Sunday club run

I managed to persuade Laurence to come out for the first club session in months today. She's been nursing her sore knee since the Paris Marathon, and since this has improved recently, she's been training all by herself, not quite ready to face the others at the club before she felt fully fit.

Today was the day. Nick had suggested the club session as an alternative to the usual Sunday run and since I wanted to do a little more distance this suited me fine. Laurence was very apprehensive as we waited for the session to start: all the runners tended to be fairly fit and fast and I could tell that she didn't want to slow the group down. She even proposed to run back to the house before we set off, but luckily I managed to persuade her to stay.

Michel was leading the session. Not my favourite coach, as I have already stated on the blog, and he intended to take us up to Marly and the Princess Road for the session. We set off very slowly at 6:20 pace and after 4 km we stopped at the old hunting lodge on the Princess Road to begin the session proper. The idea was to run a 6 km loop from here with one group starting 3 minutes before the others. The start, however, was up a steep hill, which we later found out continued for over 1.7 km. Laurence set off and we watched the group run out of sight before we set off ourselves.

I set the pace up the hill with Yannick and Benoit, with Nick, Alex, Daniel, Jean-Claude and Ephram just behind. I was feeling very strong on the hill, since we started steadily and gradually built up the pace. By the time we got to the top, I could see the others and pushed the pace to catch them as quickly as possible. We were running above 15km/h now and I still felt strong as I pulled away from all except Yannick.

My only problem now as I overtook the last of the preceding group was where I was supposed to be running to exactly. My pace was good but I slowed a little to let the others catch up and to get instructions as to where to go. Yannick had dropped off considerably but he came back again now and we ran hard into the last straight before the final downhill back to the start. We hit 16.5km/h (3:33 pace) down the hill as I let myself go and stretched for the finish. So much for a 6km loop as we'd been gone just over 36 minutes now and I had an extra 9 km almost on the Garmin.

Nick and then Laurence ran back in now and we jogged back to the clubhouse at an easy pace. The clouds that had menaced with some rain at the start of the run had by now totally disappeared and it was a beautiful blue sky again. The temperature had also risen and when we got back, I was glad that we'd left when we did.

17.25 km all up in 1:29. Good 10km training with a bit of speed and endurance in the loop.

P.S. Tom said that Kanser might be interested in running La Rochelle Marathon when he's over in Europe which would be great. It's supposed to be a good quality race and well organised. It would be nice to meet him.