Tired Sunday

I got up this morning with the alarm to go for the Sunday run at the usual time of 9:15. Laurence was coming along too as her knee joint is improving and she wanted to try a 40 minute run in the forest with Anne. I'd promised Nick I'd be there having let him down last weekend when the tiredness was just too much ...

I ran up to the meeting point at the church and bumped into Nick and Anne on the way. They were jogging slowly and so we agreed that today would be a rest day and that we wouldn't push the pace. These plans were short-lived as when we got to the church, we saw Philippe looking in fine form and eager to stretch his muscles after a week off.
Le Mesnil le Roi Church

In fact, there was quite a good turnout as Pierre-Henry, Jean-Jacques and Isabelle had come along too. We set off slowly enough and then most of the group left us in order to run the short loop, whereas Nick, Philippe and I carried on, following the longer loop paths. We were running fairly easily, but as expected it was too easy for Philippe and so he started pushing the pace. We quickly went from running 6:00 per km to 4:49 and then 4:16. To cap it all, we caught up with the others and put on a further burst of speed just to impress them. The Garmin shows that I managed to reach 16.3 km/h at this point. I pulled ahead of Philippe and managed to tire him out. He's got clear potential to be a very good runner, but off a training base of one run per week, he lacks the endurance and stamina to maintain the pace over the distance. He's also a front runner, rather like me, and when you come past him, he quickly loses the will-power to put in the effort to keep up.

We stopped and waited for the others at the barrier and then started again slowly with them. The second half of the course was a replay of the first. Having overtaken the others along a long flat section, there was a slight downhill and Philippe pushed the pace again. I kept up and put on a little more pressure and we dropped Nick in the process. Philippe tired and dropped back and next time I looked behind me, there was only Nick. We ran in together at a reasonably fast pace at just under 15km/h. Philippe finished a couple of minutes afterwards but if he upped his training, he'd be able to beat me no problem. I'm trying to convince him to do a little more and then try and get him to join the club.

Good run overall but not the rest I had intended. Wondering whether to go out tomorrow now, but it's already been 4 days on the trot. Starting to feel good again and I'd like to keep this up.

12km all up in 56:55. Average of 4:46 with a max at 16.7 km/h. So much for a rest !