YHC has been noticing a trend at Rooster, the men tend to finish the run early and then just gingerly stroll around main st or sip their drinks in the parking lot while waiting on the rest of the pax to finish. It was time to lay down a challenge from the early days of the Rooster and push the pax to run longer and harder.
I know what you are thinking. No, we didn’t go for the orignal finding FiA route (from Rooster to Smokehouse) and do stadium stairs before returning. That is a good idea and YHC will have to Q that in the near future.
YHC issued the Fulmer hardware challenge. In honor of the Tour de France, it was called the Tour de Batesburg-Leesville. The Fulmer hardware challenge goes like this; Leave the Rooster (located in downtown Leesville) and run to Fulmer hardware on the other side of downtown Batesburg and back to the Rooster in 45min.
The proposed route was about 5.25 miles long and used Francis street to cut off a corner. But some pax (not including Happy Trees) were scared of the possibly life threatening creature that may or may not live at the end of Francis street. This was also Friday the 13th, meaning there was a possible murderous man in a hockey mask hiding in the dark. The route was modified to avoid potential, certain death. This pushed the route out to 5.51 miles. The Pax have their work cut out for them. 5.51 miles in 45 minutes comes out to a pace of 8Min&10sec per mile.
Since men of any fitness level are welcome, alternate routes were given. These men were having nothing to do with alternate routes. It was Fulmer Hardware or nothing this morning. Challenge accepted, bottom line. The gauntlet was laid down and the men of Rooster were not backing down.
The challenge laid out was not going to be easy for the Q either. YHC has run this fast recently but for no more than 2 miles and YHC has not run more than 5 miles in a very long time. This means YHC was going to have to maintain a faster pace for way longer than would be comfortable, but there is no backing down from ones own challenge.
Leave the park heading down Main St toward Hwy 23 (Church St)
Right on Church St
Left on Fulmer St – Touch Fulmer hardware on the way past
Left onto Railroad ave
Right onto North Carolina Ave
Left on Hwy 1
Left on Main st and back to the Rooster
High lights of the morning:
YHC started out strong running with Mermaid. The pace was well under 8 min per mile but this pace proved to be more than could be sustained and at around mile 4 YHC had to stop at Kjs grocery store to drop off some merlot. But, just like Billy Bob from Varsity Blues, there was a puking rally and YHC was able to finish the route with an average pace of just over 8min.
Happy Trees arrived early because he had to leave early and ran the original route discussed the night before. This means that he ran down Francis Street alone to face down the creature. He faced off with the beast by taking his Nox vest off his back, wrapping the shoulder straps around his hand and holding the center straight out in front of him to light the way. He definitely looked like Frodo Baggin facing down Shelob with the light of Earendil. While Frodo fell the the giant spider, Happy Trees slayed the beast without a elven magical light.
Stay Puff killed the route and completed his first Fulmer Hardware challenge
Mermaid is an absolute freak of nature and took a couple extra laps around the parking lots and up and down side streets while waiting on YHC to finish puking up his breakfast.
T-claps to Caboose and Doodle, who completed the route together and I am sure fellowship was had. Great to have Doodle back and know that SK is back on home.