It’s time for some fun with a Ridiculous Relay tonight! For those who haven’t had the pleasure of a Ridiculous Relay before, here’s how they work. After our warmup, everyone lines up in order of speed so I can match up the fastest and slowest runner, the next-fastest and next-slowest, and so on, and then assemble pairs of people into four-person teams.
Then, one set of people from each team will start. Here’s the twist. Within each set, the runners run in opposite directions around the roughly 400m loop until they meet, exchange a baton, and then turn around and run back the way they came to the start. That way, the faster runners run farther, and the slower runners run shorter, but everyone runs for about the same amount of time. The pace should be quick—roughly mile race pace but not all out. Pace yourself because it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and run too fast early on.
Once the first set of runners both make it back to the start, they hand off the baton to their team’s second set of runners, and the first set gets to rest and cheer for everyone else. While all this is happening, the other teams’ runners are doing the same thing. Laps are run! Leads change! Batons are dropped! Chaos ensues! The winning team will get all their runners back first after all sets of runners have done 8 reps.
As always, we meet at the Stewart Park bocce pits near the big pavilion, with the warmup starting at 6:30 PM. All are welcome, but you must be an FLRC member and sign the FLRC Training Programs waiver once for 2024.
Resources
- Administration: You must be an FLRC member and sign the 2024 waiver!
- Location: All workouts take place at Stewart Park in downtown Ithaca
- Parking: There’s lots of free parking in Stewart Park.
- Warmup: Jay Johnson’s Lunge Matrix and Leg Swings, then 10 minutes of jogging
- Cooldown: 10 minutes of jogging, then Jay Johnson’s Strength and Mobility
- Pace Calculator: Jack Daniels’ VDOT Running Calculator