No one got toasted this morning when eight people showed up in 32° weather to see if I would hand out baggies filled with contraband at my VQ. But since no one brought snacks to satisfy the munchies, I felt the responsible thing to do would be to keep it all to myself.
So with the jokes out of the way, let’s get on to the sweaty part.
Started off with a nice mosey up to Cuthbertson Rd, then over to Mount Chiseled for a bit of the following:
Moseyed over to our starting point where we partnered up for a little bit of bucket work, which included:
Buckets Round 1
Partner 1 ran while Partner 2 did shoulder shrugs with a bucket, for three rounds.
Buckets Round 2
Partner 1 ran while Partner 2 did squats with a bucket, then switch with 5 Hand Slap Merkins for three rounds.
Pain Stations
Since there were only eight of us, we were able to spread out and have one person at each Pain Station.
I got there at five to set up all the gear, and almost didn’t get done in time. With that, my respect and gratitude for all the people who Q much more often than me has exploded. Going forward I will try to help in that area more often.
According to Zinfandel we broke two miles, which I was hoping for. I heard a few complaints from folks on the buckets, which I was expecting, but as I was trying not to pass out myself, I found the will to ignore them. It was my intention to set up the Pain Stations a little better, but just ran out of time. All in all, it was a solid full body workout. Thankful for all the men who let me borrow gear and helped clean up afterwards.
Note, the storage locker is very much in need of some repair / reorganization / love. It basically fell apart when I opened it.
11 men gathered in the plush, velvety smooth parking lot of a local private school for the weekly edition of Hawks Nest/Hawk’s Nest/Hawks’ Nest. ‘Twas a bit chilly, but in a few months we’ll wish for these temps. I gave a nice disclaimer, aided by our local health care attorney, then we headed up the hill to one of Latin’s 37 fields for the warmup.
We did descending burpees (10,9,8,etc) throughout the workout. I’m thinking about making that a thing.
We did an exercise and running thing on the nice field. Then we went to the track for a quick 400. Puddin’ Pop demanded to know if that was really the only lap we were going to do before he committed to an effort level. That was followed by a partner thing where Partner 1 did People’s Chair while Partner B ran backwards up the hill. I don’t think I’ve seen that sweet track statue up near the tennis courts before – modeled after Hannibal in his glory days, no doubt. We found our way through the labyrinth to the driveway hill where we did a Triple Nickel. Then yogged back to the launch, interrupted by a Braveheart-style clashing of the tribes from Fast Twitch and Hawks Nest. It was majestic. Haze clearly didn’t have enough workout planned and had to make something up to fill the last few minutes.
A couple of other tidbits from the morning:
– Morningwood is an actual street in Charlotte. Fault Line lives nearby.
– We had a strong, subtle TWSS this morning when Puddin’ Pop said, “Do we have to go all the way every time?” Classy
self-a·ware·ness (noun) conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires.
YHC generally steps up to lead only when confident of the task at hand – Q’ing Watchtower is not exactly in my comfort zone. Thank you to Doughboy and Fuse Box (injury prevented my Chiseled Q) for offering up the opportunity to lead – and thanks to Deadwood and Zinfandel for checking in on me leading up to the event. Rudy offered up a weinke that was much better than mine so I had a reasonable plan in place. But what about the counting…?
5:30 DiCCS given. Mosey on over to the Town Hall parking lot.
Warm-up:
~20 SSH, ~10 IW, ~10 Potato Pickers, ~20 Merkins, Calf Stretch. Exact counts unknown as my cadence turned out to be terrible (given a 3/10 by the Syrian judge). A handful of stragglers showed up at this point, giving us a total of 18 PAX for the morning.
The Thang:
Moleskin:
Not sure what was said and by whom as I was too concerned about my heart attempting to escape my chest cavity.
Announcements:
Seven men ignored the Fart Sack and convened Base Camp bright and early.
COP – IW, SSH, LSS, Merkin, Superman, Standing American Hammer (all x10)
Mosey to the track to do the 4 corners of paradise. The called exercise at each of the 4 corners is as follows – Merkin x10, LSS x 10, Drydock x 10 and Lunge walk x 10.
Mosey to the foot of the steps and partner up for the wheelbarrow climb. Parter 1 wheelbarrow crawls up the first two landings then switch with partner 2 for the next two landings. Repeat a second time.
People’s chair with air presses.
Wheel of Merkin x 10 at each position, run to front of school for 10 step ups. Wheel of Merkin x 5 (each position) run to front of school for 10 dips.
Mosey to rock pile – Grab a rock – curls, overhead press and triceps (x10). Run to the bleachers at the bottom and back for 1 more round.
5 minutes of Mary
Great to see the guys out there today. Everyone pushed hard.
The gloom arrived an hour earlier this Monday thanks to the bi-yearly
movement of time. Hannibal, Thunder Road, Smash, Marge, Bugeater,
Clover, and Boss Hog were treated to the best dang Irish workout the
world’s ever seen.
The post started with a slow Irish jig to get the blood pumping quickly
followed with a run to the end of the rainbow–unfortunately the only
gold to be had were wet hands and dirty mouths from kissin the blarney
stone.
Next, the pax followed Leprechaun to lift up their beer glasses while
they got comfy in their pub chairs. Many beers were lifted this morning
as the pax paid their respects to their Irish themed beer mile.
The pax were led into a game of Squat Potato and exercised the four
leaves of the clover with some St. Patrick’s, Bono Bicycles, Bog
Jumpers, and LBCs–Leprechaun Baby Crunches) and completed their lucky
clover with a double dose of beer burpees.
The pax climbed the sliabh to finish out their morning whiskey swig with
some snake chasers, Irish shillelaghs, Irish twins, and topped off the
morning with some Riverdance.
Swift will launch from the Vine Restaurant at 0515 on Tuesday. As this is Race Week (Palmetto 200 starts Friday), we’ll be doing some intervals to settle us in. Even if you’re not preparing for the race, it will be a good workout combining some Threshold Pace and Strides.
The Thang:
SYITG,
Bratwurst
Ignition- aka Hollywood’s insane asylum. 4 mile minimum…let’s just go ahead and say it now, a 4 mile Q won’t get you invited back! 12 Pax took a guided, meandering tour of new Lawson to get a jump start on their work week and hopefully meet Hollywood’s lofty expectations.
5:15-DiCCS done. We placed our lives (and my ankles) in Tupperware’s black bean and guacamole stained hands and followed him down the treacherous grassy hill, across a raging river, and through the woods to reach our launch point for the day’s festivities.
Warm-up:
Way too fast a mosey Leisurely jog to pool circle up. SSH/Calf Stretches (for me)/10 Merkins/Enough
The Thang:
YHC ran into Transporter yesterday. Told him I was on Q at Ignition and was trying to figure out some good spots in new Lawson. He obliged with introducing me to a portion of his “Heat Run” that follows a hilly trail through the new side. As it turns out, the 1/2 man 1/2 machine Transporter actually chooses runs based upon how much they make him sweat. He said “this one is a good one.” On my scale 1-10, it scored a perfect 10, Full Dehydration. Kudos for that, Sean!!!
We left pool area in pursuit of the trail and jogged a half or mile or so to the road that connects both entrances. At the mailboxes there she was- Transporter’s Trail. We hit it at a high rate of speed. What a terrific miserable little .5 mile treat! We ran it the first time with no exercises to interrupt the fun. Then, 5 burpees later we ran back the way we came. At each bridge, do 5 burpees. As it turns out, Transporter Trail has more bridges than Pittsburgh (look it up). 40 or so burpees and ridiculous hill climbs later, we made it out the other side to where we began.
Jog back the way we came for a little backwards run. YHC remembered a cul-de-sac we’d run in the past. Initially, I gave into my lazy nature and called for what was “coined” a Dime. Basically, a half-a$$ version of a Triple Nickel. 10 squats at the top 5 burpees at the bottom…twice. Bottlecap didn’t like it, so we went ahead and made it a full-blown Triple.
Head back to pool area. 5 Squats at each light pole. Arrived back at pool for an Ignition first and last…an Abs station. 20LBCs/10 pistols each/20 Hammers. At this point, Hollywood began his interpretive dance known as the Frack. Where Frack doesn’t stretch, Hollywood doesn’t ab. It seemed like he was ready to run off and leave us, so I had to come up with a quick fix.
.5 mile back to where we launched. At each of the 50 light poles, 5 jump squats…oh yeah, and 5 burpees to get us started. We did Jump squats on the way down, merkins on the way back with burpees at each end. Final trip back towards launch we did plank jacks (one each leg) at each light. 1.5 bonus miles and heaven only knows how many squats, merkins, and plank jacks.
Back through the woods, across the raging river, and up the treacherous grassy hill and on to the safety of paved surface. At this point, YHC had a dilemma- do we join Flash with 3 minutes left or smile and run right through the middle of the Irish jig they were all doing? We joined in…best guess was we were doing hand release merkins. One lap in. I was able to wrangle most of the Igniters for a final suicide. 6:15 done. Between 4.8 and 5.25 miles covered. Hollywood still not pleased about the abs. It’s possible I’ll never lead Ignition again.
Moleskin:
Ignition guys (minus Wolverine and Hollywood) seemed tired at the end of the workout. As my heart was still pounding in my ears, I thought I heard a voice that sounded like an amalgamation of Johnny Depp’s pirate, Steve Irwin’s Crikey, and a dash of Colin Farrell. I also saw a man handing out coins of some sort (we didn’t get to keep them). Posse yet again pulled out all the stops and put on quite the celebratory Q. From the chatter on GroupMe, that accent(s) carried on for 45 minutes. Next Q School Posse’s committed to introducing us to the finer points of cadence counting while out of breath and in an accent! Flash was the rainbow and its backblast will undoubtedly be a Pot of Gold. Can’t wait to read it, Posse!
The accent from the guy on the Lucky Charm’s box took us out.
Announcements:
Lattini (sic?) 8k coming up soon. Damascus on Q. See Posse and News Channels for more details
Dash For Down. See Rubbermaid
JDRF Walk. See Easy Button
21 Pax rolled into the Gloom at Carmel Road Park to see what YHC had in store to celebrate St Patty’s Day. Here’s what we did:
The Thang:
Moleskin:
Large group of PAX out this morning. Aquafresh social media marketing campaign is really working. Coldcuts surprised YHC when he asked if we’d be doing a Murph this morning. YHC was happy not to disappoint. Check Point (respect), Cold Cuts and Uncle Phil set the pace. Film Festival was unusually quiet. As a matter of fact there was not much mumble chatter at all. I guess that is the benefit of a WIB workout. You vs you. Everyone busy in their own personal pain cave. Thanks for the opportunity to lead. Always a pleasure at DMZ.
One Eye
‘Marge’ showed excellent leadership in volunteering me for the Q on delightful ‘dry’ Thursday AM- one problem…I wasn’t in the know – I was not on the email that notified me of my Q responsibility. Thanks to Gummy for watching my “six” and a light travel week gave me the opportunity to lead a great group of guys at one of my favorite workout spots. The Hydra clan missed some of the old timers and regular attendees like Hopper, Hops, Spackler, and Purple Haze. Cottonmouth came out to support a friend even though he had been taking care of sick family all week.
This was a rusty Q for this old guy… like my short game, the exercise intro and cadence is the first to go and was immediately targeted by the PAX as woefully deficient. I do think, despite my amateur Q status the Pax got their money’s worth and burned enough calories to warrant a few beers for the big time ACC basketball matchups to be played that evening. I was in my a zone… But there was plenty of mumble chatter to go around during the work out and Gummy provided plenty of hazards/warnings and clarifications to the workout regiment while running to and from Harris Teeter. Pudding Pop always provides irritable bowel symptoms and smells to spice things up…Jet Fuel (fellow Tar Heel) and I got to discuss our basketball hopes for the evening. Thanks Marge and my email is bcrottsaia@gmail.com for the next Q!!! 🙂
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