Cora with Andy

Nick was away today so I had organised with Andy to run to Cora for the usual Saturday run.

I wrapped up warmly and set out to Andy's house. We ran off easily into the forest at about 4:35 pace down the hill. We chatted about work and running and our training sessions this week. Andy has been running intervals with 30-30 sessions and kilometre intervals. I was trying to convince him that endurance running was better for performance, interspersed with some races for speed and the adrenaline rush. We decided that our next race together would be Issy in early December, but I'll have to see how quickly I can recover from the marathon 2 weeks earlier. I don't want to be pushing my body too quickly after the marathon, provoking an injury. This is what happened to Laurence earlier this year and it took her months to recover.

We got to Cora in a quick time having averaged between 4:35 and 4:45 pace all the way along. Andy was running a lot better than last week and is now fully fit after the Yvelines marathon relay. After about 8 km, we slowed coming back up the hill to Pavillon de la Muette but only to 12km/h or 5:00 per km. This was a lot better than last week and I explained that this was probably due to Nick not being there to slow us up ! (This should provoke at least one comment!) Andy looked good running all the way around and not as tired at the end as he has been.

15.1km all up in 1:13 or 4:42 per km. Nice, easy run to finish the week with 84 km managed in the course of the week.

Andy lent me "Running with the buffaloes" which I've been reading avidly throughout the day. Great book about the training schedules and lives of the University of Colorado cross country team in 1998 with their lead runner Adam Goucher and the coach Mark Wetmore. I fully recommend it to anyone interested in running seriously.