Join us as we continue the annual Spring tradition of running a mile time trial after following an 8 week training plan. This year will be a bit of an experiment, as we’ll be using a plan designed by ChatGPT. Ironically, this AI plan will help us to run away faster during the machine uprising.
The plan will start the week of April 7th, culminating in a mile time trial on Tuesday, June 3rd at Waxhaw Express on the Cuthbertson track. There will be three key workouts per week, with intervals on Tuesday, a tempo run on Thursday, and a long run on Saturday. All other days are up to you, and can be a mix of easy runs, cross-training, and rest. The interval workouts will be Q’d each Tuesday at Waxhaw Express, and hopefully Swift as well (check Slack). The Thursday and Saturday runs will be on your own, but I’m sure you’ll be able to find like-minded individuals at one of the many area running workouts (Pursuit / Devil’s Turn / Sparta / Fast Twitch / Chicken Run / Paper Trail).
Weeks 1-3: Building Speed & Threshold. The first three weeks will focus on developing speed, improving VO2 max, and increasing the ability to sustain faster paces over short distances.
Week 2: Apr 14-20
Week 3: Apr 21-27
Weeks 4-6: Building Speed Endurance. These weeks introduce longer intervals and tempo runs to improve lactate threshold and running economy. The focus is on sustaining a fast pace for longer durations, as well as sharpening anaerobic capacity for the mile.
Week 4: Apr 28-May 4
Week 5: May 5-11
Week 6: May 12-18
Weeks 7-8: Sharpening and Race Specificity. In these final weeks, intervals will get faster as we hone in on the 1-mile pace. We’ll introduce more short bursts of intensity at race pace.
Week 7: May 19-25
Week 8: May 26-Jun 1
Tuesday, June 3rd: Mile Time Trial at Waxhaw Express
Additional Notes:
-TUCK
Congratulations- you now have concrete plans for next Friday. Deck the Halls is back! A CSAUP that is great on so many levels. Can you believe that this will be the 9th deck run? What a world we live in. What started as a random Tuck weinke to hit all the decks in Ballantyne (7 at the time) at a random Brave workout in 2015 has blossomed into an essential holiday tradition that grows in legend and # of decks every year. As always, we have spent countless hours toiling away in the SOB Decknological Institute trying to make this year’s event the biggest and dumbest ever. And guess what… we did it. We are over the moon excited to present to you… The 12 Decks of Christmas.
Park yourself down for a general overview of how this will work:
Our annual tour of Olde Decklenburg will take place on Friday, December 13th. The event will be split into 3 stages, each launching from The Brave (11318 N Community House Rd, Charlotte, NC 28277). Feel free to start with stage 1 OR stage 2. It all depends on how much deck you think you can handle.
Stage 1 (4:20AM):
Stage 2 (5:30AM):
Stage 3 (6:30AM):
Nothing says “holiday spirit” like the camaraderie of a pre-dawn deck challenge, followed by cookies and coffee to share. This is the perfect opportunity to wrap up the week strong with your F3 brothers and to feel accomplished and ready to take on the season.
-Tuck & Midriff
Deckography:
Starting on Tuesday, March 26th, WXW Express and Swift will collectively embark on an 8-week training program designed to produce your fastest mile. It’s time to set the bar for yourself for 2024. Can you be faster than last year, even though you’re a year older? Can you set a PR, even though you can’t make it through the night without getting up to pee? Damn straight you can, and we will help get you there.
There will be two workouts per week for eight weeks, culminating in a mile time trial at WXW Express (Cuthbertson Middle School) on Tuesday, May 21st @ 0515. We’re hoping that holding on a weekday will allow more pax to attend. WXW Express and Swift will host the Tuesday workout each week. Perform the Thursday workout wherever you’d like. Try to rope your pals at Pursuit/Devil’s Turn/Sparta/Fast Twitch into joining you.
The plan is based on Nike Run Club’s “Find Your Fast” 8-week training program. We did this plan last year and many PR’s were achieved, including YHC’s. The plan is on a Google Sheet (link) so that you can save your own version and track your progress and/or make edits if you’d like. Here are the two weekly workouts in case spreadsheets give you the willies:
In weeks one and seven there is a mile simulation workout (8 x 400m) that will help you identify your current mile fitness and give you a good idea of what you should be shooting for at the time trial.
Some of the prescribed workouts may be shorter than what you’re used to at our F3 running workouts. If you are on Q for any of these workouts, feel free to modify.
It is recommended that you begin each workout with a 1 mile warmup and dynamic stretching, and end with a 1 mile cooldown. The goal is to PR but also to get to the starting line in one piece.
Find your various training paces by inputting your goal mile pace or a recent race time here: Link. “Tempo” pace (not shown on website) is your 5k pace + 25-30 seconds. It is a pace that you would be able to sustain for a full hour of running and should feel “hard, but controlled”.
-TUCK
It’s time for the official start of the holiday season, Deck the Halls! An event that is great on so many levels.
What is Deck the Halls? As my friend Midriff once said, “we continue the time-honored SOB tradition of gracefully scaling each parking deck and collectively holding our breath that security won’t foil our visions of grandeur.” Here are the basic ingredients:
We started with 7 decks in 2015 and have added more over the years as Ballantyne has developed. Last year we conquered 11 decks, and will repeat that plan (in a different order) this year. There are no new decks to add for this year, but rest assured there will be next year when some of the current construction projects are completed.
Friday, December 15th is when we’ll be taking our tour of Olde Decklenburg. The event will be split into 3 stages, each launching from The Brave (11318 N Community House Rd #200, Charlotte, NC 28277). Feel free to start with stage 1 OR stage 2. It all depends on how much deck you think you can handle.
Stage 1:
Stage 2:
Stage 3:
8 weeks of blood, (a lot of) sweat and tears are in the books. Congrats to the pax that made it through 2 workouts per week going all the way back to March. The only thing left to do is lace up and line up this Saturday and give it all you have. It WILL hurt, but it WILL be quick (quicker than if had you not done the training). No matter the result, take pride in the work you put in from week 1 all the way up to the finish line. It’s about the journey, not the destination. That being said I am sure we will see some PR’s out there and I can’t wait to see it happen live.
What: 2023 Mile Time Trial
Where: Community House Middle School track
When: Saturday, May 20, 2023, 6AM
Schedule of Events:
Several of your favorite F3 running workouts throughout the South Charlotte and Waxhaw area have done what they said couldn’t be done. They have coordinated on something.
Starting on Tuesday, March 28, we will collectively embark on an 8-week training program designed to produce your fastest mile. It’s time to set the bar for yourself for 2023.
There will be two workouts per week for eight weeks, culminating in a mile time trial at the Community House Middle School track on Saturday, May 20th @ 0600. WXW Express and Swift will host the Tuesday workout each week, and Pursuit and Sparta will host the Thursday workout. Fast Twitch and Devil’s Turn are a maybe depending on the mood and who’s on Q. Did you expect anything less?
Fill out this Google Form (link) to register and hold yourself and your F3 brothers accountable (registration not required). Here is the Google Sheet with responses for your viewing pleasure (link).
The plan is based on Nike Run Club’s “Find Your Fast” 8-week training program. We did this plan at Swift two years ago and many PR’s were achieved, including YHC’s. The plan is on a Google Sheet (link) so that you can save your own version and track your progress and/or make edits if you’d like. Here are the two weekly workouts:
In weeks one and seven there is a mile simulation workout (8 x 400m) that will help you identify your current mile fitness and give you a good idea of what you should be shooting for at the time trial.
Some of the prescribed workouts may be shorter than what you’re used to at our F3 running workouts. If you are on Q for any of these workouts, feel free to modify.
It is recommended that you begin each workout with a 1 mile warmup and dynamic stretching, and end with a 1 mile cooldown. The goal is to PR but also to get to the starting line in one piece.
Find your various training paces by inputting your goal mile pace or a recent race time here: Link. “Tempo” pace (not shown on website) is your 5k pace + 25-30 seconds. It is a pace that you would be able to sustain for a full hour of running and should feel “hard, but controlled”.
A long time ago in a F3 region far, far away…
This event, the first in a series of SOB #CSAUP’s pitting brother against brother, was designed to settle the long simmering feud between Stonehenge and da Vinci (with a little help from Chicken Run), and to coax PAX out of their comfort zones. Pax were instructed to wear red if they “identified” with da Vinci and blue for Stonehenge. Points were assigned to each PAX based on how many components of the #CSAUP they completed. The workout with the most points received the title of world’s greatest AO and was awarded possession of a brand new SOB artifact that captures the spirit of all things #CSAUP and will be utilized in future events. Here’s what went down.
Thang
Moleskin
Online chatter for this event was pretty weak, so YHC was worried we were headed for a repeat of South Mountain. Expectations were dropping by the day. But little did YHC know, tons of willing Pax were lurking in the shadows, ready to jump into the fray to help settle the score. At first it was looking really good for Stonehenge and really BAD for dV. Tagalong, Happy Meal, Wingman, Gruden and Tolkien were among the first wave of Pax to arrive, and every last one of them for team Stonehenge. It was nothing but blue shirts in every direction. Plus Tagalong’s beard. Was the 5:00 start time just too much to ask of the da Vinci regulars? Would Stonehenge, the OG, roll over da Vinci like a giant stale bagel?
Slowly but surely, the red tide started to come in. It started as a trickle with Midriff, Point Break and YHC. But then the numbers started to pile up. PJ. Brexit. Softie. HazMat. Doc. Chopper. They CAN wake up early on a Saturday! As we departed the PetSmart parking lot for the first leg of our journey it was looking pretty good for team dV. But none of us knew who would be waiting for us at the Stonehenge AO. Or who would be waiting when we returned to Blakeney. It was way too early to declare victory in this title fight.
On the way to Stonehenge we made a detour behind Community House Middle School and hopped on the Ballantyne District Park trails for a while. Because no route designed by YHC can ever be straightforward. At first War Eagle was confused until YHC explained that the thing we were running on was called a “trail” and the surface we were running on was called “dirt”. We mingled with some deer, who were non-committal about the whole Stonehenge vs da Vinci thing, and then exited at the Morrison Y and continued on our merry way. We stopped 4 times on the way for Mary to regroup, with Pax taking turns calling exercises.
Upon arriving at Stonehenge we were greeted by Cul de Sac, Mighty, Frehleys, Billy Goat and Market Timer, who looked like he had rolled out of bed at that very instant. These reinforcements could definitely help even the score, but how many would continue on, who would throw in the towel, and who would be waiting at Blakeney? It was still anyone’s game at that point. The only certainty was that Tagalong’s pickup bed was our de facto trash bin for empty water bottles. This was unspoken, and understood by all. After some quick hydration, Cul de Sac took the reigns for his 30 20 minute Q. After COP we did a circuit involving scaling a retaining wall, squats and merkins, followed by a relay race. Pax were divided into 2 teams of mostly blue Pax and 2 teams of mostly red Pax. Blue dominated. They won the battle, but would they win the war? With the Pax out of gas and Cul de Sac out of ideas, Might Mite took over for the last few minutes and called a bear crawl, merkin ladder. And just like that, it was time to head back to Blakeney. We said hello to C3PO, T1000 and Johnny5, and goodbye to PJ, Chopper, Tagalong and Happy Meal and ALL of the Stonehenge Pax that had greeted us upon arrival to the Stonehenge AO.
It quickly became clear by the sea of red that the remaining Pax were overwhelmingly team dV. Of the 19 of us at that point, only Wingman, Gruden and Tolkien remained from team Stonehenge. It would take a monumental showing of Stonehenge Pax at Blakeney to make up the point differential. Things were looking good for team dV. We headed back the way we came, stopping at The Brave/Snooze Button AO for Mary. At that point Right Turn, facing a do-or-die #CodeBrown situation decided his best option was to run home, which was closer than Blakeney. We continued on without him, detouring again onto the trails behind Morrison Y, this time in daylight and able to appreciate the natural beauty.
We arrived back at the dV AO at the corner of Blakeney Heath and Ardrey Kell simultaneously with our next Q, Strange Brew, and 3 others: Sweetwater, Olaf and Circuit City. This only added to team da Vinci’s lead. It was at that moment that victory for dV was guaranteed. There were no celebrations to be had, as we knew that after 2.5 hours of work we still had 30 minutes ahead of us. We said so long to Tolkien and Jerry World and headed to the “Lash Studio” shopping center on AK for Brew’s bootcamp. Brew led us through some partnered rock work and wall work, and then we Indian Ran back to Blakeney for some work on the fountain walls. Rousey came up lame during the Indian Run with some cramps but managed to pull himself together and finish.
At COT team da Vinci was declared the winner and awarded possession of a brand spanking new snow shovel flag with an American flag, a CSAUP flag and pink rhinestone letters on the handle spelling “CSAUPS FOREVER” and on the bottom shovel part spelling “F3”, “SOB” “A51” and “WXW”. Why a snow shovel? Because it is the most CSAUP thing we could think of. Snow hasn’t accumulated here in years. The snow shovel flag will make an appearance at CSAUPS in SCLT whenever possible. Look for it at WTF this Saturday! We’ll come up with a good way for another AO to “win” possession in the near future.
Those that completed the entire event ran about 12 miles. For several that is an all-time PR for mileage. Nice work, fellas. Congrats to Midriff on his 2nd CSAUP in as many weeks, with a third to come this weekend (WTF). He has been all in from day 1. What to say about Rousey? The words that come to mind are “boundless energy and enthusiasm”. What a great addition he has been to our region. It was great to host Prince from F3 Alamo (San Antonio). We hope you enjoyed it, Prince! It was also great to have Doc McStuffins out at an event for the first time in a long time. And of course he was the fastest guy out there. Super annoying. Right Turn, we hope you made it home without having to pull a Paper Jam on a sewer grate. It was awesome having Johnny5 and T1000 participate. Keep it up, men.
da Vinci Pax / points
18 Pax / 49 Points Total
Stonehenge Pax / points
10 Pax / 20 Points Total
Neutral Pax / points
5 Pax / 15 Points Total
A big thank you goes out to the planning team (YHC, War Eagle, Cooter2, Mighty Mite, Lex Luthor and Midriff) for helping refine a raw event idea from a #SSAMP (somewhat stupid and mostly pointless) into a true #CSAUP. Thanks to the bootcamp Q’s Cul de Sac and Strange Brew. Thank you to War Eagle and his M for providing the chicken sandwiches and coffee at the end. Thanks Wingy for the tent. Thank you to my M for making the beautiful CSAUP flag. And last but not least, thank you to all of you idiots that trusted us enough to show up and throw yourself into something challenging, different and dumb. You guys made this event what it was.
-TUCK
YHC will take the reigns at Swift starting next week for an 8-week training program designed to produce your fastest mile. Why? Because getting older stinks so why not flip the bird at Father Time and show him you’re not done yet. Need more? “Training for a fast mile can teach your body how to finish your next 5k faster. It can boost your overall pace in a longer distance race (hello, half marathon PR). Most importantly it can make you a stronger athlete altogether.”
There will be two workouts per week (one at Swift and one OYO or at some other workout) for 8 weeks, culminating in a mile time trial at the Community House Middle School track on Saturday, June 12th @ 0615. Who knows, maybe some other running workouts such as Waxhaw Express or Fast Twitch will join in and run these workouts in parallel and join us at the time trial (hint hint). The plan is based on Nike Run Club’s “Find Your Fast” 8-week training program. YHC has loaded the plan into a Google Sheet (link) so that you can save your own version and track your progress and/or make edits. Here are the 2 weekly workouts:
In week 1 and week 7 there is a mile simulation workout (8 x 400m) that will help you identify your current mile fitness and give you a good idea of what you should be shooting for at the time trial.
Find your various training paces by inputting your goal mile pace or a recent race time here: Link. “Tempo” pace (not shown in website) is your 5k pace + 25-30 seconds. It is a pace that you would be able to sustain for a full hour of running and should feel “hard, but controlled”.
It is recommended that you begin each workout with a 1 mile warmup and dynamic stretching, and end with a 1 mile cooldown. The goal is to PR but also to get to the starting line in one piece.
A long time ago in a F3 region far, far away…
What: This event, the first in a series of SOB #CSAUP’s pitting brother against brother, is designed to settle the long simmering feud between Stonehenge and da Vinci (with a little help from Chicken Run), and to coax PAX out of their comfort zones. After 5 years of insults, passive aggressive #FridayMarketing and ill-spirited workout count comparisons, this first episode will officially determine which Saturday SOB bootcamp reigns supreme. The rivalry may have cooled off recently, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a score to settle. These old wounds are still raw! We need the SOB’s (and friends) to come out in force to help determine which workout will wear the crown, and which will continue to eat bagels covered in ants and trash (ok, YHC might be slightly biased). Side note- if you’ve ever taken part in a #CSAUP you know that there is a direct correlation between the number of PAX and the amount of fellowship. So show up and let’s get stupid.
When: April 24th, 05:00AM
Thang:
The Competition:
Wear the color of whatever Saturday bootcamp you identify with in your heart (Stonehenge = blue / da Vinci = red). Points will be assigned to each PAX based on how many components of the #CSAUP they complete (see below). The workout with the most points gets bragging rights AND is awarded possession of a brand new SOB artifact that captures the spirit of all things #CSAUP and will be utilized in future events.
Options and Point System:
Misc: