Club session

I was able to get out of work at a reasonable time and made it to the club with plenty of time to spare. It was a lovely evening with the sun shining in a perfectly blue sky and the temperature hovering around 16°C at 6:30pm.

It was a real pleasure to get to the club session and to see most of my running colleagues who I haven't seen in a while: Nico, Miguel, Thierry, Jean-Marc and then Gérald. I instantly went over to Gérald to congraulate him on running the last 10k race in 36:45, beating my record by 12 seconds in the process. Respect. He's in fantastic shape at the moment and I'm sure that he's going to finally beat his marathon record and beat 3:00 for the first time ever in Toulouse. I'm really pleased that I'm going to be there to see it too.

The programme for the evening was a VMA test over 2k on the track. I had brought my Saucony Kinvara in case anyone was interested in running this seriously but Nico, Jean-Marc et al were all resting after racing at the weekend and nobody seemed bothered. Only Gérald facnied doing some speedwork and suggested running the 2 k after we did a warm-up over 1k to begin with.

We ran our normal warm-up with the rest of the club and then Gérald and I joined the back of the VMA test over 1.5k for the slightly slower runners. We started at the back and then worked our way to the front over 1000m, finally finishing in 3:35. This was for the warm-up as we then lined up for a 2k time trial with a few others: Charles, Nick B, Gérard and a couple of younger, faster runners.

Gérald said that we were only to treat this as training as we were to run more 1k intervals afterwards. I wasn't convinced and wanted to run a reasonable time without killing myself in the process. The 2 young lads (Romain and someone) set off fast and after 150m I pulled out and started running 5 metres behind them. Gérald was just behind me and we went through the first lap in 78s. The second lap was more of the same, passing the 800m in 2:38 with Garld on my tail and then on the third lap Gérald went past me and I didn't have the motivation to follow him. We went through 1200m in 4:02 and then I lost count on the fourth lap of the split. I could feel my legs tightening with lactate over the last lap and I knew that I lack this sort of speed training at the moment. I spend too much time running intervals by myself and not against others. I managed to stay close to Gérald to finish just behind him over the 2k in 6:49 while he finished in 6:46. Not bad for some interval training.

We ran another few kilometres after at just below 15km/h to wind down !

10.5k all up in 52 minutes or an average of 5:03. Good to see everyone and shame that Nico didn't want to take part in the test. Big event will be on Thursday when the really fast guys (Mohammed, Tom, etc.) do their VMA test. Wish I could be there.

Thursday VMA

I arrived a bit late for the session tonight and interupted the president in his speech to the runners prior to warm-up. Laurence told me afterwards that I received comments as to how elegant I was, which is always good for the ego.

The ego took a bit of a battering afterwards when having got changed and chased the others down over the warm-up, we finally arrived back at the track. The marathon session for tonight was 10x500m as a VMA (VO2 max) interval session. In the absence of our trainer, Miguel, it was Thierry who was calling the shots and he declared that it was a threshold session instead.

I decided that there was no way that, having prepared myself mentally for VO2 intervals, I would be doing threshold pace instead. I decided to run the 500m with José and Thierry. Luckily for me, Thierry was running 20 x 500m and I only had half to do. I set off with José and we ran ahead of Thierry for the full session. José did a couple more with Thierry after the 10 and then dropped out.

The intervals went as follows:

1:46, 1:49, 1:46, 1:46, 1:45, 1:44, 1:43, 1:43, 1:43, 1:42

I was pleased with the increase in speed as we went through them. On the last 4, I was by myself as José pushed the pace to under 1:40 and I couldn't follow. I checked in the training plan to see what speed was expected over 500m and for the 3 hour marathon it stated 1:45 intervals so I was well under this by the end. Felt good but tired on the last 3.

Good session.

Marathon training

Well it had to start sometime and since tomorrow I will miss the club session, I planned the start of my Paris Marathon training tonight with the VMA session for the week.

I haven't found a good translation for "VMA" which stands for "Vitesse Maximale Aérobique" - basically a speed session where you build up lactate and thus get your body to acclimatise to harder and harder levels of training. The marathon training I am following over the next 10 weeks has one VMA session, one threshold session, one long run and two recovery runs per week. I am determined to give myself the best chance of achieving my objective this time so I'll be following this plan assiduously.

Tonight's session in the plan for someone wishing to run a 3 hour marathon was 5x400m x 2 series with each 400m in 1:23. The recovery was 1 minute with 3 minutes between the series. I peeked a look at the 2:45 training schedule and this was the same but with each 400m in 1:16. I figured that if I want to run well under 3 hours I should be somewhere between the 2, so I was aiming for 1:20.

I started with a 4km warm-up run at around 4:50 / km pace and then headed to the track. Im glad that I'm determined because mentally I was not looking forward to this. Without any more ado, I set off. I stretched out and tried to run fast but not to the limit with the result that I ran the first 400m in 1:23. "Not good enough" my brain was telling me so I put a little more effort in and tried just a little harder.

The full set went as follows:

1:23, 1:23, 1:20, 1:20, 1:22, 1:20, 1:21, 1:20, 1:22, 1:19

So fairly regular and I was running by myself so I was pleased with the result. 1:16 for a 2:45 marathon is out of my reach though. Perhaps one day in the future.

I warmed down with another 10 minute jog. 12 km all up.

Sitting down now at the PC to write this up and can feel the tiredness in my legs. This could be due to yesterday's race, the swim session at lunchtime or the VMA session tonight. More likely to be a combination of all three. 10 weeks to go.