Sunday club session

I trundled off to the club for the morning session by myself this morning since Laurence was running with a friend. The sun had finally decided to come out and the temperature was far cooler than Saturday, so much that I was quite looking forward to the prospect of an easy Sunday run through the forest with the other guys from the club. Nico had promised to turn up so it was a bit of a surprise to see that he wasn't there when I turned up. In fact, there was not a large turnout with about just over 20 runners present and about half of them women. I was just beginning to wonder if I wasn't better off running by myself when Nico turned up, looking as though he'd had a rough night and needed a couple of matches to keep his eyes open.

I had a quick chat with Simon and Alex then ran towards the front and saw Nico with Vincent. So there were definitely some runners who were going to push the pace at some point today and the session was improving greatly until Michel Z announced that we were heading towards Cora. I don't have anything against this little lake but I would have preferred some other destination for a change. We were running at a gentle pace with Vincent, Nico, Ephrem and myself at the front chatting about Vincent's forthcoming move to the States and the impact fast food would have on his running. It might have been gentle (5:00 / km) but we soon distanced the others so we stopped at the cabin in the forest as per usual. Our front running tactics apparently cut no ice with Michel Z and when they caught up here, they continued straight on without stopping. Michel Z was showing us in no uncertain terms that it was he who'd be leading the session today.

Michel stopped the group about 10 minutes later and instantly a row started with another runner telling him that this wasn't warm-up speed and that he was exhausting the group etc., etc. I almost felt sorry for Michel with the fierceness of the attack and would have stepped in to add my tuppence worth but it was Michel after all who can be so annoying... We carried on and then stopped 10 minutes later for a pee stop but nobody was interested now as we'd stoped earlier. Michel was taking no chances though in upsetting anyone else now. We started again and headed towards Pavillon de la Muette: Vincent, Nico and Ephrem accelerating away from the rest of the group. I wasn't going to run by myself with Michel so I put on a burst myself to catch them and we headed off towards Achère for our 10 minutes acceleration as planned.

Nico clearly fancied his chances here but I wasn't going to let him have it easy so we pushed the pace until we were striding at 3:37 pace and sped to 3:32 pace now before a little hesitation as to where the path should go and then back up to 3:40 pace. I felt good about myself as to be able to hang on and Nico was only a couple of metres ahead, there was virtually nothing in it. Ephrem and Vincent fell off the back with Vincent really struggling with the pace, showing his lack of training since the marathon back in spring. We ran back to Achères and the railway before cutting into the forest on the Poissy side and along the tracks running parallel to the main road. We slowed now for Vincent to keep up and then cut back towards Croix de Noailles before crossing back over the main road and along back to the club. We caught the rest of the group here and pushed the pace again to catch the front runners, running at 15km/h. I found this hard and let Nico and Ephrem go at this point before catching them again just before the sprint finish at 16 km/h.

18.25 km all up in 1:31 or an average of 5:00 per km and a total of 66 km for the week.

The best part of the morning was heading back to Nico's for breakfast with Laurence and being looked after by his charming wife. The idea of a dip in the pool was tempting but we'd cooled off after the run now and the temperature was not hot enough to entice this time. Good morning all round.