Doubling up

With a manic Monday and an early start with a first meeting at work scheduled for 6:30 am - yes, you did read that correctly - I put my recovery run back a day to Tuesday and ended up by doubling up with a session at the club in the evening.

The recovery run went well but I could definitely feel the impact of a hard Paris-Versailles race in my legs. The thighs were still aching slightly and I didn't have the same energy as of late. I set out on my usual course around Maisons Laffitte as it's the only route where I can see where I'm going now that the days are closing in again. I have added in a extra loop in the park which brings the total circuit to just under 13km. I set out slowly but as the body warmed up I gradually gained in speed.

By the end of the run I'd begun to feel better and the thighs had loosened. It was a pity that I hadn't been able to do this a day earlier. I finished the loop in just under 58 minutes at an average pace of 4:31 per km.

After a day in the office, I was able to sneak out from my myriad conference calls that I'm having to participate in at the moment and got to the club just in time to see everyone having the pre-rep speech and heading off while I changed into my kit. I chased off after them in the hope of convincing someone to return to the track with me and do the 2 x 3km that was indicated on the marathon training schedule. I caught them after a rather rapid warm-up but nobody was interested in my proposal so I settled on doing the 15 x 30/30 that were on offer with Miguel.

We set off on these intervals with Nico and Jean-Marc. I was able to stick to both of them for the first few intervals but after that their speed meant that I would lose 5 metres over the 30 seconds and then catch this back over the recovery. Jean-Marc is returning to form after some injury and he tired towards the end of the session but was otherwise looking very good. I was pleased with the quality of the session and the fact that the gap between Nico and myself is closing.

I ran around the track at the end after returning to the club to record 10km on the Garmin forgetting that I hadn't been able to start the watch until a kilometre into the training session at the start due to my catch-up exercise. 11km all up in just under the hour.