15x200m

I finally made it to a club session last night having been treated to another sequence of ESWT on Monday night. It was a close call, leaving work slightly late but arriving just in time to get changed and be ready as the others were all heading out of the door. It had been a while since I'd made it to a mid-week session and there were plenty of faces I didn't recognise, but some more familiar : Nico, Bruno, Jean-Marc, Momo, Jérémie, Vincent and Miguel amongst others.

As we ran our warm-up through the St Germain forest, the talk was about the various performances at the weekend over the half-marathon, either at Rambouillet or at Rueil. A pretty good show overall with José, Thierry and Mireille all doing very well at Rueil, to the extent that Nico and I did put into doubt the exact measurement of the course. Some of the 10km performances looked too good to be true too - will have to run this next year to achieve a new PB! We managed to avoid following Michel into the darkest sections of the forest and ran back to the track. I discussed running injuries with Bruno who appears to have taken a subscription to ESWT at the local physio's. Apparently, he appreciates the pain !

By the time we got back to the track, I was already suffering from a slight stitch due probably to too much food at lunchtime and the 4kg of extra weight that I'm currently carrying. The options at the track amounted to trying to keep up with the big boys running 200m and 1000m intervals, or joining a group of lesser mortals to run 15 x 200m as marathon training. I chose the latter along with Vincent, Laurent, Nat, Alex and Bruno. These started off well and I felt very comfortable for the first 4 or 5 intervals which we were running at around 38 - 39 seconds and off 30 seconds rest. I didn't have a watch on (since I'd left it at home and wasn't initially going to run seriously anyway) and relied on the others to tell me how we were doing. By the time we reached 10, I was over-heating and suffering. 'Endurance' is not my middle name anymore - it's now 'curl over and die in agony'. I stripped my top off and let the others suffer by having to watch my pale flabby stomach trundle around the track for the last few intervals. By ythe time we finished, I was seriously tired and my achilles was beginning to show signs of wear.

Pleased to have run the session overall and it's given me new resolve to reduce my weight. I'll need this if I'm to improve. Looking forward to getting out there again now that the weather is starting to brighten.

About 11km all up and achilles is on the mend.