#F3Swift – Feel the Road

#F3Swift – Feel the Road

The 12 cool kids at Swift launched into the cool Gloom at 0515 on Tuesday morning.  Here’s what went down.

The Thang:

• Warm-up 1.2mi with some high knees and butt kicks thrown in for good measure.
• Meandering through Ballantyne CC, complete 5 rounds of 2 minutes at “Hard” / I-pace (http://runsmartproject.com/calculator), 1 minute jog to the six, 1 minute Hard, 30 seconds jog to the six, 30 seconds Hard.
• Bonus “Hard” effort until you reach entrance of Ballantyne CC (another 1:40 to 2 min).
• Long recovery home of 1.6mi.
• Total miles between 5.8 and 6.9.

Moleskin:

• Longest swift ever!  With the Six running forward the whole time and others regrouping as necessary, minimum distance covered was 5.8 (bonus credit to Rock Thrill, Stump Hugger, and Frasier for taking longer way back to COT).  Others may have covered more miles because of regrouping.  YHC totaled about 6.8 and missed some due to stopping watch (for the PAX to get some longer recoveries sometimes…).
• Record PAX?  Not quite, 13 is the record, but 12 is pretty close.  Not sure if that’s because of pre-Race week for Joe Davis Run or because Brisket only shows up when the temperature dips below the Freezing Point.
• Time-based intervals give a great workout to each of the PAX.  While 5+ miles is a decent length for most PAX to run, we took over 60 minutes to get there.  If you have been comfortably finishing a 1 hour Bootcamp (not dead at the end), then you can do a Swift workout.  We could have cut the route shorter today, but the distance from leader to six was tight enough to push the envelope.
• I-pace / “Hard” / 2-mile race pace – here’s the video that explains how it maximizes “Aerobic Power” or VO2max.  You may have seen Gatorade or other commercials that show runners with a funny mask and tube on – they are trying to measure their VO2max. Video link – http://youtu.be/7dQEwJhHWXk.  Our workout today should have the PAX running at their MAX most of the time.  We’ll eventually be lengthening these intervals, but there will be longer recovery between each, for example 4 min hard / 3 min recovery, 5 min hard / 4 min recovery.
• Up, down, and around.  Get used to it.  That’s what the Joe Davis Run is looking like.  While the Ups and downs are not as extreme as the course today, you’ll need to be prepared to never feel like you are much in a rhythm with a lot of turns on the course.
• Kotters – Stump Hugger, Brisket, and Champagne were all back after a long Swift layoff.
• Cobains – YHC didn’t clearly communicate the cooldown route to Rock Thrill and Frasier (or they just wanted the extra credit).  YHC found it hard to enunciate between “hump” for speedhump in the Ballantyne CC and “hup” or something like it that was an attempt to not wake the neighbors at the end of each interval.  “Obstruction” became the word of choice so Honeybee and Soft Pretzel wouldn’t get confused again, but “obstruction” was found to take too much O2 from YHC’s VO2max – back to “hump” and “hup”.  Will “ho” work?
• Didn’t get the Matchy-matchy memo – apparently Wingman, HB, and SP all read the memo about Orangish / Red longsleeve top and black hat. A couple of times, they switched places to play tricks on the rest of the PAX.
• Dressed for 20F – Strange Brew said that -4C would have him don the long sleeves like this morning, but normally our ACTUAL 30F temps would only beg for shortsleeves.  Conversion factor?  Long Haul went the extra layer and put on the full highvis winter coat.  Can’t wait to see what Thursday morning may bring with 10F / -12C.  Wooly mammoth pants and furry eskimo hoods?
• If you are doing the Joe Davis Run, cruise in from here.  Do a normal workout up through Thursday, but make Friday a very light or rest day.  Save it for Saturday.
• Strava http://www.strava.com/activities/237475232 and Garmin http://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/666743157 results from today.