Rule Followers Can Still Run Circles without No Stinking Track

The BackBlast:

The impromptu Q’s are always the best or are they!? The ‘Belt notified me Monday night that my name was on the Q schedule but offered many ‘outs’ for YHC to get out of Q’ing. My email had dropped off the distribution list – a penalty I’m sure for not posting enough at the AO, so YHC couldn’t go through my normal weeklong planning process for devising the absolute best Thang. ‘Belt had multiple backup Q’s in the wings to take the reins, and that did not even include himself since he is on the IR. YHC decided “Why miss this opportunity?” – one reason it was an easy decision, is that one of my goals for 2022 is to sign up to Q at least once per month, so this would check the box for February. If you are reading this (which really doesn’t make since to even write, because obviously you are reading this) and you post regularly in F3 Metro but haven’t Q’ed recently or at all – here’s my call out to you to get your name on the Q list at any of the AO’s where you are posting – it’s the first way F3 builds leaders.

Ten of us decided to take the DRP this morning and get some miles in. I got the impression right when I arrived at the AO that recently, the SIBling Rivarly Qs had used the track a good bit and YHC had a plan in YHC’s head to use the track as well. As it turned out, the fence around the track was locked, so YHC being a ‘rule follower’ modified YHC’s plan and moved to the parking lot. Other than that, and a modification because of time, the original plan worked in a slightly different location. Plus, by changing the location, some convenient coupons offered a minor modification to the plan as well.

Deertick was an extra credit pax, as were, I believe GraveDancer and Alibi based on Strava postings. There may have been others. I guess if I heard a double respect was Q’ing a running workout, I may have tacked on a little distance to keep it real. No offense taken; EC of any kind is all good. Gridlock came in hot and had no trouble finding us. Alibi made his first SIBling Rivalry appearance, so put him on the Q sheet ‘Belt – he’s ready to Q. Freeloader had also come early and ‘jumped’ the locked fence. He credited the Promo brick pile as his entry way over the fence. He was within earshot of us who were on the outside of the fence, so we credit him as being part of today’s pax, and there’s no doubt he covered as much ground.

Everyone looked to be crushing it this morning. My plan involved breaking up the pax into teams of two and letting them run laps in opposite directions. First, they would run one lap, then two, then three, then 4, then 3, then 2, and finally one. We ended up skipping the second 3 lap set because of time. Runners would continue running their lap until they encountered their partner, then recover back together to the starting point, then taking a short breather before starting the next set of laps. Thanks to my partners Omar and GraveDancer for being faster and lengthening my recovery each set. When you are running the whole time with only short stops, it’s hard to say who is doing what, but I would say it looked as if callouts should be made to most everyone for looking good today – we had to call Aquafresh off the course because he was enjoying it so much. Day Z and Torpedo never stopped, but then I wouldn’t expect them to. Deertick told me I should be suspended from the Q schedule, which I guess says it wasn’t a walk in the park, but it certainly looked like he was out in front the whole time. No one really wants to know the specifics of what is done at a workout, therefore, I’m not even going to try and describe what we did other than what I shared above. Those that were there, know exactly what we did. And anyone who wasn’t there and really wants to know, can DM me for details on what we did – I’ll be happy to share it. But either way, this counts for one of the exceedingly rare backblasts you will see posted on the F3 Metro site.

Good to be back at SR again – back again in the not so distance future.

Carrier