Author Archive Turkey Leg

Area 51 Speed Showdown

The time has come for us to finally put to rest who really brings the most speed to the table in Area 51: Fast Twitch or Bagpipe (others can participate as well, see below for details).   Our Speed Showdown is set for Tuesday, August 27, at JM Robinson Middle SchoolUPDATED: Additional event by popular demand: 4×100 relay.

Logistics

Date: Tuesday, August 27, rain or shine

Time: 0515 – 0600

Location: JM Robinson Middle School Track

Address: 5925 Ballantyne Commons Parkway

Note: The track is west of the school and the athletic fields.  There is a small parking lot in front of the athletic fields where you should park.   If the lot is full when you arrive, you can park at the school and there is a path from the school to the fields, but please note it is about a 5 minute walk (potentially 7 minutes for SOBs – “Sons of Ballantyne”).

Schedule:

1)      0515: Warm-up lap and stretching (Joker)

2)      0525: Mile Race Heat #1:  Thoroughbreds (For all participants who typically run a mile in <7:30)   (Turkey Leg coordinating)

3)      0535: Mile Race Heat #2:  Mustangs  (For all participants who typically run a mile in >7:30, Haggis coordinating)

4)      0545: 4×400 Relay: Fastest 4 Fast Twitchers vs. Fastest 4 SOBs (Haze coordinating)

5)      0555: NEW: 4×100 Relay: Fast Twitch vs. SOBs – must be different runners than 4×400

6)      0600+: Cool-down, Awards Presentation and COT

 

Awards, Rules, and Important Notes:

  • Four Awards are up for grabs:
    1. Fastest Workout – Mile.   Will be determined by averaging the times of all the Bagpipe racers and all of the Fast Twitch racers across both heats combined.
    2. Fastest Workout – 4×400 Relay.  Will be determined by who crosses the finish line first.
    3. Fastest Workout – 4×100 Relay.  Will be determined by who crosses the finish line first
    4. Fastest Man Overall.  Will be determined by the fastest overall speed in the mile.
  • On the Mile heats, the race coordinator (or designee) will be calling out official times at the finish.  Please remember your time and provide it afterword on the paper or device to be provided on site – honor system is in force here.
  • While this is a competition, it is also meant to be fun.   There will be some speed demons out there, but this is a great opportunity for everyone to show how they’ve improved and set new personal records.
  • Only those who have previously participated in either Fast Twitch or Bagpipe are eligible to participate as part of those teams (e.g. no ringers).  Those who have not participated in those workouts can still run, but will be grouped into an “Other” team.
  • This is a speed showdown, not a standard F3 bootcamp workout, so do not expect to get a full 45 minutes of working out on Tuesday morning.
  • Regular Bagpipe and Fast Twitch workouts will be closed on Tuesday 8/27 for this event

What to bring:

  • Headlamp strongly recommended
  • Smokeboots
  • Water
  • Speed: everything you’ve got

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to:

Turkey Leg, scott_mastbrook@yahoo.com, 214.529.4284  or

Haggis, George@stonemanrocks.com

Looking forward to seeing you out there on Tuesday!

Dog Days

bigdog

9 pax jumped out this morning to enjoy a solid beatdown in the dog days of summer at Area51

The Thang:

TL on QIC:

Warmup jog around field, followed by COP:

  • 20 SSH
  • 10 burpees on your own
  • 20 IW
  • 9 burpees on your own
  • 20 Slow squats
  • 8 burpees on your own
  • 20 LBCs
  • 7 burpees on your own
  • 20 mountain climbers
  • 6 burpees on your own

jailbreak to trail in the woods

  • 3 laps on trail; exercise between laps: 20 jump-ups, 30 dips, 20 merkins
  • Bear crawl out back up to path
  • 10 burpees on your own
  • Plank-o-rama

Mosey to front of school

  • Peoples chair 1 min x 2
  • 20 incline + 20 decline merkins

Quick run over to rockpile along McKee, grab a rock for various exercises

Line up on field, full-out sprint to other side

Tag over to O’Tannenbaum on QIC:

  • Pull ups 2×10
  • Walk the wall (on hands 3x)
  • Kari Okie 3x
  • Jump squats 3 sets –15-10-5

Mosey to F3 Lighthouse park

  • Stump jumps 3 sets–12-10-8, with partner sit-ups in between 25-20-15
  • Mack Tar Jy (plank pus ups) 2×10
  • Mosey to field for “Mary”
  • Back scratcher x 15
  • LBC x 12
  • Dolly x 10
  • Flutter x 10

Back to parking lot for COT

Moleskin:

Gotta love these dog days of summer when you can cut the humidity with a knife.  Everyone looked like they had been dunked in a pool by the end of the workout, no doubt helped by YHC’s extra pinch of running thrown in to support #BRR training.

After all this rain and lack of maintenance, our trail run through the woods feels like it is turning into a trek through a dense Brazilian jungle.  In addition to getting clothes-lined by a several tree limbs, YHC seemed to clear out about a dozen spiderwebs with his head.  Not a good idea to be the front-runner out there in the woods these days.

Inverted wall-walking was a great change of pace and a real #crowdpleaser, despite a few skinned knees and shins (for YHC at least).

Great to see Hairy Dog out there today – haven’t seen him much all summer.  Despite almost throwing up a couple times he pushed it hard – nice job out there brother and hope to see you out again soon.  Alf was out in front for most of the stations today… looking forward to his maiden Q next week at the Matrix.

Tooth Fairy came out disguised as an FNG, and somehow ended up with the new Curious handle in COT.  YHC was probably a little too easy on supporting the rename – may need to revisit this one in the future.  Good to see you out there and looking forward to seeing you at some of the weekday morning workouts.

Good times by all out there – pushing it hard.  Thanks for letting me and O’Tannenbaum lead today.

Announcements:

  • Keep in mind other Saturday workouts options recently started, including Outland at Sun Valley, and Ascent (moderate intensity) at Olde Providence Elementary – plenty opportunity to EH other friends who have been hesitant in the past
  • Still spots available Sign-up for F3Dads trip to Camp Thunderbird

Run to the Hills

As the rain started to fall, 16 brave men came out for the early workout to give those legs a test on some of Rain Tree’s finest slopes.

The Thang:

Warmup in parking lot.  A couple laps with karaoke, etc, followed by brief COP:

  • 20x SSH
  • 20x IW
  • 21x SS

Tempo run out of the parking lot through Rain Tree to our favorite hill on Windbluff and then partner up for some hill repeats.  Note: Mapmyrun shows steep part of the hill is 10-11% grade

  • Partner 1 runs to bottom of hill, burpees, run back to top
  • Partner 2 stays at top and does an exercise
  • Flapjack

7 rounds completed:

  • 7 burpees at bottom; LBCs at top
  • 6 burpees at bottom; lunges at top
  • 5 burpees at bottom; dollies at top
  • 4 burpees at bottom; squats at top
  • 3 burpees at bottom; CDDs at top
  • 2 burpees at bottom; flutters at top
  • 1 burpee at bottom; 30 merkins at top: 10x diamond, 10x regular, 10x wide
  • Hill suicide races  (cancelled due to time constraint)

Run back through Rain Tree to South Charlotte Middle.

Total mileage: 3.2 miles (including warmup laps)

Moleskin:

  • YHC thoroughly enjoyed anniversary tex-mex dinner the prior evening and decided to give the pax a break with one of the shortest mileage Fast Twitch’s in a while – saving the pax from being subjected to an explosion of mexican merlot.  note to self: need to remember not to do that on the BRR.
  • Heard “I have 5:59 on my watch” after that last round, resulting in an unfortunate cancellation of the hill suicides, and a late return to base. Sorry about that – YHC will need to re-calibrate the timekeeping equipment (and move suicides up earlier in the plan).
  • The BRR crew is out in full force now, breaking in shoes and new equipment.  New smokebooks hill-tested?  check.
  • Mall Cop put in a good performance, even though admitting he held back to avoid injury and “save himself” for the BRR.  Good move. Of course expectations will be high for the BRR – looking forward to seeing some record time out there.
  • Lots of other strong performances out there today.  Impressed by Strange Brew – regularly in the mid/front of the pack today.  Fraiser and 49er kicking it into high gear on the run back to base (suspect the latter was daydreaming of his future BRR glory run the whole way).
  • Not really any stragglers today… seemed to mostly hold together – nice job!
  • With the departure of Sprague taking his gun show out west, I will be lining up a rotation of QICs for future Fast Twitch workouts.  Please ping me if interested.

Announcements:

  • New moderate workout has Started on Saturday “The Ascent”
  • F3 Dads Camp – plenty of space still available, but sign-up soon
  • HDHH at Vintner’s wine market Wednesday (location may change, check twitter)

Fast Twitch Preblast

#FastTwitch will launch Tuesday morning at 0515 from South Charlotte Middle.  The Area51 BRR team is in full training mode now, so be ready for some miles on the roads (hills) of Rain Tree.  Bring out your headlamp, flashers, vests, and any other gear you want to tryout for your night legs.

Of course all are welcome, even if you’re not training for BRR – I’m just off vacation and so this promises to be a good one focused on the hammies, glutes, and on the lungs (as always).

Out with 5, Back with 7

The Thang:  An early morning 6 mile run on Four Mile Creek and Lower McAlpine Creek greenways, roughly 8:00 pace out, and 7:30 pace in.

Moleskin:

Four men and a furry friend headed out for a six-mile run early this morning, ran into a gaggle of clipboarders and managed to return back with six men and a furry friend.  After a good warmup on the way out, a few of us picked up the pace on the way back in and were able to peal Flyboy and Rock Thrill away from the RFYL crew and pull them in for the COT.

The Shore – hope you’re getting better and we’re looking forward to seeing you out there again soon!

Announcements:

  • Pig-Pickin on Saturday.
  • Area 51 T-Shirts are in.  You can pick-up from Mall Cop at Kevlar and Compass afterward on Fri, The Rock and coffeetiria at Starbucks aftwards Sat morning, the Pig Pickin Family Pic Nic Sat afternoon, The Matrix on Mon, Fast Twitch on Tues, and Death Valley on Wed. Otherwise contact Mall Cop directly.

 

Catch Me If You Can

cheetah

17 Men of Fast Twitch headed out into the gloom for some early morning track and field…

The Thang:

Warm-up with moderate half mile around the track, mixing it up with some buttkickers, high-knees and karaoke.

4X timed interval runs on track: 4min run at tempo pace 80%, 1min walk.  Divided into three groups to keep pax with similar pace together.  Total distance for group one: 2.7mi

Mosey over to south end-zone for recovery and planks.

120s: goalpost-to-goalpost races.  Run with partner to north end, pain station with partner, sprint back together to south end, winner recovers, loser gets 5 burpees.

  • 20x squats
  • 30x lbcs
  • 10x merkins
  • 20x dollies
  • 20x hth
  • 25x smcs
  • 10x burpees  (final one, last 3 finishers get 10 burpees on return)

Jog back up to parking lot for COT

Total distance: 4.5mi

Moleskin:

Perfect weather this morning at a crisp 72 degrees without any precipitation.  Thankfully we had TR there to provide some air pollution to ensure none of us are too fresh.

Interval training helps build the speed and ultimately get faster.  Relatively short intervals today of 4 min gave most a chance to get a half mile for each interval.  Will be building up these toward an 8 min pace over next several weeks.

Had some questions on the tempo pace we ran for the intervals and wanted to provide a little more explanation…   Hat tip to Bratwurst here who provides a great description: “T-pace / Tempo / Threshold / 15K Pace – some research calls this Lactate Threshold (LT) pace, or a hard pace that you could run for a race of up to 60 minutes.  For workouts, it is a pace that should be “hard” but controlled breathing (not breathless) and a pace slightly below at which your body can still process all of the Lactic Acid buildup so you do not get sore muscles during the workout.

To get your target pace, you can go here: http://www.runbayou.com/jackd.htm, enter a recent race result (or timed pace from our 1-mile runs) and it will provide your T-pace for various run distances.  Aim for the right pace during the runs.. training faster than this risks injury.  Training slower doesn’t risk injury but doesn’t advance your speed either.

Great effort out there by all the groups, especially those out front 49er, Joker, TR, and Sprague.  I had trouble keeping pace with you guys today (too much beer over the 4th?).

Must have been more humid today than expected –  several “weight vests” (soaked shirts) seemed to fly off near the end to lighten the load.   Saw some of our female clipboarder friends turn their heads, though not sure if it was toward us or away from us at that point.  I’m sure they all appreciated the expose from the Men of Fast Twitch.

Limited chatter today due to the heavy breathing being expressed by all, but was good to keep together in groups for some 2nd F where possible.  Track and Field two weeks in a row, so expect some more off-campus tours in the near future.   Welcome FNGs to Fast Twitch – we hope to see you back!

Announcements:

  • F3 Charlotte South Pig Pickin’ 2013 Saturday 7/13 Will have a pig pickin, DJ, and kickball/cornhole competition. Olde Providence Baseball Fields July 13, 2013, 5-9 PM. $10 per grown up, $3 per child. No need to RSVP at this stage, just show up… questions send message/head count to Bugeater: jasonehilliard@gmail.com.

 

Fast Twitch Preblast

runningman

Fast Twitch Launching at 5:15am at South Charlotte Middle.  Mostly track and field work this week, working on interval runs to build up speed, with a little Haze-inspired competition just for fun.  Don’t forget your headlamp.  See you in the gloom!

 

 

Six Pack for the Turn

Six + a furry 4.0 joined together for a nice early morning jog in finally some crisp morning air.  3 + the furry 4.0 headed out at 5:15 for ~6 miles tempo pace, while 3 headed out at 5:30 for ~4 miles and change.   Second time out for Musket (furry 4.0) who did a great job of clearing the path of the numerous frogs and critters that seem to be out in full force.    Road Rash put in a good pace out in front and despite taking a pitstop for a “gutbomb” still managed to finish strong.  The second group apparently got caught in the gaggle of clipboarders and then took a slight detour to explore some of the fine suburban landscape outside the greenway.    Glad to continue seeing metro representation out there with Orlando setting a steady pace with the second group.   Welcome to Moses FNG – 3 claps for hitting a running workout first time out and putting up a strong pace – now we just need to get him out to Fast Twitch for a real indoctrination. 

Enjoyed seeing everyone out there today! 

Announcements:

  • Double-Down opportunity for BRR runners this evening at 19:30 (or 7:30pm):   Evening Six:   An evening 5-7 mile route using the hills in Governors Square, Mountain Brook, Sharon View to Old Providence launching from Ben and Jerry’s on Fairview at 19:30.  (Barracuda will Q @F3Barracuda)
  • 2nd F summer event July 13th: Summer Pig Pickin’ 2013 including friendly cornhole and kickball tournaments;  please RSVP or reach out to Bugeater if you haven’t received an evite. 
  • Deadline approaching to order your Area 51 shirt – order closes on Saturday 6.22:  http://f3.mudgear.com/NC–CLT-South-Area-51_c_37.html

 

Haggis Caught Mallcopping

Two for Tuesday:

An impromptu double-down workout inspired by a delirious 49er after slipping into a runners high on the last leg of this morning’s Fast Twitch rodeo.

The Thang:

Group of four fellow BRR runners gathered off at the 4-Mile Creek Greenway (current site of Devils Turn) for a nice evening fellowship run to top off this mornings’ fun.   Relatively easy run of about 4.5 miles – no hills, no sprints, no surprises.  Stepped up the pace a bit at the end and beat the lightning by about 5 minutes.

Moleskin:

No, “Mall-copping” is not some kind of disease (though it does seem to be spreading) – this is F3 Lingo for the act of fartsacking after talking big game.

It was supposed to be 5 runners today, but somehow we missed Haggis.  For those who missed the banter on the other back-blasts, Haggis laid out a strong challenge with “I just hope the Fast Twitch fellows are taking this as seriously as the Sons of Ballantyne.  Do they even care about this epic battle…?”   After stepping it up a notch and receiving an invitation for today’s double-down, Haggis threw out the rock-hard commit of “It’s on, pal”.

So we all waited at 5:45… 5:50… 5:55… but no Haggis?  Looks like he Mallcopped-out on this one.   Apparently he didn’t even have the stones to make it out for a friendly fellowship run.  Just giving you a hard time… we all love you Haggis – and we’ll get this epic battle underway next time.  Live to fight another day lad.

We were actually a little worried as we didn’t even see him at the end – we all pray that he is safe and not stuck under a Balarney Stone somewhere in Waxhaw.

Announcements:

  • Friends don’t let friends Mallcop-out – at least not without a good beatdown in the backblast
  • HDHH Wednesday Vinter’s Wine Market in the Arboretum

Cheers!

 

Wranglers and Runners

16 courageous wranglers showed up for an early morning three-legged rodeo, kicking off from the gloom at South Charlotte Middle.

The Thang:

Lift off at 5:15 with lap around the parking lot mixing it up with some sprinting, high knees, butt kicks, and a round of burpees x 10. Set off on 3-leg rodeo:

Leg 1: Cowboy Run through Rain Tree

Corral down at end of parking lot to organize for the Cowboy run.  As opposed to an Indian run, with a Cowboy run YHC stays out in front to lead the pax down the dark neighborhood streets while varying the pace to keep it interesting.  What started out as a nicely organized 2-line cowboy run gradually spread apart into a thundering herd of PAX huffing, puffing, sweating and sprinting through the dark hilly streets of Rain Tree like the pack of thoroughbreds on the backstretch of Churchill Downs.

Corral for merkins at Raintree: 20 merkins + plank-o-rama

Cowboy run continues down Windbluff to Shallowood

Corral for burpee break: 10 burpees + plank-o-rama

Cowboy run finishes up to Providence Rd, covering 1.6 miles in total.

Leg 2: Hill from Hell

Sprint down Providence toward High Ridge, turnaround and sprint back up for total of 1 mile.  (1/2 mile down, 1/2 mile back up).  Meet at Church at top for round of 50 squats.

Leg 3: Tour de Arboretum

Run back down Windbluff, cut into woods, winding around pond and park, up the hill into the back lots of the Arboretum, stopping for some incline merkins at top.  Window shopping tour all the way down to the ABC store in the back.  Plank-o-rama. Grab some hill, sprint up for burpees x 10, back down for squats x 20.   YHC realizes we’ve barely got time to get back to the stables by 6am so… jailbreak down 51 back to the South Charlotte Middle.

Total Distance of all 3 legs: 4.2 – 4.4 miles depending on how far you went down Providence Road.

Circle up for Mary:  Flutter Kicks x 20, LBCs x 21.

Moleskin:

Great mix of runners out there today from thoroughbreds to clydesdales.   We had a bit more distance today than usual, but kept it interesting by mixing in the recovery breaks to allow the clydesdales to stay with the pack while keeping the thoroughbreds honest with a little extra downpainment as a reward for being out in front.   Mixing it up with the shorter sprints, moderate runs across varied terrain and “recovery burpees” helps to stretch the lungs and build cardiovascular endurance.

Not too much chatter from the pax amid all the winded huffing, though I could swear I heard some snorting and neighing in the middle of the herd on the Cowboy Run. Joker, 49er and Road Rash took the hill by storm churning out a breakneck pace both down and up #speeddemons. Brew busted out the red cape at the end and I swore he was ready to fly away like superman after COT.

Despite the option to do rounds of squats/merkins instead of the hill, all pax opted to run the Hill from Hell, and kept up a solid pace to boot.  Really enjoyed leading the group today who all put in a tremendous effort – thanks for coming out!

Announcements:

  • Congrats to Spackler on his new 2.0 arrival last night.  (though we suspect M.Spackler did most of the work) – great job on posting this morning!
  • New Wednesday workout ‘Anvil’ starts tomorrow at the Rock (Calvary Church) with Younglove and Baracus on Q.  Death Valley and The Maul continuing as usual.
  • Double-down opportunity today being led by 49er – considering an evening run after work… look for details in the comments below.