Mountain Goats BB_03.23.18

Mountain Goats BB_03.23.18

With our lead goat Slim Fast indisposed, a call was made to the Q bullpen to ride herd on our beloved goats on this not-quite spring morning.  The bullpen must have been pretty sparse as YHC got the call.  Slim Fast claims to have been running on a 4-man team in the Palmetto Relay.  That would mean each team member would run in the vicinity of 50 miles (or nearly 2 marathons) in about 32 or so hours.  Obviously that’s crazy; no one would voluntarily do that.  Maybe if a Russian infantry division was chasing them… or IRS agents.  But nobody would do that ‘for fun’.  Would they?   Do you know Slim Fast?

Proper disclaimer given, at 0515 the herd set off on a warm up run down Wood Fox to the Stop sign at Rounding Run and back. Regathering on Strawberry the normal dynamic stretching regimen was executed:  walking on toes straight, in and out, walking on heels straight, in and out, honey-bee skips, high knees and butt kickers.

The THANG

Gathering on the speed bump at the base of Mount Strawberry the devilishly simple Weinke was revealed:  30-30-30-1’s.  I think the proper cycle is 30-30-1’s but with our leader jogging lazily on flat/mild downhill legs, we were going to go all-out with uphill intervals.  Thirty seconds up Mount Strawberry at I-pace, recover down to the start line.  When everyone was back, immediately do another 30 seconds uphill at I-pace and recover back down.  I presume you know where this is going at this point.  One more cycle of 30 seconds and then the glorious 1 minute interval uphill at I-pace and recover back down.  That constitutes one complete cycle.  Two more complete cycles were finished.  A nice cool down run down and back up Strawberry followed by stretching back at SMMS.  Done.

MOLESKIN

Great effort by everyone today; especially Chin Music who appeared to be the pacesetter throughout.  Great to see Daisy and Jello out hoofing around with us.  The core MG were out in force: The Mouth teamed up with Sensei, the Bobbsey Twins Lois and Tweetsie;  Retread, Pele and Gullah were strong as ever.  And Costanza has now run MG enough times that he is auto-commit to the BRR this fall.  Congrats Costanza!

The goal with these intervals is push hard and then get back to about the same spot on each iteration.  It gets continually more difficult after each successive iteration.  The PAX engaged in some #mumblechatter because Q had all the running uphill and recovering downhill whereas Slim Fast usually reverses it towards the end.  Other #mumblechatter was heard about ‘only’ having a couple of 10-counts.  Whatever; no slacking off just because we have a substitute today.  Embrace the Suck.  Q’s Garmin logged 4.2 mile with no pre-run.

I appreciate the opportunity to lead these awesome men.  They never fail to encourage me and make me laugh no matter how miserable/tough the conditions or the running.