Follow directions to save your shirt

Follow directions to save your shirt

20 PAX gathered at the Vine parking lot on Tuesday morning to see if the Site Q would actually show to the workout in June 2017.  Turns out he did show, so let’s head out for an Interval-pace workout with the 21 PAX in tow.

The THANG:

• 0500 – many PAX in the parking area eager to run, so this was a faster 1.3mi warm-up loop than normal. We got back to a parking lot full of dudes looking for an excuse to run.
• 0515 – Short disclaimer then gave 2 options on the warm-up – 1.0mile via the Hotel or 1.3mi via the Pond to meet up at the Metlife building on Ballantyne Commons.  PAX evenly split to choosing their own adventure.
• 0526 – already a minute late due to deciding to shed a shirt or not, let’s do some warm-up exercises down towards N. Community House with heels, toes, high knees, and butt kicks.  Gotta make up some time, so that’s it!
• 0531 – dispense the workout directions of run at Interval Pace (hard effort, follow 5K race pace effort if don’t have pace on your watch) for 4 minutes, 3 minute jog recovery to regroup.  Repeato for 5 sets.  Route is up N. Community House to Endhaven, back down to Ballantyne Commons, repeat loop.  Finish last one where we started at 0526.  Don’t cross loop until checking for traffic both ways.
• 0606 – if everything goes right, we’ll head back to COT 1.0mile away by 9 minutes

Moleskin:

• Check this Pre-blast for the purpose of these Interval-pace / VO2Max intervals.
• It’s good to be back to be pushed by these PAX.  While YHC has been working out doing speedwork for the last month (at least for the most part), the push of a big group of PAX will keep you on your toes.  There’s usually someone faster to chase, there are the PAX that you normally run beside, and there are the PAX that are hungry to keep up and pass you.  All push you in different ways when you start suffering because you started too fast, the air is too thick, you have a respiratory infection, your muscles ache from previous workouts, or whatever other excuse is rattling around in your head.  In the end, it’s you vs. you on that workout and you’ll either be pleased or disappointed, not necessarily by the results when you look back at your split times or how you compared to where you fell in line of the PAX like normal, as much as your thoughts that will linger from you overcoming them or succumbing to them during the workout.
• Regrouping worked great AFTER the first interval debacle recovery where the PAX scattered to all sides and directions of N. Community House.  On the recovery, since the point is to regroup the PAX, we should always try to stay on the route (which was all the way to Endhaven) because it’s difficult to communicate with traffic and separation if there is an alternative.  What YHC tried to communicate is that during the Work Interval, if you see the PAX leaders passing in the opposite direction on the other side of the loop (i.e. they already turned around), then you check traffic and cross over.  This is to try to keep the PAX as close together as possible.  However, if everyone scatters, not only does it confuse vehicles, PAX, and Udder’s M, but it’s harder to get regrouped again and call out the start of the next interval. On the Recovery Interval, find the Six and recover back while the Six keeps going in the same direction.
• We ended in a different location than we started in an attempt to not have the Cooldown back to COT as rushed.  This was perhaps a little more ambitious due to the distance we were away from that back corner behind the Metlife building, for YHC barely ran out the last 4 minutes to arrive just in time, but fortunately we made it before the Ballantyne Corporate Park maintenance staff rode off with the shirts we had left scattered on the ground at the corner.  Apparently, we’ll need to either hide shirts or just leave them at the Vine next time.  Probably a good thing the maintenance staff is on the ball to keep the place looking nice, but several shirts almost ended up at Goodwill or the dumpster if YHC hadn’t rescue them from the garbage bag in the staff’s cart.
• Great to meet some of the PAX like Woodson and Erector that have started showing up while YHC was out.  HoneyBee even made the longhaul from the northern lake to get some speedwork in. And there was even a Mr. Bean sighting!
• The timeliness of this Backblast is sponsored by TigerRag.
• Strava results all available at http://labs.strava.com/flyby/viewer/#1023592340?c=7zzzzzzz&z=4&t=0 .  With 14 of the 21 PAX’s workouts synced to Strava (notables like Frasier don’t post results since they train in secret), it makes for a great opportunity to leave individual comments for others and see how your time/speed splits are tracking versus your targets.
• Special thanks again to the substi-Qs Frasier, JRRTolkien, HoneyBee, WildTurkey, and ThinMint, for not only putting their own spins on workouts, but for getting out a BackBlast on time!