Swift Back-Blast: Chinese Fire Drill Intervals

Swift Back-Blast: Chinese Fire Drill Intervals

Summary

22 men still chose to run a few miles at Swift today, despite their fearless leader Bratwurst being DR, MIA, on a work boondoggle, starting up a new running workout, on Vacation (who knows). YHC thought surely that Bagpipe would have record numbers factoring in my main man Heartbreaker on Q, Brat’s absence, and YHC notorious Preblast. It didn’t happen and SWIFT PAX outnumbered Bagpipe 22 – 20. #scoreboard #notacompetition #yesitsacompetition  Here’s what we did, or didn’t do:

The THANG (yesterday’s preblast)

“Bratwurst is out… Tolkien is in, but don’t worry…  the fabled Fortune Cookie Run won’t be back. Instead we’re running a Chinese Fire Drill. Mongol style!

OPTION #1: 0500 – 0515:   warm up the legs and core by pulling each other in rickshaws for 15 minutes, sneak in a little Tai Chi to get the mind right. Shots of ginseng to chase down a GU packet right before the main event.

0515-0615:    In drive mode (coasting, no pressure on the gas) one PAX starts driving Tolkien’s truck around the bull ring with the rest of the Pax in the cab or in the bed.  The person in the back of the bed, hops out of the truck, runs around the truck without getting hit, enters the driverside door, pushes the driver in, and the PAX move towards the back of the truck.  Repeato until all PAX have cycled through.  That’s round 1.  Round 2, add 5mph to the truck speed and repeat until 0615 or until there is a casualty. Remember the disclaimer that is given at the start that you exercise at your own risk.

or….

OPTION #2: We could go with the Bratwurst plan, so set your watches accordingly:

• 3min HARD (2mi race pace) followed by 2min recovery
• 4minHARD (2mi race pace) followed by 3min recovery
• 3min HARD (2mi race pace) followed by 2min recovery
• 4minHARD (2mi race pace) followed by 3min recovery
•  on and on and on until 0615

PACE Groups:

(R) ICH Pace – if you can afford a fancy watch that will override your heart rate to something ridiculously low and pump your VO2 MAX into the 60s fictitiously. Bunker leads pace group.

(I) NJURY Pace – if you have sprained an ankle for good or bad reasons in the last year, you have a free pass to this group. Fire Hazard, Tolkien and Tuck are the pacers…. in arrow formation, like Nike’s Breaking 2hr marathon pacers did… only 2hrs slower.

(P) URGE Pace – follow Frasier, Citgo, Fahvra, and whoever else has no body fat who will be running at lightning speed, and purge the food they ate four days ago in the woods somewhere to stay lean and mean.

NAKED MOLESKINE

Surprisingly, everyone chose Bratwurst’s option #2, despite some consideration by Enron to do #1 per Slack comments. During the workout, Gumbo nearly changed his mind as well but resisted asking for the Chinese Firedrill. MAn it would have been interesting to attempt this! Anyway, After considering a multitude of venues for the workout, and realizing that after 100+ SWIFT workouts there wasn’t any new ground to discover, the Bull Ring was chosen to allow for more measured pacing and regrouping.  Tagalong was curious at Stonehenge what SWIFT was all about, and was true to his word, came out and crushed it. His brother-in-law Thin Mint chose not to make it a family affair and was MIA after completing 50k Trail Ultra this weekend, which earned him a free pass… until Haggis showed up to run (also ran the same trail ultra), which immediately revoked TM’s hall pass for missing.  Congrats to the both of you crazy fools.  Cheddar rolled up with seconds to go, and started jingling away with his keyset. No word whether he ran the Smoky Mountain Relay with some keys.  Way to go brother in the F3 Expansion! #HIM  Hairball, Bunker, and YHC tried to take advantage of Frasier’s calf injury which was sustained Saturday at Stonehenge after some idiot Q had the PAX backwards-run up the ramps AND the flats of the Premier 5 story parking deck.  All three were looking to get back in pre-marathon form and today looked promising, covering 7+ miles (not including the pre-run).  Anne Springs Greenway Trail BFF’s Enron and One-Niner showed they can run fast on pavement and trails.  Wild Turkey battled through lingering effects of a sprained ankle incurred from paying zero attention to a hole on a Monday 10 miler.  Everyone else put in solid work it seems per Strava Labs FlyBy.  YHC was too busy running (P)urge Pace and not (Injury Pace at the end, spilling merlot from an ill advised Gu packet.

Kudos to Brat for leading this workout week in and week out.  It’s tough figuring out what to do on a speed day, without just running senselessly fast to get injured.  It’s also tough to synchronize watches, keep the group together, and to B-skip properly, although it comes naturally to Tiger Rag. So thanks for sharing your knowledge, intelligence, and leadership with the SWIFT crew. You can have your Tuesday workout back.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Yesterday, the F3 Foundation approved the grant request and endorsed the F3 Speed-For-Need Charitable Initiative of pushing kids with disabilities in fast specialized racing chairs in local races in the Charlotte area.  The initiative is being led by Nash (Metro) and JRR Tolkien (SOB), and F3-SFN will be partnering with a national racing chair pushing organization, Ainsley’s Angels of America.  The official preblast and marketing launch will be coming in a few days but in the interim, please spend a few minutes to watch the video in the link here, and read a little bit about the initiative in the top section of the link:   F3 Speed For Need Pre-Preblast (watch video) We would love to have your involvement in some way, shape, or form so be thinking about what that is, or go find a cause you feel strongly about and get the PAX on board with that.
• Join your fellow SOB / A51 / Indian Land brothers in the Charlotte Craft Course on Saturday May 20th from 1200-1530 starting at NoDa Brewing Co. Basically the point is to run to as many breweries as possible, get blasted, try not to puke (in the bar at least), and try to also not get hit by a car or sprain an ankle. Have your M pick you up if you’re not already in the doghouse for this, or stay at Tuck’s House since he has plenty of room, even with a hoard of 2.0s….. contact Tuck for details or check Slack. You can register on : CLT Craft Run Signup
• Bagpipe Q’s are covered as of email chain, Savage Race is Saturday so be there with 50+ PAX, Tuck wants to remind you of something on March 20th 2018, and the F3 New Guy Workout is Wednesday 5/24/17 so EH someone and be there.

“They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our F3DOM!”  ~ @JRRTolkienF3