It wasn’t “Sun’s out, Guns out!” but more like “It’s November and it’s 70 degrees at 5:30 in the morning. Let’s bang out some merkins pre-run and then go shirtless for the run.”
22 strong on foot or on wheels attacked the Punisher route this fine morning. At least the runners ran the Punisher route, the Gears did something else…..
Routes:
4’s – Grove to a left on Malvern. Cross Broad where name changes to Westwood and continue to top of Acca Yard rail yard bridge and then back-track back to the Shovel Flag.
5’s – 4 mile route but continue on Westwood to CATALPA. That’s right, CATALPA! Turn around and back-track to flag.
6’s – 5 mile route but continue on to Laburnum and hang a left and go to Holton Elementary and then back-track to flag.
Numberama, Namearama, Announcements and YHC took us out!
Announcements:
Merkin Challenge has begun! “Bang ’em out!”
Ghost Flag will be at Dogpile tomorrow. Most FNG’s by Nano-region wins the flag. See Hardywood to get a definition of who qualifies as an FNG.
Splinter announced that he owed an apology to YHC. Thanks, Splinter! YHC’s Southampton County, VA accent makes it difficult to pronounce some of the street names of RVA, for example “Grove” and “Broad”
TYA has the annual Thanksgiving Day 45MOM Q on 11/22/18! Go Berkeley Plantation, beat Plymouth Rock!
NMS:
The temperature in the gloom can be very tricky. One day it’s too cool, another day, it’s too warm, other days it’s just right and then other days, you just don’t care because you fartsack. This morning was definitely too warm for November, but you got to fight it and continue on. YHC decided to attack the 5 mile route this morning for a RAMM first and struggled (combination of tasting spicy dinner from last night and remnants of col beer still from Halloween night) but came in at 6:15 and 30 seconds. Close one! Vinny upped his game and ran a good, clean and fast 5 miles to come in ahead of the time limit. The rest of the 5 milers were smoking it, led by Swirly, Gumbo and BT. Le Tigre posted to his first F3 run and attacked the 4 mile route (great job and keep coming back out!) Hoser (formerly Mountie) received his name change and posted for the second day in a row to start off his F3 career (also great job and keep coming back out!!) No one got lost which may be a Kubota running Q first! Prior to 5:30, several of the PAX “banged out” some Merkin Challenge merkins. Great job guys! After the run, Swirly and maybe others continued to bang them out. YHC is expecting to see another “500” in Swirly’s challenge box for today.
Something that YHC was thinking about this morning but forgot to mention during the COT was this: Phonics’ daughter, Rachel (forgot her F3 name??) won the Region 5 cross country championship yesterday and her team (Atlee) won as a team, as well! Phonics, this is awesome and we know you are proud. We also know that your other children run cross county, too and that you are proud of all of them! Great work as a Father and supporter of your children. You need to get Rachel out to a RAMM run so she can smoke the 6 milers! Here is the link to the article in the RTD on Rachel:
It was an honor to lead this morning and say the word “CATALPA” several times!
Have a great day all!
Kubota
keep posting!
7 Comments
CATALPA!
Good route Kubota . Haven’t been that way in a while and it was good to stretch the legs over the bridge.
The highlight of the 6 milers was Sippy trying to keep my cadence for a few strides then gave up. Otherwise, it was a pretty high intensity run and non-conversational pace.
For the record, wikipedia (which is the source of all truth in the world) says that catalpa is often pronounced as catawba. Who knew? I’d like to see Kubota pronounce the latin species name “Catalpa bignonioides”.
Good route Kubota !
Enjoyed the run BT and Gumbo for some on the way back.
70 in Nov – crazy…
See y’all in the gloom…
Go Berkley Plantation – also BT’s alter ego! Enjoyed the run today boys. Was glad to be a little less slow. Had to crank the last mile to get in before the door shut. I want hear TYA and Kubota reverse accents and provide color commentary for the BT v PR game on Thanksgiving Day. And for the record, the first Thanksgiving was in Williamsburg. (Who’s idea was this Merkin challenge anyway)?
Gears guys rode a rough approximation of Upchuck’s Tuckahoe route: down Grove and descend on Towana, climb College Rd and over to climb all of South Ridge Rd to Westham Parkway and back via Patterson. Definitely a great route. Pullout and Handshake led most of it, but those corksoakers are young so that only makes sense. I was hoping to have had Fuddski in the pack today… poor guy posted and found M. Fudd had relieved the Explorer of his pre-prepped road bike. D’oh!
Beautiful morning for a Bike ride. Great start to Friday, see y’all in The Gloom!
Great run gents. BT and Swirly were crushing it. Lost me there in mile 4, but it was fun while it lasted.
Congrats to Kubota and Vinny for crushing 5 for the first time. Well done. Great to see the steady, hard work paying off.
Welcome Hoser!! ‘Eh