7 June 2011

Easy club session

Taking it easy this week in the taper before the long gruel that awaits this weekend. I'm entered for 2 races in the trails in Britanny this weekend: 13km on Saturday and 58 km on Sunday in the trail challenge put on by the organisers. 3 of us from the club are attempting this challenge and I hope to be in pole position but I have Gérald as my closest competition.

Despite the taper, I was stressing like hell as I was caught in the usual rush hour traffic jam of 30 km between work in Malakoff and St Germain for the club session. There was no real incentive apart from running easily with friends and chatting about the events of the weekend. I arrived 5 minutes late and managed to jump out of the car, pull my trainers on and catch them after 2 minutes down the road as the rest of the club had started late too.

The turnout was smaller than usual with only Nico, Nat, Mireille and Momo there from the regulars. José was taking it easy and no sign of Gérald, Thierry or Jean-Marc. Slightly worried about Gérald as he is probably putting in some last minute quality sessions before the runs at the weekend. Just hope he isn't tiring himself out in the process.

The programme for this evening was 1:15 recovery jog which suited me fine. I ran with Nico and Régis and we chatted about the 10km race in St Germain this weekend. I could tell that Nico was disappointed with his performance as he's been running so well recently. It just shows that even when you've done everything right there's no accounting for the days when things don't turn out as you want or hope. We showed him no mercy anyway and teased him like mad about being "chicked" by both Jennifer and Mireille from the club. He won't let this happen again I'm sure !

12.7 km all up in 1:12 so very easy. Only the last 1.5 km was done at pace with a little burst of marathon speed towards the end to finish. Feeling very good at the moment and am convinced that I'll do well this weekend.

All's well here. Looking forward to the end of the week already.

3 comments:

Gérald said...

James ...
Mon programme de samedi à samedi prochain :
Samedi 22km avec camelbak première fois de ma vie.
Dimanche.rien. pas le temps.
Lundi 16km avec camelbak (2ième fois) puis j'ai poussé à 22km me sentant bien.
Mardi 2*6km avec camelbak (3ième fois) avec mon ancien club le FLEP.Il n'y aucune qualité la dedans 12km/h au maximum moins bien que ta séance.
mercredi rien jeudi rien vendredi rien.

Trouve un autre adversaire. Je ne suis pas ton homme.Je fais cette course pour MOI et pour me prouver que je peux le faire. Je vais y aller à vitesse minimal quitte à finir dernier. Si tu comprends pas ça ... passe ton chemin.Il y a 3 254 655 autre occasion dans l'année pour se bagarrer.

James said...

Gérald. You're exagerating again! There are only 525 600 minutes this year so we won't have over 3 million opportunities to race each other.
I've updated my blog race counter to include you in the 2011 challenge.
The camelbak doesn't change much to the run, only adds a little weight and rubs your back raw (which you only discover really when you've finished). As for your training, well it looks like you've been tapering well this week ready for the race. See you Saturday.

Nicolas said...

Your official challenger is far too strong so you decide to find another one...