When I signed up to Q Christmas Eve, I wanted to do something a little special. We have a great core group of PAX at the Rabbit and many of us have run today’s route a dozen times this year (sometimes twice a day!). Today’s effort was a great way to gauge our progress this year, by running a race-pace effort over our beloved XC course. The weather was perfect.

Looking forward to making this a tradition.

Warmup

A few of us put in a mile to two-mile jog before the 0530 start –

• SSH x 20 IC
• Imperial Walkers x 15 IC
• Butt-kickers x 15 IC
• Hacky-sacks x 15 IC
• Slow Merkins x 10 IC

The Main Event

The First Annual Rabbit 8K: We lined up in the parking lot, I gave one last disclaimer and encouraged folks unfamiliar with the route to stick together. Ready, set, go – and the watches bleeped and blooped the start of the race, headlamps stringing out around BC to add some more twinkle to the twinkling Christmas Eve “gloom.”

YHC took an early lead and felt good and stayed pretty steady the whole way. The second mile was killer with an extremely steep, but fortunately short, climb up to boulder park. Running alone is nothing like a fellowship run with the guys, but it is also fun as hell to run fast. I finished up and circled back to see who was coming down the road. Almost immediately I saw Dueling Banjos, his headlamp almost stationary in the gloom, so smooth is his stride. He ran great today.

Next I saw two headlamps coming from two different directions. Splashback tried last night to memorize the route that I posted on Slack, but got bored or overwhelmed part way through the 22 turns. He tried to hold on to Nescafe as he sped along at a close to 7 min/mile clip and had him in his sights up until the end of Bennett Mountain Trace where Nescafe surged and Splashback couldn’t match the move. Without his guide in site, he took a wrong turn or two, but made it back to the finish. His time is an estimate as his good sportsmanship wouldn’t let him finish ahead of Nescafe. Great run by both PAX!

Dueling Banjos headed back into the gloom to meet up with the 6 and the other 3 of us soon followed. I was keeping time, so I turned around when I saw the next finisher coming at me fast and looking really strong. RG3, who was glowing from head and legs (reflective compression socks? – safety first). He ran the course just ahead of Cricket. He gapped Cricket early and, according to Cricket, ran the hills extremely well, making it tough for Cricket to close the gap. RG3 took a slight wrong turn which allowed the gap to close just a bit making the race even tighter. The two Rabbit Regulars finished just seconds apart.

When the last two finishers in a race run an 8:18 pace, you know it was a good day. Iron lung is still coming down from a 50 mile race, but is already back in form. Bright Idea may have run a little faster if he had remembered to wear his 25lb vest. Without it, his cadence is just all wrong. (Side note – there were several points in the race where I expected Bright Idea to stomp up behind me and blow by. I’m not sure why this is, but it could just be that the man has tenacity.) These two finished hand in hand with hands raised over their heads in celebration of life and of the run and of the day, much like Meb Keflezighi and Mike Cassidy in the 2013 NYC Marathon or Meb and Hilary Dionne in the 2015 Boston Marathon, or Meb and YHC in the 2021 Boston Marathon.

Here’s a nice map of the course – evidently, we were mostly running through the woods. Strava can’t keep up with BC development.

The Results

Overall times for the 8K

Segment times for those technically advanced Strava PAX

We ran hard today and saw a lot of PRs in the segments, as well as RG3 and Dueling Banjos in distances from the mile to 5K. If you can PR in the mile in an 8K, you’re doing pretty well!

Mary was omitted

COT – joined by Rambler and Griswold of the Sharks (Jets?)

Announcements

• Tuesdays on Ice continues: be sure to add your efforts to the spreadsheet
• Cricket is relinquishing controlling stock in The Rabbit and stepping down as primary Q. YHC will humbly take the lead and try to continue to build this great AO in 2020.
• I may be missing an announcement

Name-o-Rama

BOM

I didn’t have anything too inspiring to say today. It’s nearly impossible for me to think straight after a 30 minute race-pace effort anyway, so that’s probably for the best. I just took the opportunity, being it the end of the year, to reflect on what a great decision it was to come out to F3 back in July, and how it’s changed my life in ways I didn’t even know my life needed to be changed. Primarily related to the 2nd F, but also very much the 1st and 3rd. Bright Idea tells me the 1st F is for Fitness – I had remembered the other two on my own. Merry Christmas, all.

Aye!