Tired Monday

I've read my French friend's post about his recovery run this lunchtime where he managed to average 15km/h over 12km without feeling the tiredness in his legs. I just want to state one thing: he can't have been trying hard enough yesterday.

I felt my legs as soon as I began to run. It was a recovery run though and I resisted the urge to look at the Garmin after every kilometre. Besides, nobody has shown me how to make the backlight work in synchro with the lap function, so I can't see a damn thing at 6:00 am. I'd like to give this impression of a confident aloof runner taking it easy having bust a gut yesterday. The truth is more like an old-aged, short-sighted, bad-tempered git, who squints every time his damn watch beeps at him and spends several seconds trying to work out the lap time in the half-light, failing every time. So I'm not cool - actually I was close to freezing as the cold weather is back again and it was just below zero this morning. Good job I had 3 layers on top to encourage me not to run too fast...

Back at home I was able to look at what I'd achieved: 12.8 km in 55:06 or an average pace of 4:19/km. I'd started at 4:35 pace and finished at 3:45 pace with the latter part of the loop run at around 4:20.

While in the park at Maisons Laffitte, I crossed a number of other lunatics runners including Sylvie going the opposite way to me, still running although suffering from loss of cartilege in the hip, causing intense pain. Don't know how she does it - stubborness and frustration probably. Hope I'll still have this courage in 10 years time. Starting my marathon training again now with the objective of Rambouillet half-marathon in early March. Will serve me well for the ecotrail 80km race a couple of weeks afterwards.