Easy club session

Taking it easy this week in the taper before the long gruel that awaits this weekend. I'm entered for 2 races in the trails in Britanny this weekend: 13km on Saturday and 58 km on Sunday in the trail challenge put on by the organisers. 3 of us from the club are attempting this challenge and I hope to be in pole position but I have Gérald as my closest competition.

Despite the taper, I was stressing like hell as I was caught in the usual rush hour traffic jam of 30 km between work in Malakoff and St Germain for the club session. There was no real incentive apart from running easily with friends and chatting about the events of the weekend. I arrived 5 minutes late and managed to jump out of the car, pull my trainers on and catch them after 2 minutes down the road as the rest of the club had started late too.

The turnout was smaller than usual with only Nico, Nat, Mireille and Momo there from the regulars. José was taking it easy and no sign of Gérald, Thierry or Jean-Marc. Slightly worried about Gérald as he is probably putting in some last minute quality sessions before the runs at the weekend. Just hope he isn't tiring himself out in the process.

The programme for this evening was 1:15 recovery jog which suited me fine. I ran with Nico and Régis and we chatted about the 10km race in St Germain this weekend. I could tell that Nico was disappointed with his performance as he's been running so well recently. It just shows that even when you've done everything right there's no accounting for the days when things don't turn out as you want or hope. We showed him no mercy anyway and teased him like mad about being "chicked" by both Jennifer and Mireille from the club. He won't let this happen again I'm sure !

12.7 km all up in 1:12 so very easy. Only the last 1.5 km was done at pace with a little burst of marathon speed towards the end to finish. Feeling very good at the moment and am convinced that I'll do well this weekend.

All's well here. Looking forward to the end of the week already.

Bets - 2011 challenge

I've got a bet on with Nick for the following times and distances to be achieved before the end of the year :

Race Estimates for JAMES HIGHNAM
5km Time	10km Time	15km Time	Semi Time	Marathon Time
00:18:01	00:37:33	00:58:13	01:23:34	02:56:09

I hadn't looked at these for a while following our exchange back in April and I thought that I'd beaten the 10km time with my race in Les Clayes. Turns out that I missed the objective by 2 seconds so I'll have to keep trying. The objective is to beat 4 of these 5 times by year end and Nick pays for the beers all evening. If I don't manage then it's my shout.

The real difficulty is going to be planning all of these races around the events that are already scheduled. Now where's my race calendar ... ?

St Simon - steady run

The old classic to finish our short stay here in Aurillac. It's been a tough week running-wise and I didn't want to force it with too long a run today, especially before the drive back home.I thought that I would give it a shot at running the St Simon loop at speed to see how I was going and to see if I could approach my PB for the course.

I soon realised when I set off that it wasn't to be. My legs were tired and my heart wasn't in it after the distances covered recently. I went well enough to begin with: 4:36 for the first kilometre, then 5:11 up the hill, but then when I should have been stretching away down the hill towards St Simon, I just had nothing left.4:17 then 4:32 into the village for the next 2 kilometres and I knew that the PB was unachievable today.

From St Simon back I just tried to run as steadily as possible without pushing it too hard. I covered the 5 km back along the main road in 4:49, 4:26, 4:18, 4:07 then 4:10. So I managed to build up speed along the way back feeling comfortable as I ran.

9km all up in 40:34 or an average of 4:30 per km. Total mileage for the week is around 105km. Good tough week and IO now need to take it easy before the long trail next weekend in Britanny.

Laurence ran by herself this morning doing the same loop. She was trying to beat her PB too and managed 46:32. Still waiting for official confirmation but it looks like a new PB by some 30 seconds.

Hill training

I'd run 50km in 2 days and decided that today I needed to ease off slightly. Not too much as I still want to do as much mileage as possible before Guerledan nesxt weekend, but not so much that I exhaust myself completely. Laurence was taking it easy today and running a flat route through town. I decided to head off in the opposite direction and to run Thursday's route or just under 20km.

I set off at a steady pace, feeling the tiredness in my legs from the previous 2 days. I headed out on the old road to St Simon and then headed up the hill on the southern side of the Jordanne valley. The trail leaves this road after a kilometre but since I was feeling adventurous and didn't want to repeat a run with so many other options available, I continued on up the hill towards Boussac. This hill was a killer and I climbed 300 metres in 4 kilometres of non-stop uphill. I told myself that this was good training for the trail combined with everything else I'd done over the last 3 days.

I got to the top of the hill at Salesse and then carried on to Boussac before turning left and running along the crest towards Velzic further up the valley. I knew this road from a mountain bike ride a couple of years ago and my only concern was that it winds its way uphill even further before heading back down the valley. I'd remembered seeing a mountain bike route off the left back down into the valley and I ran along looking for this. It was a lot further than I thought and I realised that my 20km run was going to be a little longer than initially planned.

I found the path off the road with a sigh of relief and headed down this into the valley. This was my slowest kilometre of the run with the distance run in 6:30 as I picked my way gingerly down the path trying to avoid slipping on the wet rocks and bashing my head open. I reached Velzic after 2 kilometres of downhill along some lovely paths towards the bottom of the valley and back onot the main road. I picked up the pace again now and was running at 4:30 pace as I knew I had to manage my energy to get back home. Having left with no water bottle or food bars, this was going to be a major worry.

I had to ease off even this average pace with the sun beginning to warm up the valley bottom considerably. I was hot, sweaty and tired and I was just gasping for water, in fact it was the only thing that I could think of now. I ran into St Simon and remembered that there are some public toilets beside the church where I could wash my face and drink some water. The relief was amazing and when I set off again, I felt like a new man. I ran back a long the old road now and even the last steep uphill stretches were not painful as I knew that I was almost home and dry. I last stretch downhill and I was back.

24.75km all up in 2:07 or an average of 5:09 per km. I'd probably run another 400 metres of uphill on this route too and my hill training is all over for this week as I'll take it easy tomorrow after running almost 75km in 3 days! Tired after these last few days but happy to have managed so much exercise.

LSR with hills

The tour of Aurillac is a 20 km route marked out on the roads that encircle the town. The last time I ran this was a year ago when I did the 20km loop in 1:33. The idea today was to run with Laurence around most of the loop and then carry on up the crest of the hills and along the tops to the crossroads before dropping back down into St Simon and then back to the house. An ambitious run, as the tour of Aurillac is already tiring enough with plenty of hills to manoeuvre skirting the town, but the added loop around St Simon was going to add severely to the overall difficulty.

I set off with Laurence around the loop at a steady pace. She's been running very well recently and improving constantly. We were running around 5:30 pace and she looked easy. We ran around to La Ponétie, onto the park at the far side of town and then back to Belbex in the second half of the course which is a lot hillier than the first half. Gmap shows this nicely. Laurence only started to slow down at the 14 km mark. I say slow down but she maintained her pace but was looking slightly more tired. I left her with 2 km to go after 1:43 of effort and she was chuffed as she knew that she'd beat the 2 hour barrier, something she's never achieved before for this course.

I ran up "la route de cretes" at this point: 3km of constant uphill and 150m of height gained going from 676m to 826m in altitude. I caught another runner on the top who'd been walking at this point and he started running again as I passed him. This was an encouragement as I'd been resisting the urge to ease my muscles by walking for a while uphill and the company now made this impossible. I ran easily with him along the top chatting about the weather and the beautiful countryside. We came to the crossroads on the top and swung right heading back down into the valley and St Simon. The road down goes down for 2km, losing the 150 altitude that I'd struggled so hard to gain minutes earlier! My new running companion was heading back through St Simon and out the other side back up the hill on the other side of the valley to Boussac. I ran with him through the village and then back on the old road to Aurillac, including another 50m of uphill for good measure.

30km all up in 2:42 or an average of 5:23 per km. This doesn't sound very impressive but I reckon there is also approximately 500m of uphill over this route and when I got back I was exhausted and ready to drop. The fact that I'd only had a glass of orange juice before heading out didn't help either. Pleased with the run and thrilled to hear that Laurence had finished in 1:54 her tour of Aurillac.

Trail running with Laurence

It's Ascension day today in France and as a good Catholic country, it is also a public holiday. So much for the separation between the church and the state in France - but since it's a day off for everyone who am I to argue. We're making the most of the prolonged weekend by taking a day off tomorrow too and spending the weekend in Aurillac in the Cantal. This is a lovely part of the country and is most famous for its cattle (salers - big red cows with long horns), its hilly countryside and its umbrellas.

Laurence and I wanted to make the most of the day by running up to St Simon along the old road and then uphill and along some old trails along the hillside up the valley to Rouffiac, before turning around and running back along the other side of the valley. It had rained here over night and the road was damp. This is only remarkable since the Cantal is one of the rare regions not to be severely affected by the drought over the last couple of months, unlike the rest of France. Running was very pleasant since the temperature was cool but the skies had cleared and we were accompanied all of the way round by sunshine.

I accompanied Laurence up to Rouffiac after 7.5 kms where she cut back to run back the main road. I was feeling particularly energetic and decided to continue on until the next hamlet, Clavières. We'd been running at around 6:00 per kilometre up until this point and I stretched away now running at just under 5:00 per km along the trails until the main road. I then managed the next 8 kilometres back down the main road at marathon pace including a couple of kilometres after St Simon at 3:53 then 3:47 as I pushed the pace in a not convinced hope of catching Laurence who now had a 4 km start on me. I felt really good after a good night's sleep and some beautiful countryside to inspire me though.

19.25 km all up in 1:35 before breakfast on the patio or an average speed of 4:57. Didn't catch Laurence who finished 8 minutes ahead. Nice start to the weekend.

Tuesday club session

There was only a small crowd at the club on Tuesday night for the evening session. Many must have been resting up after the races over the weekend and with the Foulée Royale on Sunday, the club's 10km race around the terrasse, others are taking it easy in preparation. Fabrice, Nico and myself had arranged to run a track session and it was finally decided that we would be doing 10x300m at VO2 max pace. Miguel took the other runners off into the forest for an easy run.

We warmed up in the forest, chatting to the others before heading back to the track after 4.5 km to get the session over with. We'd managed to convince Romain to come along too while Jean-Marc, still nursing a calf injury, decided to skip our offer. No sign of Gérald, but since he'd run 3 10km races over the weekend this didn't surprise me. In fact, I was happy that he'd decided to get some rest and recuperation in before the long trail in 10 days time.

We jogged around the track, noticing the strong headwind on the back straight and decided to start into this wind to finish over the finish line with the wind behind us. It was to be 10x300m intervals off 100m recovery. I could see that nobody was really motivated to run this session as it's hard work but I was pleased with the group as it was most likely that Nico and Roamin would run together at the front with Fabrice and myself behind.

We set off and I tried to keep in touch with Nico and Romain but they gapped me from the start and finished 10 metres ahead. I ran this in 56 seconds and although I didn't feel too bad, I remembered last time how these intervals really hit you from the fourth onwards. It was the same this evening and I was just glad to hold off Fabrice every time on the home straight where he would close on me after my faster starts. Nico and Romain built up a little lead by reducing their recovery times and running the intervals faster while I gapped Fabrice who took longer recoveries while running his intervals at the same pace as me.

Intervals went as follows:

56, 56, 56, 57, 57, 57, 57, 57, 58, 57

A really steady session again and I was pleased as these were faster than a couple of weeks ago.

10.5 km all up in 1:00 and 21km for the day. Gérald showed up at the end having turned up late and considering that nobody would be foolish enough to hit the track, he'd run easily in the forest with the rest of the group.