The bell rang, five pax materialized from the Gloom with their Implements of Whoa(TM), and the latest meeting of the St. Christopher’s Country Club was gaveled to order. Here’s what was accomplished:
Tabata Set 1: SSH / IW
Hot Lap 1
Tabata Set 2: Weighted Squats
Hot Lap 2
Tabata Set 3: S/S Lawnmowers
Hot Lap 3
Tabata Set 4: Bicep Curls / Overhead Tricep Press
Hot Lap 4
Tabata Set 5: Banded Monster Walks / Other Weighted Work
Hot Lap 5
Tabata Set 6: 4 Minutes of Mary
Hot Laps 6, 7
Spreadsheets from the Gloom:
_ OK, I’ve noticed something about RVA in my year here that I need to get off my chest. And no, it’s not my shirt …
There’s a real cult of male topless running in this town.
It’s not like this was unheard of in CLT. My good friend Six Mike had a rule that if it was 70 degrees at the start of a run, a shirt was optional. But in these parts, shirtless seems to be less a way to beat the heat than just a way of life for many running dudes.
What I was not prepared for was to show up at the 49-degree St. Christopher’s track (with all of us in long sleeves) and witness a pasty white torso circling the track as we did our Tabata sets.
SYITG, indeed!
It put me in mind of the sign on the side of the Sunflower Public House in Belfast that gave me a laugh during my recent visit:
_ With Blank Space in attendance, there was a lot of talk about the new Taylor Swift album and “Wood,” the song about Travis Kelce’s Swinging Richard. Reminder that Blank Space will mark his retirement from performing with his former band, Taylor’s Version VA, by sitting in for one song of their Dec. 13th (TSWift’s birthday, you know) show at the Broadberry. I’m OOT, but Faceplant (who listened to the entire New Heights podcast on which Taylor announced the new album) has promised to represent F3 at the show.
_ We also learned that the only thing standing between Faceplant and a career in the Marines was his inability to do the required pullups on the PFT, but apparently if you’re a middle-aged dude you don’t need to worry about pullups — just be able to hang from a pullup bar for two minutes … (?) That and do lots of squats, according to some fitness guru who has 100 followers (one of them Faceplant) on his YouTube channel. And maybe run your laps at the track with no shirt.
_ The Bridge is Saturday. You should go — four hours out of your life to nail all three Fs. I’ll be there. Ping Upchuck for details.
OBT