Late

Damn and blast. As I arrived at the club tonight, having been held up in a discussion with one of my team at work, I saw the others leaving for the evening session. I quickly grabbed some keys off Jean-Claude and changed in double quick time, hoping to catch them up.

Leaving the changing rooms behind, I ran to the end of the road, hoping to catch a sight of them as they headed into the forest but unfortunately, there was nobody to be seen. I crossed the road, narrowly avoiding a cyclist who had run the red lights, and started a zig-zag search across the whole of the forest between St Germain and Le Mesnil.

The whole session was spent searching for them at a speed of around 4:20 per km. There were slightly slower times, when I stopped to relieve myself of a late coffee from work and a couple of hills where the pace slowed to 4:40, but otherwise I was very consistent.

Towards the end, I ran around the 'Mare aux Canes' (literally the duckpond) and along the salamander trail, which we sometimes use for intervals with the club. It measures 2.6 km exactly, including the run around the outside of the pond. This should help me on the next interval session as I'm always wondering how far to go and how hard to push it around here. Knowing the exact distances should help me mentally.



14 km all up in 1:03 (including the pee stop) so not bad going. Another warm night and I arrived back home slightly dehydrated again. Looking forward to some cooler weather soon for training and racing.

Poitiers - Futuroscope

Poitiers has one of the biggest permanent cinema exhibitions in France and was the site of our training on Friday.

I went for another early morning run and left the industrial zone of Chasseneuil-du-Poitou to find some more pleasant scenery.

I was just beginning to wake up as I left the zone and found a little path heading off into the forest. I followed this as it meandered around only to find myself beside what appeared to be a large pond. The path promptly disappeared, forcing me to fight my way through nettles and the undergrowth, before I found myself back on a track again.

7.5 km all up in around 40 minutes. (I'd forgotten to pack my Garmin in the hurry). Oh and the large pond turned out ot be a river, so it would have taken me a while to have run around it ;o)

Long Sunday

Last long Sunday run before next Saturday's race. I was intending to run about 20km around Olm but after a look at the map last night after a few glasses of champagne, I'd forgotten most of the town names that I was supposed to run through this morning.

I set off easily at about 4:40 pace, suffering slightly from lack of sleep and an excess of champagne. As usual, a few kilometres into the run and my head began to clear and I felt a whole lot better. The start of the run was through some forest areas and the shade and the coolness of the air was very pleasant. This ended too shortly and I ended up running some hills (yes even more than I would have asked for) in the sun on a warm morning.

I ran through Nospelt, which I recognised as one of the intended towns en route and found a lovely footpath through some more forest and down into a valley only ot rise steeply out on the other side. My pace slowed to 5:26 per km at this point, and my mind clouded with concern over La Pastourelle and the thought of the 8.5 km uphill section.

The footpath joined a road and headed back to Nospelt and I guessed, correctly, that I should be heading more West and so ran in the direction of Goeblange. This is where I made my first mistake. I'd run 14 km by now and saw a sign for Olm, a mere 3km away. I decided that this wasn't long enough and saw a another sign for Wandhaff. I followed the street down, but it looked too small to be a real road, heading anywhere. I turned back to the main road and continued on to Koerich. Once, I arrived in this village, I realised that the champagne had well and truly worn off and that I didn't recognise the name, or any other villages heading out of the town either, for that matter.

I turned up left as soon as I could here, thinking that I would be heading South and would eventually come upon another village that I recognised, or a sign to Olm or Capellen, next door. No such luck. In fact, I was still heading West in the opposite direction to where I wanted to be.
Steinfort was the next village on my tour and I was tiring now. The heat and the hills were wearing me down. I hit a main road, signposted to Luxembourg and so I followed this, figuring (correctly this time) that I would cross another main road to Capellen in a few kilometres at Windhof (actually known as Wandhaff in Luxembourgish, cause of my initial mistake).

Stopeed at 19km and walked for 50 metres before beginning to run again. Just when I was beginning to despair, I saw the town sign that I recognised and knew that I was only 3km from home.

Finished the run after 24 km and 1:49 or an average of 4:34 over the whole route. Excellent time considering the hills and the heat. Bodes well for next weekend. Knackered.

Lost in France

Tried a new route out today in order to increase my mileage. It worked as I got lost and ran farther than I initially intended.

As I wrote last week, I want to increase my mid-week training runs to around 10 km. I planned a new route using gmap through Maisons Laffitte in the park, extending my usual run into the park on the way out. It was perfectly planned but unfortunately badly executed and I ended up running a little further than intended.

I set out at 7:00 am this morning and the weather was perfect for an early morning run. The sun was already up and there wasn't a cloud in sight. The temperature was still cool enough to run without feeling uncomfortable with the heat. After the training at the weekend, I didn't have much energy in my legs when I left the house, so it was no surprise when I went through the first 2km in 8:46. And, as usual, the initial pace sets the tone for the whole run so when I finished after 48:12 minutes of effort later, I had completed an 11.1 km course.

It felt good to run at this speed (13.8km/h) and I came back having really enjoyed myself. That's all that counts really.