“Oh, why, hello derr, my friend! What isn’t going on herr??”

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So, sometime a bit after Y2K scare and all, wanna say circa 2001-2003ish, you know, back when folks would actually pick up one of those NetZero tins with a shiny CD in it near the checkout stand at your local grocery store (the kind that promises some silly ## of free hours of web surfing) and when everyone got there tunes off Napster, YHC got heavy into online sports betting. It was all Wild West then…legal gray area stuff before the Feds dropped the hammer and said it was no bueno (which I suppose recently, they reversed and now made it legal again…). I am ashamed to say that I developed quite an addiction to this stuff (I thank my dear mother, from whom I inherited my penchant for addiction) and spent way too much time and money dabbling in this ding dong pastime of sordid sorts.

Anyways, common parlance in sports gambling circles, perhaps even still prevalent today, was this wager booger called “getting Moosed.” What it boils down to is when there is some last minute score that is utterly meaningless in terms of the outcome of game itself, but the very godforsaken act takes your winning ticket and renders it completely worthless. Good example would be if you placed a wager on the winning team to cover the spread, but your team decides to stop playing defense coz, you know, they are so far ahead and there’s not enough time for the losing team to score enough points to come back and win, so they decide to personally screw you in the *ss by allowing the losing team to score just enough gratuitous points to still win, but FUBAR your weekend party funds (or worse, your rent/food money for the week, month…etc). Gamblers are a superstitious lot and I can tell you, many folks had their rituals to ward off “the Moose.” Mine involved burning a print out of the image above (The image was the mascot for Alaska Airlines. I mean, just look at the stupid grin on that filthy beast, smug AF…it’s just beckoning to get smoked and ashed…) while repeating the mantra “Vamoose! No Moose!” like 30-50 times.

Thankfully, those days are behind me and I have transferred my addictions to “healthier,” albeit, no less mental, pursuits. Which segues nicely to this morning’s festivities where a very lucky 13 Moosen or Meeses or Mooseses circled up in a lovely Dur’m strip mall parking lot at 0530 for a soupy, syrupy run through a quaint and beautiful neighborhood. Aye!

WARM UP

Greetings/Intros/Fist Bumps.

FNG today. Decided to go with a pre-game one on one welcome and disclaimer to bring a more personal and casual ambiance to this morning’s initiation.

Did some stretching, warm up exercises…WMH, Side Lunges, Hip Flexor/Hamstring Stretch, Butt Kickers, High Knees. Gave an overview of what the game plan was going to be…Head North on ATT, Head into Woodcroft, Explore the Woodcroft Trail, and end up at the ATT trailhead that heads south towards the mall.

MAIN EVENT

Here’s what we ended up doing per the Strava-sphere:

—> OK, so, right here, on the WP editor, I had embedded the Strava map from today’s run. Shows up nice and neat on the editor page, but when I hit the “publish” button, it pulls a Keyser Söze and poof, like that, it’s gone from the Churham site. Whatevs. Too old and busy to figure out how to make it work, so here’s the Verbal Kint version:

From Bean Traders, head N out of Homestead Market, past the Wendy’s, crossing over H54

Catch the ATT heading N on Southpoint Crossing Dr. Continue on ATT to Woodcroft Parkway

Left onto Woodcroft Parkway. Quick Right onto Fortune’s Ridge Dr. Catch the Woodcroft Trail off Fortune’s.

Head W on Woodcroft Trail to T. Take Left on Trail. Head S on Woodcroft Trail until it spills out back onto Woodcroft Parkway.

Head E on Woodcroft Parkway to Traffic Circle. Right onto Highgate. Head S on Highgate to Powerline Trail entrance.

Right onto Trail. Take Right, Head N on Woodcroft Trail to catch the Fitness Loop. Take Fitness Loop N until it spills back out onto Woodcroft Parkway.

Head W on Woodcroft Parkway back to Traffic Circle, Right onto Highgate. Head S until we get back to Powerline.

Right onto Powerline. Quick Left onto Woodcroft Trail, heading S. Up the hill, and exit onto Park Ridge.

Left onto Park Ridge, then Right onto Highgate. Take Highgate back to across H54 to ATT trailhead.

Distance: Approx 5 and change. Circled up and saw that we only had about 3 minutes left as we stopped a few times along the way to crush out squats while waiting on everyone to re-group.

COT 

Name-o-Rama

FNG Fig Leaf. Fig is originally from Canada. He mentioned that he broke a cardinal rule of the ATT, which is any guy over 40 is to keep his shirt on at all times. Sidecar suggested fig leaf as a play on the Canadian maple leaf, while another PAX (Snots, I believe?) made apt Biblical reference to fig leaf as a way to cover one’s “nakedness” or “shame.” Done.

***At this point, we were over time. Toolbox had made a request for some EC this morning, so I gave the PAX the option of calling it or doing a quick EC finisher on the ATT. Wisely, all chose to call it, except for Toolbox and me. I once read that US long distance champ and Olympian Kara Goucher said one should always finish every run with strides to make sure you always keep your fast twitch muscles on the ready. So that’s what we did. We did an AYG sprint from the ATT trail head entrance until we crossed over the I-40 bridge, hit 5 burpees, then did another AYG (albeit our pace was a bit slower on the way back) sprint back to the trail head, and did 10 squats. Ran back to Bean Traders and called it.

Nice work, all. Great morning with a great group of guys. Blessings and well wishes to the BRR runners. Prayers that there won’t be any other injuries or conflicts. Until next time, aye!