Thursday club session

I've been letting my hair down lately, which is ironic coming from me. The customary seriousness with which I take my training, my determination to follow my training plans, my early morning runs, etc. All of this has gone out of the window since Toulouse and now I'm paying the price.

I stepped on the scales this morning and then immediately wished that I hadn't. 77.4kg was the verdict. This is over 2 kg heavier than when I ran the marathon and 3kg heavier than at the peak of my training mileage. I have to admit that I've been drinking a few more beers recently, relaxing more in the morning and generally relaxing and enjoying life now that I don't have an objective to achieve. Where has this led ? To a big belly and a weight complex.

I arrived at the club with some determination this evening. Not necessarily to run a tough session but to get some exercise and to burn a few calories. Large turnout when I arrived: Nico, Gérald, Bruno, Thierry, Jean-Marc and then some fast guys: Tom, Jéremy and Mohamed. Miguel announced that the session for the evening was 500m the 4x1k followed by 300m to finish.

We warmed up and with Nico and Gérald we chatted about Toulouse and the fact that I could now die peacefully since I'd beaten Mireille's record over one distance at least which neither of the others could claim to have achieved (yet)! We got back to the track and Gérald announced to Mireille the contents of our chat (he doesn't know anything about male solidarity - we'll put this down to his age) and she announced that I'd beaten her time for now but that it wouldn't last. Bruno added that I'd better start training for London as he was going to beat me - so a lot of mouth but we'll wait for the real tests to begin.

The track session was hard. I didn't have a watch on but I ran with Gérald for the first few intervals as we trailed behind the group with Mohamed, Jéremy, Nico and Jean-Marc and so he was able to give me an idea of the splits:

1:38 for 500m, then the 1 km splits went something like 3:25, 3:30, 3:32, 3:38. Last 300m in 53 or so seconds approx.

I find the start easy enough but the lactic rose quickly over the 1k intervals and I was falling off the back quickly by the end. Mohamed was running those in 3:06, Nico in 3:18 - 3:20 and Gérald was between 3:20 - 3:30 depending on how hard he pushed. Good tough session and great to be running with the others. I haven't run intervals this hard in a while and I felt the effort. As I said to the others, it's easier to run a marathon than these.

About 11km all up for the evening.

Surprise of the evening was to hear that Bruno, having run Venice marathon in 2:58 is still intent on running Nice - Cannes marathon in a couple of weeks time after completing his marathon preparation this time. It won't be enough to beat me in London in the Spring though. Bruno you've been warned ;)