Evening Session

Made it just in time, as is my wont, to the evening club session. There wasn't a huge turnout as it's the holiday season and many people are away. It's almost a pleasure driving into work at the moment with the roads empty of people who prefer to profit from their holiday leave, stuffing their faces at yuletide. Am I jealous ? - possibly.

What is most surprising is that these same roads appear to fill up magically in the evening and I'm faced with the same abysmal traffic conditions as usual when I try and get to the club on time. 20 minutes on the ring road last night before I could get to my exit and then another 20 minutes on the motorway, stuck in long queues. As a result, I arrived only just in time to get changed and to head out the door for the group jog as no intervals are planned. No coaches either, just Michel Z happy in his role as stand-in, ready to confuse everybody with a route he makes up as he goes along.

I jogged easily and chatted with Nic, Ilyes, Stéphane, Sandra, Pascal and Anne. We made our way easily through the streets of St Germain running just over 11 km in 1:07. It is now official that Nico's watch is completely uncalibrated as he measured over 12 kilometres for the same run. This clarifies some of the doubts we had recently when Nico claims on his blog to have run 20km in 1:19. His watch is actually recording 10% higher than it should. As a result 20km on his watch is actually 18.2 km and running this distance in 79 minutes equates to 4:20 / km. Perfectly logical for the rest of us but it must represent a huge blow to Nico who was satisfied with his post-marathon form and optimistic about the upcoming x-country season. How the mighty fall!

Myself, I'm still feling guilty about the lack of more speed sessions in my current training schedule and this will have to be remedied in my New Year resolutions.