VMA session

This is the hardest session of the week, no doubt about it. I begin to get tense even before I start running hard over the intervals. Mentally, it is just about as tiring as it is physically. But it might be the toughest session of the week, but it sure as hell does you good.

An easy warm-up with the club around St Germain. There were a good few participants tonight but Bruno and Jean-Marc were missing notably. Nick and I had a good chat on the warm up especially about Mo Farah and the return to form of some British athletes. He mentioned the Steve Cram write-up in the Guardian, which I've just read. Most disappointing though as it's more of a rant against Dwain Chambers than an interesting piece on Farah's run.

Anyway, once the warm-up came to its end, far too soon of course, it was time to face the track. The planned session tonight in the marathon training schedule (hereafter known as the Bible) was 10x500m in 2 series. Each 500m was to be run in 1:45 for a 3 hour marathon objective. Unfortunately, the club session was 10x400m, so I was on my own.

I set off and found the first interval relatively easy and finished it in 1:42. This was looking promising and in my mind, I had set my objective on 1:40 intervals. This never happened.

They went as follows:

1:42, 1:43, 1:45, 1:44, 1:45, 1:44, 1:44, 1:44, 1:43, 1:43

What was worse, was being overtaken by a runner on 400m intervals running each one in 64 seconds. I felt a real loser !

I had a nice warm down and ran 15km all up. 1163 calories burnt so I deserved my chocolate this evening.