Stroll in the forest

Thursday night club session. I coasted into the clubhouse with a good 5 minutes to spare this evening before the official start of training. Some good-hearted abuse from Nick and Philippe when I arrived, "Good you're here. Training must start soon". I even get thrown the keys to the changing room now as I'm always the last to arrive.

Anyway, 4 minutes and 30 seconds later, I was outside and ready to go. Perfect timing. There was a larger turnout than on Tuesday with Thierry, Miguel, Jean-Marc, Fabrice, Alex and Nico all present. We set off at a very comfortable pace (6:20 per km) and ran through the forest towards Le Mesnil. We got to the crossroads near the car park and stopped here.

Miguel, who was leading the session tonight, gave everyone the choice of just running back at an easy pace, or running at threshold for 20 minutes as a workout. I chose the latter and with Nick, we tried to hold on to Thierry, Jean-Marc and Miguel as they coasted back through the forest, chatting away. We were running at just over 4:00 per km pace and the final kilometre was run in 3:58 on the Garmin. I was feeling really good until we came to a slope 7 minutes before the end, and I lost touch with them then. To add insult to injury, Fabrice came past me at this point and I couldn't hold on to him either. I'm just lacking a little stamina and endurance at the moment.

Anyway I was pleased with the session as I felt it had done me some good. More of these are necessary if I'm to improve on my 10km times in September. Nick was on fine form too. I was given the explanation for his absence on Tuesday: future business exploration and networking - this is PC speak for boozing in Paris with former colleagues. Nice one mate !!

11.5 km all up in 1:01. Pretty good going considering the easy first half to the session.