Nick was busy at home, entertaining this weekend so I decided that rather than go running with the usual crowd from the Church at Mesnil le Roi, I would head off for a longer Sunday run with the club. Pay-back time for "moi-je.com" will have to wait until another day.
It was a busy weekend and when I turned up at the clubhouse this morning, it took me all of 5 minutes to greet everyone. The training session planned was a threshold session of 14 mins , 12 mins, 10 mins effort off 3 minutes recovery. The idea was to run out to the Golfclub at Joyenval, and the are known as the Retz desert (le désert de Retz) to run these intervals.
Plenty of competition to maintain the pace this morning: Thierry, Fred, Yannick, Jean-Marc, Bruno, Adrien, Philippe amongst others. We set off and arrived at the golfclub after about 30 minutes of warm-up and then began the first interval. Jean-Marc, Fred and Thierry set off easily enough but as I joined them they pulled away again leaving a small gap that I couldn't close. We ran up through the forest and up some hills, bringing back fresh memories of Friday's fell race and my legs slowed instinctively. There's a lovely track through the forest near the top that contours around that I've often cycled along and I followed the others with some distance along this path.
Disaster struck at the end of the path when I reached a crossroads and couldn't see which way the group had turned. Yannick caught up at this point and he pushed ahead with Adrien on his tail. A few minutes later and it became obvious that there were no other runners along this path and so at the end of the first interval, we pulled together the remainder of the group, about 10 of us and back-tracked. We went down the hill this time and turned right under the motorway and the second interval was then a little marred by dead-ends on the path and numerous U-turns. Maggy wouldn't have approved.
It was only then that I understood that they were trying to find there way back to the golf-club and the start. I'd assumed, naively, that the others in the group knew where they were going and I just followed blindly. For the last interval, I led for the first 6 minutes until we hit the right path but as Adrien and then Bruno went past, I couldn't summon the energy of the willpower to push on and follow and so the ended up 30 metres ahead by the end.
Last interval was run at a steady 16km/h which I found heavy going. Met up with all of the group again by the end, more by luck than judgement, and jogged back to the clubhouse.
18 km all up in 1:39. Average of 5:30 per km. Nice long run with some good hills.
Photo as promised of my feet. Please don't examine if you're squeamish !!
It was a busy weekend and when I turned up at the clubhouse this morning, it took me all of 5 minutes to greet everyone. The training session planned was a threshold session of 14 mins , 12 mins, 10 mins effort off 3 minutes recovery. The idea was to run out to the Golfclub at Joyenval, and the are known as the Retz desert (le désert de Retz) to run these intervals.
Plenty of competition to maintain the pace this morning: Thierry, Fred, Yannick, Jean-Marc, Bruno, Adrien, Philippe amongst others. We set off and arrived at the golfclub after about 30 minutes of warm-up and then began the first interval. Jean-Marc, Fred and Thierry set off easily enough but as I joined them they pulled away again leaving a small gap that I couldn't close. We ran up through the forest and up some hills, bringing back fresh memories of Friday's fell race and my legs slowed instinctively. There's a lovely track through the forest near the top that contours around that I've often cycled along and I followed the others with some distance along this path.
Disaster struck at the end of the path when I reached a crossroads and couldn't see which way the group had turned. Yannick caught up at this point and he pushed ahead with Adrien on his tail. A few minutes later and it became obvious that there were no other runners along this path and so at the end of the first interval, we pulled together the remainder of the group, about 10 of us and back-tracked. We went down the hill this time and turned right under the motorway and the second interval was then a little marred by dead-ends on the path and numerous U-turns. Maggy wouldn't have approved.
It was only then that I understood that they were trying to find there way back to the golf-club and the start. I'd assumed, naively, that the others in the group knew where they were going and I just followed blindly. For the last interval, I led for the first 6 minutes until we hit the right path but as Adrien and then Bruno went past, I couldn't summon the energy of the willpower to push on and follow and so the ended up 30 metres ahead by the end.
Last interval was run at a steady 16km/h which I found heavy going. Met up with all of the group again by the end, more by luck than judgement, and jogged back to the clubhouse.
18 km all up in 1:39. Average of 5:30 per km. Nice long run with some good hills.
Photo as promised of my feet. Please don't examine if you're squeamish !!
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