20 January 2012

3 - 2 - 1 Friday session

Another Thursday skipped due to work commitments and I missed the club session too. I went to bed Thursday evening determined to run my favourite marathon training session involving 3km then 2km then 1 km off 3' then 2' recovery with target times of 11:30, 7:30 then 3:30. I've never actually managed to achieve these target times, always falling short on the last interval running somewhere between 3:35 - 3:38. I woke up at 6:00 this morning and I felt really tired again. Sod the intervals, it'll be another recovery run I thought as I pulled on my running kit.

I got outside and over the first kilometre down to the Seine, I managed to convince myself to do the intervals as I was lapsing into too easy a routine. Too many recovery runs and not enough quality. I was at that point where your mind is telling your body to do something and the body is not convinced and doesn't want to respond.

Tough. I was off and running as the Garmin beeped the first kilometre. It felt hard and I wanted to stop already. This is normally the easiest part as the 11:30 objective is not too stretch and only requires 3:50 pace average. I ran these in 3:46, 3:48 then 3:41 so 11:15 for 3km and the first objective achieved.

A 3' recovery and I set off again towards the park: 3:41 then 3:40 so 7:21 for the 2km and another target under the belt. I let myeslf recover for 2' now and I still actually felt relatively fine. "Push it this time", I told myself and set off for the last interval - 3:28 and I finally managed to break my targets. Thrilled to bits and I was happy for the rest of the day.

12.8km all up in 56:08 or 4:23 /km average pace.

In fact, my day only improved in the afternoon when Laurence sent me a mail telling me that I'd been accepted into the CCC race this summer. 98km and 5600m of uphill and the race is regularly over-subscribed. Just goes to show how many nutters there are out there. Views are fantastic though, it just remains to be seen whether I'll be in any state to enjoy them. A little taster here (thanks Maratrail):





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