30-30

Well, it was the day of reckoning today or rather the evening anyway. I'd been reading about the 30-30 session in the running magazine we subscribe too and this was my first occasion to put it into practice.

Laurence and I attended our first ever training session with the St Germain running club: La Foulée Royale. Before you start, the name of the club is rather pompous, but the people we met this evening were really nice and friendly. There was a large group at the start of about 40-50 people in total and having listened to the president give a short speech, mainly addressed to the newcomers, we set out.

The first 25 minutes was a warm up and I haven't run this slowly in years. We were averaging about 9 kmh. Then we stopped and split up into 2 groups: a faster group with some of the more experienced runners and a slower group for the newcomers. I decided to join the fast group with Nick and we began a 30-30 session where you run flat out for 30 seconds and then jog to recover for 30 seconds before repeating the process 10 times and then take a minute break before starting all over again 10 times, then another break before finishing with another 5.

It all began quite easily and I wondered what all of the fuss was about but by the time that I'd done 5 fast runs, I began to struggle to keep up with the leaders on the fast runs. We finished the first series and then began the second series. The fast sections felt longer and longer and when we finally finished the last 5, I was sweating heavily and beat.

Nick had hung back a little on the second series before catching up at the end and Laurence had decided to run in the slower group from the start. I was really pleased with the workout and look forward to some more training with the group. Some of the runners are very capable and it will push me more to train with them.

12 km in all for the session in 1 hour 12. Great workout, but I don't think that I have the courage to do this by myself.