I was running with Nico and Laurence was accompanying us both on the bike to carry water and some food bars and fruit gels for us. The plan was to start from the club and then run along the top of Princess Road at marathon pace or around 15 km/h for the 30 minute intervals before heading back down Princess Road for the warm-down. It was a lovely morning to begin with if a tad on the cold side as the temperature was hovering around 2°C.
We got to the top of Princess Road in just over 30 minutes, running very comfortably and chatting easily. Then the hard work began. To start with, Nico's shoe pod was playing up so that meant he was unable to gauge his instantaneous speed. The Garmin is not very accurate on this front either, so after an initial start at what was indicated at around 4:14 pace we sped up and the first kilometre went by in 3:52. In fact, the pace never actually really dropped from then on. We ran through the forest to St Gemme and the edge of Feucherolle before dropping down to St Nom la Breteche and the end of the first interval. We'd covered 7.77 km which calculates out to an average pace of 3:52.
Both Nico and I were wondering at this point if we hadn't gone out too fast and whether we'd be able to keep this up. The 5 minute recovery went by too quickly to dwell on the problem and sooner than expected we were off again. This time we had to start by running up the steep hill through St Nom and Nico made a few yards on me up the hill. We turned left along the forest track back towards Feucherolles and I put in an effort to catch him and to stay together. There is an extremely long straight through the forest here and a slight downhill which I used to maintain my rhythm. Nico appeared to be falling behind slightly but at the end of this road we turned right and he went past me now at this point. We would tire mentally at different places and it was the sight of the other pulling ahead that would encourage us both to react and to push the pace again. This second interval we covered slightly less ground with 7.68 km or an average pace of 3:54 but this included that first hilly kilometre in 4:14.
One left to go now and we headed back along the top path to the St Germain / St Nom road and ran around this 4km loop twice. I was beginning to tire now and it was all I could do mentally to manage to maintain the effort. Nico appeared to be cruising and looked more comfortable than I felt. Laurence noted that I was white above my mouth, a sure sign that I was putting the effort in. I'm glad that she didn't tell me this until afterwards. I was able to hang on until 5 minutes left when I suddenly found a final burst of strength and caught Nico up and went past slowly. We finished together covering 7.74 km for the last interval or an average pace of 3:52.
37 km all up in 2:45 exactly. Another huge performance and with tomorrow's early morning run, I 'll be well over 100km this week in training. If this doesn't work, nothing will.
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