Skunkworks – The Track is Open
20 of south Charlotte’s best took on Skunkworks this am.
Warm-up
– SSH
– Imperial Walkers
– 10 burpees
– 25 two-handed swings
– 15 burpees
– KB figure eight
– 10 burpees
– KB halo
Catch me if you can
– Mosey to back road, partner up with like size KB
– Partner 1: farmer carry, partner 2: 10 merkins and chase, switch
– Finish at bottom of parking lot around church
KB Suicides Set
– Run to first curb and back, 5 snatches
– Run to second curb and back, 10 cleans
– Run to road and back, 15 squats
– Repeat using opposite arm
– Plankorama
Partner Hill Work
– Find partner again for combined set
– 200 swings, 5 burpees at top of hill
– 100 triceps, 10 merkins at top of hill
– 25 snatches, 10 jumping lunges at top of hill
Catch me if you can back to parking lot
Good group out there this morning, always an honor to lead. Morning temp was finally under 70 degrees, but it’s probably not going to last. Brought back some moves we have not had in a while – catch me if you can around newly remodeled church and school, burpees and more burpees (crowd pleaser). Great to see new faces, should be a big group in a couple of weeks once the Fast Twitchers make their way back.
Announcements
– convergence on Wed. Sept. 10 for 5 year south charlotte anniversary, 5:15-6:15 at Calvary
– prayers for Destiny
– Young Life Mud Run on Sept. 17 at Whitewater Center, family friendly event
— Harley
Pre Blast – SPECIAL ONCE A SEASON BRR TRAINING AT ANVIL
Special guest appearance and gear expo.
Massages post workout
Top advice on gait
Not really but trying to drive traffic. YHC has Q tomorrow and with goal of jacking up heart rate and getting in a few miles. Only have 45 minutes
SOFAWIB: The Fresh Murph of Bel Air
A dozen for this week’s edition of SOFAWIB. Bel Air was on a mission, and I was game to support. Here’s what we did –
THE PLAN: 3-Mile Murph
Run the HT Mile 3 times
100 pullups, 200 Merkins, 300 Squats
NMM: Before we even get started, High Tide runs into the lot with the WV on. So yep, he’s officially leveled up to SuperSaiyan.
Conversely, BelAir aka Bro Zaire, was unsatisfied with his Ortho10k time, blamed it on too much MAF, and tried to take it out on Kirk by knocking him off the “kissing your sister” section of the OfficialSOFAWIBHTMileStravaSegmentLeaderboard. Come on fam, it doesn’t matter if he ran all over Mt. Charlotte the day before; Kirk has two running speeds, 1) Ludicrous and 2) Broken. Long story short, everyone is still bitter and Brushback was popping Korbel at 6:16. And just wait until I plant gps tags on Swiper (Dailek) and IronMike (spawn of FloJo and the Brawny lumberjack), post the results on MapMyRun, and ruin everyone’s day.
Confession – I saw Thunder Road run past the usual turnaround at HT and didn’t yell for him to turn back. Call it rookie hazing.
No one likes my taste in music. Ingrates.
After being dogged by just about everyone for my enjoyment of Garden&Gun (the Martha Stewart Living for southern transplants), including ThunderRoad and DeepDish who I’ve worked out with maybe once, HighTide sniped me with “Never heard of it. I know about Field & Stream though.” Brutal. I still love all of you and this is why everyone except Hammer posts to FastTwitch now.
BRR season is stupid. Running all the time is stupid. Pull-ups are awesome. FastTwitch is terrible. SOFAWIB is awesome. Everyone who posted this morning is awesome. Caddy is awesome for posting after a very public HC on F3Twitter. BelAir is awesome for Q’ing.
Announcements: Caddy is collecting clothing for the folks in Baton Rouge. Hollar at him or me or TalkBox to collect.
Prayers for OneEye after his recent skin procedure.
Church On The Street is the first weekend of September. Check the South Charlotte nation page for signups.
Why haven’t you Q’d at SOFAWIB yet? Yes, you. Shout at Kirk and Swiper to get on the calendar.
Many thanks to Swiper for the STRONG takeout, and to him and Kirk for the keys to the place.
Thank you for making SOFAWIB your choice for weekly periodical and music criticism.
SOFAWIB Preblast: The Fresh Murph of Bel Air
Bel Air and YHC split Q duties at SOFAWIB tomorrow – he does the metaphorical and literal heavy lifting, and I write stuff and talk sh!t. We are each following our #D2X.
The Plan – we’re running The Murph with the HT Mile.
It’s “Fresh” because Bel Air is the Q. Get it? [crickets]
Anyway. Bel Air is talking all kinds of junk about taking down Kirk on the HT Mile Strava leaderboard*
Will Kirk be able to recover from HorseyMcHorseAss in time to beat the competition?
Will all that MAFing result in more bad mile times?
Will we have more backblast comments than attendees again?
Will the horrible truth that Sundancer attended Fast Twitch last week be revealed?
Join us tomorrow and find out. Olde Providence Elementary. Rally at 0528 for instructions from Bro Zaire. We start sprinting at 0530.
*Even though we all can see Brushback still has the SOFAWIB record, thanks to his portable hawking spacetime transporter. Miss you, Brushback.
#PreBlast – Speed Pyramid 3-4-5
Swift will launch at 0515 from the Vine Restaurant in Ballantyne on Tuesday. Come at 0500 for some extra warm-up.
The THANG:
- 0500 – early birds get the extra warm-up
- 0515 – leave from the Vine lot and continue warm-up with Easy running and stretching. Stay in Ballantyne Corp Park
- 0530 – start on Rushmore Dr (course is rolling, but hills are not as aggressive as Bagpipe Hill), for the following VO2Max / Interval pace intervals (click this link to get a personalized pace)
- 3min Interval / 2min jog recovery
- 4min Interval / 3min jog recovery
- 5min Interval / 4min jog recovery
- 5min Interval / 4min jog recovery
- 3min Interval / 2min jog recovery
- 0605 – continue cooldown and head back to COT
- 0615 – COT done
Brotherhood is love
I love the F3 #wasnow stories. Judge Hairy went from 365 pounds to flat-sexy. The Judge knew he was dead in 15 years if he didn’t do something. His knees hit the dirt, and he asked God for help. God gave him F3. Floppy disk lost 48 pounds and started being able to focus on others. Columbo was a 265 pound cop, moonlighting at a school during an F3 workout. Now the guy has logged 225 workouts in one year, and is closer to his wife and kids. No Help was struggling with purpose after leaving the Marine Corps, in a dark place, and even lost his faith. Yet with F3’s brotherhood, he regained his purpose, and his faith. In describing the difference it makes, he rightly notes that “Brotherhood is love, and YHC loves this brotherhood. Truly a blessing.” Kato was suffering dizzy spells in his 40s, and easily winded at any attempt to play with his kids. Kato reminds us that a leader needs to kick a new guy’s butt to show the new guy esteem. In each story, with new brothers, each man achieved what he could not alone. There is a lot of hurt in the world. As Cindy points out in 10 minutes, F3 is part of the solution.
At #Horsey today, 45 men shredded their legs. I needed that. But what really drove me was the men at my side. Stinger, my partner, was running his guts out. How could I do less? Posse, who had trouble running any distance a year ago, arrived from Union County with a full head of steam and never stopped. Stickbug, Mr. Brady, the Leg, Alf, Belly, Swiper, McStuffins – all killing it. And what can you say about my brother Fishwrap? The man has gone from awesome to inspirational.
Great to be with you all this morning.
God bless.
All Down the Line
Quick Warm-up
SSH x 15
IW x 15
LSS x 15
Merks x 15
The Drill
Everyone’s bells, in no particular order, lined up the length of the parking lot. There are three exercises per round. For each round, PAX will perform 10 reps (or 5 per side) at a kettlebell. After completing that exercise, PAX slides to the next bell until he returns to his original bell. If you finish before your neighbor, you get a short break. After each round we circled up short pause and instructions on the next three exercises. We (almost) finished 5 rounds.
R1
2 hand swings
Alt hand swings
Cleans
R2
Squat (goblet or teabag)
Bob & weave
Rows
R3
Lunge & press
Thrusters
High pulls
R4
Deadlift (single leg, if able)
Tactical lunge (from lunge position, circle bell around thigh)
Clean (single leg, if able)
R5
2 hand swings
Snatch
Racked lunge
This was my first non-boxing Foxhole Q and I was having trouble coming up for inspiration. I knew I couldn’t stand in the middle of cirlce for 45 min. (Too weak!) After scrolling through dozens of websites and youtube videos, I found the All Down the Line concept. I liked the idea of keeping up a decent tempo while trying a variety of weights. We had the perfect sized group with about a dozen bells of various poundage. Not a lot of mumblechatter today. The line-up didn’t facilitate much 2nd F. (It could be worse, at least you didn’t need to run through woods in the dark. #thebrave.)
An honor to lead! Aye!
Really Late Fat Camp BB
The Thang,
Run around the parking and then hit some SSH’s, Merkins, and Windmills (I was sore from Swift and really needed this).
Next we moved to the 7 stations:
- Plank rows – One hand on the 8 in tall mulch barrier at the playground and the other pulling a kettle bell. You had 2 choices a 40 or a 25.
- Feet on the swing and walk you hands back until you were as vertical as possible.
- 20 Kettle bell swings. 2 choices – 25 or 50.
- Agility ladder pushups – Diamond and wide
- pull-ups on a rope threaded through the monkey bar rings
- Sand Bags bent over rows
- Sand bag curls
We did this circuit a few times with the Kettle bell swings as the “Pace Car” (thanks for that idea Soft Pretzel). We also ran a lap around the parking lot after a each circuit.
Then we went to the fields and sprinted, did Mary, and Planks.
Moleskin.
I took the Q for this one on Tuesday night so it wasn’t very creative, but everyone pushed hard and at least I was smoked by the time it was over.
As always it is an honor to lead these fine men. A few of which I was meeting for the first time.
Announcements. Since I am late anything that was said is now over.
Visit to South Hall
9 men showed up at McKee Rd Elementary for another 60 minutes of fun on a Saturday morning. All were on time this week, with O’Tannenbaum even making it to the AO before 0701 hours. Think we can thank Tiger Rag as he had forewarned OT about my Tweet the night before mentioning heading off campus down towards the fire station. Had 2 site FNGs as Lumberjack and DQ joined us for the first time on a Saturday morning. With everyone in tow and the clock indicating 0700 hours we headed out for a warm up lap in the lower parking lot by the soccer fields and circled up for COP.
COP:
- SSH x 20 IC
- IW x 20 IC
- Squats x 15 IC
- Merkins x 15 IC
- MC x 20 IC
Properly warmed up and giving any last minute stragglers the opportunity to find us before we headed off campus, YHC led the crew on a mosey down the sidewalk along the soccer fields and we made our way to the rock pile. Quick stop to work on the soccer arms. Pick a friend for a some light lifting:
- Curls x 15 IC
- Rock Press x 15 IC
- Goblet Squat x 15 IC
- Rinse & repeat x 2 (w/ 10 reps IC and then 5 reps IC)
Return the rocks to their resting spot and we continued our jog down to the fire station. Circled up and everyone completed 25 Carolina Dry Docks OYO.
At this point we had reached our final destination (sort of), which was the South Hall neighborhood just across McKee Rd from the fire station. Made our way down South Hall Dr into the neighborhood and made a quick stop at the first side street to gather the 6.
- Merkins (?) x 15 IC
Continue down the main drive into South Hall with 2 more stops along the way, prior to our final destination, with LBCs x 25 IC at Stop #2 and Flutter and Dolly x 15 IC at Stop #3. One last straightaway on Warwickshire Ln and we arrived at Derbyshire Dr for the main event.
Derbyshire Dr is about 1/4 mi long with a nice little up and over to a dead end. 4 decorative street lights spaced evenly along the length of the street. Perfect set up for a modified Triple Nickel.
Idea was to run up and over Derbyshire Dr, stopping at east light post along the way and with a final stop at the end for 5 reps of the called exercise at each stop. Plank and wait for the 6 a the end of each round. Completed the following exercises during the series:
- Merkins
- Jump Squats
- LBCs
- Carolina Dry Docks
- Flutter (5 each leg)
At the wrong end of Derbyshire at the end so we alternated Lunge Walk and Sprint between each of the light posts and the other end at Warwickshire before heading back to the launch point. Made our way back to McKee Rd Elementary with a couple stops along the way to gather the 6.
COT
NMM:
- Welcome to Lumberjack and DQ to the AO. Both have been posting for a few weeks with Area 51, but this was there first visit to McKee Rd for the 60 minute edition.
- Strong work by Lobster Roll, Ocho Cinco, O’Tannenbaum and Squid leading on the modified Triple Nickel with Slapshot not far behind.
- Beaver appeared to approve of the off campus visit and indicated he may take us back out that way on his next Q. PAX can thank Frasier for the tour as he found this hidden gem a good while back and we had not been back for a return visit until now.
- Apologize for the 2 min of overtime as I miscalculated the time for the return and probably could have cut the rock work by a round to time it better. See management for a refund of your admission $s.
- Thanks to Squid for the takeout.
Announcements:
- Area 51/SOB/Union County end of summer pool party was Saturday afternoon at Candlewyck Pool. Van Pelt provided some quality BBQ from all reports.
- 2nd Annual Southern Discomfort, Area 51s own CSAUP event, is scheduled for 10/22. Should be 10-13 miles with several stops at various AOs for short pain stations. Margo and Gerber are the co-Qs. Look for more details to follow.
Ye Old Man Reaches His Goal!
It has been too long since YHC had posted (or led) at The Rock. Thank heavens I have a phenomenal co-site Q. That said, I pulled out a favorite workout plan of mine I affectionately call “No Outlet Hell”. We gathered for a quick disclaimer (both legal and admittance that I gained 5 pounds on vacation last week and it would show it in my performance) and headed toward the front lawn of Calvary.
Warm-Up:
- 20 SSH
- Mosey to the corner of Cary Ridge and 51
- 20 IW
I explained to the men the premise of No Outlet Hell. We will run along Cary Ridge and Bevington and back up Rea Rd. to Calvary. That stretch equals about 3.25 miles. At each cul-de-sac (there are 8) we will stop for 20 of the stated exercise. Here’s what we did:
- Merkins
- Lunges
- Rosalita
- HR Merkins
- Squats
- LBC’s (with two sets of sprints around a cul-de-sac garden mixed in)
- Decline merkins (20 as a partnered team with some running in between)
- Freddy Mercury (I called them Freddy Kreuger at first….I already mentioned I hadn’t Qd in a while)
As we waited on the six back at Calvary (I was part of the six by the way), extra LBC’s and planking.
Mosey to the hot box:
- 20 incline merkins
- 20 dips
- 20 flutter
- 15 Incline merkins
- 15 dips
- 15 flutter
During hot box time, Marlin mentioned he volunteers at Calvary and is responsible for soccer field management, including moving all of the soccer goals (there are about 18?) to the side of the field so he can chalk line the fields. Time for an audible….
Mosey to the soccer fields. Pair up and each pair runs to a soccer goal and carries it to the far left of the soccer fields near the sidewalk. Once you put down the goal, run to the next one and repeat.
Mosey back to the cars
COT:
We covered 4.25 miles and got in a lot of good work along the way. We also got a chance to help out Calvary, a great partner for us all in F3! Thanks to Marlin for the idea. I forgot to mentioned we had some youth with us today…..Drago, Nemo and Rapper’s Delight are all in their teens. A few of us got dusted by them during anything sprint related. E Trade, on the other hand, hung with them and sometimes led them….awesome work you four! You’d be even more impressed by E Trade’s speed if you saw the shoes he was wearing. Let’s just say my father (who is 74) has a similar pair.
Thanks men! It was a pleasure!
Announcements:
Area 51 pool party tonight at Candlewyck
Gummy, thanks for the great take-out!