VMA on track

I must admit that I hadn't been looking forward to this one : 20 x 400m on the track. Fabrice had insisted that this was part of the marathon programme that he'd been given and since we've been following his word, that was the plan for the evening.

It was a lovely evening too. The weather has improved vastly over the last few days and since it's getting lighter too, it was a real pleasure to get the running kit on and head off for a warm-up through St Germain. All of the normally constituted runners headed off right into the forest to do an hour 30 of easy jogging. The loonies turned left for a short warm-up before hitting the track. Guess which group I was in ? The temptation to turn right and forget about the marathon was tremendous and it took all my will to ignore the evil little voice in my head telling me to take it easy.

At least I was in good company: Nick had obviously lost all sense of reason and decided to stay with the marathon preparation runners tonight. Fabrice and Régis were there too - good job too since it was all Fabrice's fault that we were doing this in the first place. Yannick had joined also to run along with us, or rather run alongside, sprint off and then return and run a little further in our company.

We set off on the interval session after a few stretches and sprints up and down the back straight of the track. I set off at the front to start, running at a pace that I was comfortable with around the track. We split the remainder of the session between Fabrice and myself, taking it in turns to lead and to set the pace. The only exception was the last 400m where I set off with the intention of giving it a good blast only to be overtaken by Nick after 150m who was going like a steam train. I couldn't follow and I watched him from behind as he left me for dead around the final bend and down the final straight.

The intervals went as follows:

1:25, 1:25, 1:24, 1:24, 1:24, 1:23, 1:24, 1:23, 1:24, 1:25, 1:24, 1:23, 1:23, 1:23, 1:23, 1:23, 1:23, 1:23, 1:23, 1:14

So very consistent except for the last. Tiring session and very hard mentally to maintain the effort over so many intervals. No real pains to speak of - tired legs by the end though which needed stretching.

Almost 19 km all up in 1:36 so an average of 5:06 per km. Good preparation.