised, no exercises and intentions of avoiding a possible kidnapping.

If you haven’t experienced the suckfest that is Mountainview / Mt. Charlotte / Mt. Horse’s Arse, it is worth the hype.  In short, it is a big, steep, long hill – the closest thing to BRR-level “hills” that I’ve seen in Charlotte.  It doesn’t have the “wow” factor of Muthaship, and definitely won’t fit on a shirt as well – so don’t get any ideas High Tide, but the suck factor is pretty close.

A lot of “encouragement” out there today, which helped.  Guys pushing each other to keep going, run faster, etc.  Alf reminding me I wasn’t running backwards for instance, or me offering Sundancer advise on running headwear’s effects on aerodynamics.

Frasier says backward running slows him down and crab walk is kryptonite, but running hill repeats is wheelhouse.  I’m pretty sure I got passed at least twice, and feeling fortunate he hasn’t uploaded to Strava yet.  Turkey Leg wasn’t far behind him.  Like a 2-year old, Tiger Rag chose not to play with others but rather in the same general area doing whatever he chose, which seemed like alternating short and long loops.  Virtually everyone seemed to deviate from the planned route at some point.

I’ve still never seen him, but Chester apparently has a crush.  The neighborhood unfortunately has multiple points of ingress / egress, so when Stone Cold is inevitably chloroformed and thrown into the back of Chester’s trunk, we will likely never be able to find him.  However, SC is generally running with someone, and much as a cheetah goes after the slowest and weakest member of the pack (pax), Sundancer is rightfully concerned.

Several unofficial site FNGs – Curd, Swiper, Udder (I think)…maybe more.

No clue has the conch next week, but after today, I’m not sure it matters much.  Much like BRR, I enjoyed it today, gents – except for the running.  Same bat time next week.

• Kirk