Sunday club run

There was only a smallish turnout at the club today which wasn't surprising as most people were running marathons either in Paris or at Rotterdam. Nevertheless, yesterday's running companions, Nico and Jean-Marc were there together with Gérald, Mireille, Simon and Ylies. I had decided to take it easy and just put a little bit of distance in before the race next week. So while the programme was 3x10' at threshold, I decided to run these at marathon pace instead.

After a 4km warm-up (at snail's pace it has to be admitted) we set off and I let the leading group of 6 mentioned in the first paragraph shoot off. I stayed with Alex and Jean-François happy to run at a more moderate pace of 4:30 then 4:11 for the first 10 minutes. After this first interval we tried to pull the group back together during the 3' recovery but the diversity of capabilities was too large and te distance between the runners too far. We set off again towards Poissy now and a nice downhill stretch to begin with. The pace was a little quicker with the Garmin recording 3:50 then 4:04 during this interval and I dropped Alex towards the end as I found a comfortable rhythm and chased Gérald as he fell off the back of the leading group.

Another recovery and we set off again. I tried to encourage Alex to stay with me but we were running at 15km/h and it was just faster than he was comfortable with. I focused on Mireille and Simon to begin with and then Mireille and Gérald as he dropped back again towards the end of the interval. I ran these in 3:58 then 4:02 so I'm happy with my performance. I was happy too that I wasn't running a marathon as it was very sunny, even in the forest and the heat was making itself felt. Hopefully it'll be cooler next week in London.

Results from Paris and Rotterdam are on the club site now and a few disappointments and surprises. Only 2 runners managed to beat 3 hours: Vincent then José just behind in 2:58 and 2:59 respectively. I imagine that we'll hear the full story later on this week. I'll keep you posted.

15km all up in 1:29. Would have like to run a little further but rushed back to see the end of the Paris marathon (well for the elite anyway) on the television.