Club trot

Summer is over. Officially. I can tell you this with certainty because there were at least 40 runners at the club tonight all back from holiday looking tanned, fresh and eager to run hard. 

Obviously with any group there are always a few exceptions: Gérald is still whingeing on about being injured despite running at 4:30 pace without a bead of sweat on him. In fact he was spotted at the pond next to the club splashing water onto his face pretending that he'd been trying hard this evening; Nico is as pale as ever as unfortunately he is too poor to afford to go on holiday; Miguel the trainer was back from holiday and apparently had no intention of running hard as it might disturb the pot belly he is trying to build on at the moment...

Miguel stood up at the beginning of the session to announce the programme. He announced that the holidays were over and that he was delighted to see everyone back and looking healthy. To celebrate the reunion we were going to take it easy (to preserve the belly obviously) and an easy jog in the forest followed by stretching was on the menu. The large female contingent were all delighted by Miguel's programme.In fact, Laurence, Katia, Anne, Delphine and Aude amongst others had to be held back from running over and hugging him to death. Since I'm currently floating on my own purple running cloud at the moment, I wasn't bothered either way.

I ran with José, Bruno (back from injury at long last) and Mireille and caught up on their holiday news and training schedules for the next few months. Bruno is trying to turn himself into a triathlete and has taken up swimming. He's finally reached that satisfying situation where he doesn't need to be rescued from drowning 6 times every length he does. The ironman is still a little way off yet. José has taken up mountain biking in preparation for the Millau ultra-trail. Don't ask me how this helps unless he's planning on hiding his bike half-way up the first mountain on the circuit. Mireille has been taking it easy and is now aiming to smash the competition in the French half-marathon championships at the end of October. She gave me a few words of encouragement on how to beat that young whippersnapper Nico. Unfortunately, I can't mention them here as that would give the game away. Needless to say that I was enthusiastic before and now I'm utterly confident in my ability to whop his ass in the next race.

So a gentle jog it was until we got back to the track and since I only had 9.5km on the Garmin, I decided to run a few laps to achieve at least 11k before doing the stretching with the girls. I put on a little show just to show what shape I'm in and found myself running the next kilometre in 3:33 - amazing. It felt easy too.

It was relaxing to finish the session stretching in the grass doing a few sit-ups and listening to José and Nico grunting beside me as they struggled to manage 15 without regurgitating their mid-day meals. To cap the session, Delphine showed us all her recent poses achieved on her last club 18-30 holiday (sorry UCPA) involving lifting her buttocks some 50 cm off the ground. Just what do these youngsters get up to nowadays? No wonder Nico and José were grunting so much...