Intro:
I’m a creature of habit. I like a routine. And when you have 2 kids under four years old, you absolutely need a routine. I’ve been posting 3-4 days a week for +4 years on a steady rotation of Monday – Phoenix, Wednesday – Bandit, Friday – Sparta, Saturday – Latta. Tues / Thur are some combination of #meatpuppet training or peloton in the basement with dueling baby monitors while my better half goes to one of those overpriced boutique fitness studios. Sunday is always #smartsack day.
I can probably count on two hands the number of times I’ve posted somewhere other than my normal rotation. Ring Run twice, SharkTank twice, and Worm twice. That may be it. I’ve still never hit WIB, SIB, Sweet Six, Ranger, Indy, Big Hair Monday or Mustang. If its south of AG, forget about it.
Until last week, I had never posted to PWW despite the AO being 0.4 mi from my house. For those outside of Metro, PWW has the reputation of being the fastest and least FNG friendly “bootcamp” in Charlotte. On Sunday night 3/14 I shot off my weekly text to Frogger.
Sheep: Phoenix?
Frogger: Negative – PWW. Holtz has the Q.
Sheep: Nice. Never been. Will I get dropped?
Frogger: Naw, you’re good
I saw Checkpoint’s pre-blast that mentioned something about Holtz calling a code red. Not sure what that means, I thought, but Holtz seems like a nice guy. I’m sure it won’t be too bad.
Show up Monday morning 5:29 (gota act like you’ve been there, amiright?) and do a mental check through the who’s who of metro batflippers, some of which I’d never actually posted with before. It had been a while since I’ve had the pre-workout jitters, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous.
First exercise, is the merkin. Ok, I thought. Merkins in the parking lot to start. Not so bad.
Next exercise, meet at the top of Bonesaw. Um…. What? I could tell by the immediate reaction of the Pax that I wasn’t the only one hoping this was a joke. Bonesaw is not only one of the steepest hills in Charlotte, its also over 2.5 miles from the PWW AO. There was about a 5 second collective pause by the Pax, and then everyone took off. ThinSlice immediately suggested forming a splinter group, to which Dredd rightfully noted that we would never live it down.
Now, I know where Bonesaw is and how to get there. However, I typically drive in my car around the I-277 beltline to get there. I’d never run there, which consists of running across uptown, through a slightly sketchy industrial area, and into NoDa. If you want to run faster, I highly recommend a training regimen that includes potentially getting dropped in slightly sketchy parts of town at 5:30 in the morning.
We ended up doing three trips up and down Bonesaw, a comically low number of merkins and a total of +6 miles. I made it back just under the 45 min time limit and surprisingly did not get dropped. I waited for Frogger to get back (that’s right, I beat Frogger home) to tell him that I hated him and I was going back to Phoenix next week.