The loneliness of the medium-distance runner

I left early from work to get to the club session tonight. It has been a hard day/week/month/year, in fact all of these and sometimes it's good to leave it all behind and to liberate my mind from my business preoccupations and run with like-minded people. I find running allows me to evacuate all of these thoughts. I can step back from my problems and think them through more clearly, often finding solutions to problems that have been bothering me for hours. Today I got stuck in a traffic jam.

I had been looking forward to the session tonight. In fact, we had been planning it on Saturday with Nico and Miguel. The idea had been to run the last hard session for the week tonight, ready for Sunday's race in Houilles. Miguel had planned 3x1600m just so that he could time it easily around the track. I had been looking forward to pushing it as hard as possible and getting a good quality session in ready for the race. Last minute preparations to pick up some speed, readying myself to give it all on Sunday and especially to give Nico a run for his money. All these plans put to waste by a monstrous traffic jam on the Paris ring-road and then the St Cloud bridge.

I spoke to Laurence on the phone who had arrived at the club and was wondering where I was. She had my Garmin with her. She recommended that I go home and run from there since the track was slippy with the remainder of ice and snow from the weekend and had been declared off-bounds. I followed her advice and changed into my running kit at home and set out with the intention of doing the 3x1600m by myself, but without my Garmin to measure the distance.

I set off on the usual route down by the river and then began my first interval. I ran until the roundabout in front of Maisons Laffitte castle and then slowed down until the 3km marker and set off again. I ran the second interval better and then ran my 400m recovery before running the last interval, finishing this in Maisons Laffitte park. I didn't feel tired enough though and despite my efforts to push the pace, I still had some energy left in my legs. I decided then and there to run another interval through the park, down to the castle and then back again.

This was better. I was taking longer to recover and my pace was slower. I left the park and decided to give it one last go by runinng another kilometre at full pace down Rue du Gros Murger from one end to the other. Now I was tired - a quick jog home and I'm now ready for the race this weekend. Nico watch out!

12 km all up in 55 minutes.