I was really pleased to make it to the club session tonight. I thought it was going to be out of the question when I got onto the periphérique and saw that an accident had occurred 5km further on. 24 minutes was announced on the overhead gantries, instead of the usual 4' for the next exit. Luckily as soon as I'd got past this, the traffic cleared and I arrived, miraculously, with 5 minutes to spare.
There was a good turnout tonight and I was able to pass on our beautiful trophy for 3rd place in the ekiden to Fabrice. This was a good thing as Laurence had declared the trophy persona non grata in the house and was close to offering it pride of place in the large black, cylindrical object just outside the house, aka the dustbin.I even passed on our winnings of 10€ Decathlon vouchers despite the temptation to keep the 6 of them and have a good contribution to a new pair of shoes, instead of a good contribution to a new pair of socks that I now have. Still, it's nice to take part in an event and come away with something, compared to the normal feeling of simple satisfaction from having participated. Still, as Coubertin would have stated: it's not the winning that counts but having taken part. These are wise words indeed and probably from somebody who never won anything and just wanted some form of satisfaction from that.
Thierry, Nico, Fabrice, Charles, Ylies, Romain, Gérald and Frédéric were all there and we decided that after a warm-up in the forest, we would head back to the track and do some 300m intervals. Charles and Thierry were not interested and they stayed with Miguel to do some longer intervals in the forest. We got back to the track and I have to admit that I was very apprehensive in such prestigious company. Furthermore, it was hot and sunny and I didn't have a cap. My bald pate is still suffering from too much sun on Sunday and I wasn't looking forward to an extra dose this evening.
After a few strides and shuffles down the back straight, we began. Nico and Ylies quickly took the lead, with Romain following in their footsteps. I was happy to try and hold off Fréd, while Gérald and Fabrice were just behind. This was the case for the next few intervals too and each one Nico and Ylies would finish about 10 - 15 metres ahead of me and I was consistently around 56" for 300m. I had no reference for this distance, so I didn't know whether this was good or not. As we ran these, there was a discussion as to how many we should do too. I had agreed to do 12 with Fabrice in the afternoon, but the others wanted to run 10 in one block. They settled on 10 and I decided I needed to toughen up mentally and would run 12 even if it was hurting like hell.
Intervals went as follows:
56", 56", 55", 55", 56", 57", 58", 59", 58", 58", 58", 58" so very consistent and all under the minute.
11.4 km all up in 1 hour exactly.
The scoop for the evening was the sight of Nico in cycling shorts. This is the guy that swore that he'd never be seen dead in "moule boules" or revealing underwear. To give you all an idea of what he looked like this evening, paperazzi were spotted in the grounds and I managed to get a photo from them :
Nico in full flight around the track this evening. What do you think ?
3 comments:
A very bad fake, I'm much more elegant. I'm going to put you on trial. Sad that you need to try this kind of strategy to distract our attention of your weak training.
See you in les Clayes!
I think it's a very good likeness actually. The photographer makes you appear slimmer than you are in reality, and your stride appears a lot longer here but apart from these minor discrepancies, I think that it's spot on.
As for my weak training, I wasn't the one who gave up after 10 intervals last night !
One solution : Nico wear a running short skirt when he arrive too late ...
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