There’s GOLD in them thar Hills!

There’s GOLD in them thar Hills!

9 PAX arose on Tuesday with a simple #F3Swift Preblast (if they even found it on Twitter), but still posted anyway for what was to come over the next hour.

The THANG:

• 0500 – Prerun with Bunker, WildTurkey, and Bratwurst.  Even though it’s the smallest turnout in a while, the miles still counted.  Traditional route.
• 0515 – Gather rest of the PAX and head towards the Ballantyne Country Club East via the hotel parking lot and Ballantyne Commons Dr.  Pass just through 1mi mosey and start warmup exercises on the “Snoopy” hill (there is a Christmas display in a yard along the hill that involves Peanut characters.
• 0530 – Finish mosey to the bottom of the “Bean” section of the hill (well at least it was near the hill that Bean knows up and close).  Start some rounds of 30-30-1 effort.
  • Just hills – 30 second R-pace effort (1 mile race pace) up the hill, recover down.  30 second R-pace effort up the hill, recover down.  1 minute R-pace effort up the hill, recover down.
  • Mix it up – Backwards run up to where you ended 30 seconds on prior round, recover down.  30 second R-pace effort up the hill, recover down.  1 minute Bounding up the hill, recover down.
  • Just hills – 30 second R-pace effort (1 mile race pace) up the hill, recover down.  30 second R-pace effort up the hill, recover down.  1 minute R-pace effort up the hill, recover to regroup and move to upper “Snoopy” section of the hill.
  • Mix it up on the Snoopy hill – Backwards run 30 seconds (call out the speed bump when you get there), recover down.  30 second R-pace effort up the hill, recover down.  1 minute Bounding up the hill, recover out to Ballantyne Commons Dr near Premier Building.
• 0603 – Progression run back to the Vine.  Take the long way (via Ballantyne Corp and pass Aloft, SPX) or the short way (Ballantyne hotel), but make an effort to pick up the Pace each 60 seconds.  Start slow, try for a 15-20 second increase in pace, and meet back at the Vine.
• COT

The Moleskin:

• Let’s start with how we ended.  60 seconds of progression interval on a mile and a half run means about 10-12 intervals where you’re supposed to find more speed.  Total Q-fail on this one.  Normally Progression Run we’ve done is to pickup the pace every 400m, but since we didn’t have a track, Q figured that 60 seconds should be easier to track on the watch.  Not a bad interval to have, but Pace pickup guidelines failed.  If you started at a 8:00 pace, and had 10 pickups to do of :15 seconds/mi of pace, that meant you would have been running 5:30/mi by the end and still not done with 2mi.  So, not surprising when we hit the hill by Sara’s Y that Q called it quits (for the benefit of the PAX of course) on the Progression when we were only 1.2mi into it.  However, Bunker and Haggis didn’t get the signal to slow it down completely until in to COT.  Bunker kept pulling away from the moseying PAX, and of course Haggis couldn’t take it so coerced YHC into a final 30 second Sprint.  We still didn’t catch Bunker, but all 9 PAX were found at COT.
• 30-30-1 Hill repeats have been done before, and we’ve even done a little of the mixture with other strength building before, but it felt like everything combined made a good Hill workout.  Backwards run especially hits the Quads, but also other muscles not normally stressed in the same way.  Bounding felt fine the first time, but by the last time, there wasn’t much vertical left for the final half.  If YHC had one of those fancy new Garmins that shows vertical oscillations, it would have looked like a Sine wave with amplitude gradually decreasing to zero.
• The PAX that did turn out on Tuesday got a treat with a moderate breeze on an otherwise stifling humidity, low car traffic (maybe only one the whole morning?) on the Snoopy and Bean sections of the Hill, not too many road obstacles (save for the speed hump on one backwards run), and not too much traffic on the road home.  What wasn’t a treat, but felt like it had good variety, were the actual hills and run home.  Good running fast/quick, and then holding the speed.
• Cheddar showing the endurance on the Progression Run that’s sure to sustain him at the Grandfather Mountain Marathon this Saturday.  So much for a taper…
• OneNiner, don’t understand why he didn’t wear a weight vest, strong on the Hills.
• WildTurkey, Mr. Consistency, forming himself into a runner with his own clicking cadence to remind him of pace (is that a shoe, keys, or a knee sound?)
• NardDog, keeps coming back for some more even after last week’s long intervals.  Strong on the Progression Run as well.
• FireHazard, who could probably show some cool vertical oscillations, cadence, and stride length, confused his watch into thinking he had transformed into a gazelle.
• Tootie, who likely had to put earmuffs on his 2.0 to get her to sleep through the night with all of the fireworks, still made it out and pushed through the suck of the morning.
• To the 8 who showed up, thank you for following the madness and the privilege to do the workout with you.  To the others that are waiting to post at Swift, we’re here every week.
• 800s around the Bull Ring next week.  You vs. you.