Fitness. Fellowship. Faith.Conditions: Beautiful morning for a run. Course was a little wet. 68 degrees.
Disclaimer: No FNG’s but I gave it anyway. “F3 is peer led. Only you know your capabilities. Be safe, don’t get hurt. Please don’t sue me if you get hurt cause I’m no professional and I’m just running with you.”
Preamble: Last workout of the month at the Creek is the one mile time trial. Nothing fancy. Just a nice excruciating all out effort on a Monday morning. But it’s important to benchmark your performance, see what you’re capable of, yadda-yadda. As I mentioned in my pre-blast I don’t even like this workout, but I do it because I feel I need to.
Reminds me of the quote from the great hero from the movie “Caddy Shack”, Judge Smails:
“I’ve sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn’t want to do it. I felt I owed it to them”
I want the PAX to know their capabilities. Most of us aren’t going to go out and run an all out mile. Frankly it’s not a great workout. It’s too short by itself to be considered a workout. It’s more of a “feat”. But, when you go out and run a hard mile you learn all sorts of things about yourself. How much have you improved? What kind of estimated pace could you hold for a 5k, a 10k or more? There are formula’s for all of this. Check out the Galloway Magic Mile formula to learn what your result means for you.
The plan: Since the mile by itself is a serious undertaking we will do a proper warmup. The PAX completed a half mile warmup lap around the 1/2 mile pond loop. Nice little jog….. Then we did a second loop this time picking up the pace for brief strides. This is where we’d accelerate for 50-80 yards or so to a near sprint, then decelerate back to jogging pace. Dutchess was holding a strong pace during this. I got the feeling from last weeks Swamp Fox workout at the Ditch that the guy had some speed. Once the warmup was completed we gathered at the starting line. The course would take us around the track twice. I asked the group to estimate their finish time. Group 1 would be 8:30 and up. Group 2 under 8:30. YHC sent the runners from group 1 off first with about 15 seconds between them. Followed by group 2, one at a time.
We ran. We ran until we were done. Personally, I decided NOT to look at my watch. I didn’t want to know my pace I just knew what fast felt like and I wanted to feel like I was running fast. So I managed to avoid looking until the work was done. The rest of the group was pushing hard. We didn’t say much to each other. As YHC finished up he was greeted by the voice of McFly. McFly was running a little behind this morning. He asked me how I did. I told him I’d tell him when he was done. 🙂 McFly is fast. I didn’t want to lay my cards out even though I knew he’d kick my butt. Gamesmanship!
The PAX where gathering. A couple of muted “good jobs” etc… I heard a few times but not all of them. We took off for a cooldown jog around the AO while McFly did his work. Once we returned we did a little Mary while we waited for him. 15 LBC in cadence led by YHC. 15 American Hammers in cadence led by Dunkin, 14 flutter kicks in cadence led by Recount.
Final Results:
McFly!!! 5:58 first under 6 at the Creek. He won the crown (all I had was a safety cone).
Snowden 6:24
Dutchess: 7:40 great first trial effort sir! I can’t wait to see next month’s result.
Recount: somewhere under 8. what kinda guy doesn’t wear at least a stop watch to a time trial? Recount. Either way, this a GREAT run for recount. The guy has really been getting in killer shape lately.
Urkel: 8:15 (huge props to this guy! He’s been around f3 for about 4 months I reckon and his fitness has improved immensely particularly with running!)
Dunkin: 8:52 another amazing improvement. Dunkin didn’t even run 6 months ago. I think he was a 11-12 minute guy the first time he came out, but he’s been posting more and just threw down a sub nine. That’s incredible.
Pledge/COT/Devo: Led by Snowden. Don’t fall into the trap of letting your blessings begin to feel like burdens in your life. It was more detailed than this, but I’m running short on time. Thanks for reading my backblast!