Club session

My marathon bible stated for tonight: thou shalt run for 4x4 minutes at a speed equal to that for a 10km race. Thou shalt not run any faster and thou shalt not slacken neither.

I decided that the club session was close enough to this threshold training and that I would do that instead. This, at least, gave me the chance to run with other runners and to motivate me mentally to put the effort in.

We started with a 25 minute warm-up and then got down to business. The plan for the evening was 5 x 200m off 100m + 1000m + 5 x 200m + 1000m + 1600m. The rest between the 1000m and the next interval was 300m. The 200m intervals were to be run at VMA and then the longer distances at threshold, ie. 10 km race pace.

First problem this evening was that the Garmin decided to die on me. No battery left: I don't know what happened to the watch in my bag but it was dead to the world this evening (thankfully now recovered after a recharge).

Two groups quickly formed for the intervals: Miguel, Thierry and Jean-Marc in front; followed by me, Bruno, José and Fabrice. I pushed the first series of 200m's, leading the second group and then took off on the 1000m to finish this in 3:33. So I was well above threshold pace for the first one. I led the 200m intervals again in front of the second group but all 4 of us were closely packed together which was motivating.

We started the second 1000m interval and Bruno was leading all the way round, with me on his heels. He stopped 100m short of the finish, in his confusion, and I carried on pulling José around just behind me. We finished in 3:35 so a very similar time to the first interval. The last 1600m was very hard mentally. I was hurting already now and my energy and enthusiasm was waning. I'd felt so much better than recently up until this point that I was really pleased to be running well again.

I started leading over the 1600m and after one lap, José took the lead expecting me to follow closely. I wasn't ready mentally and I let him go slightly with a gap of 2 metres bewteen the 2 of us. The last lap was a killer and my sprint finish deserted me. Bruno came past 200m before the end and then Fabrice overtook me in the last 100m. I finished in 5:59 which was spot on schedule for me based on a 3:45 km.

Good session and my legs are tired again now. Can't help but feeling that all this is doing wonders to the legs and endurance. I really feel that my form is returning.

Good substitute for the official marathon plan. The mix of VMA and threshold training in the one session is a good combination. Switching from 1000 m pace to 200m pace is interesting !