Doubling up

This would be my only just to get to the club this week so I planned on an easy early morning run to get in a few kilometres before. The main motivation to get to the club was to hear the results announced about the Rambouillet half-marathon and to see the others to congratulate them on their performances.

My legs were only feeling slightly better than yesterday so I didn't push it excessively. However, it was one of those days when you just feel good about yourself and my speed just increased progressively kilometre after kilometre.

I started out at 4:40 then 4:30 down to 4:20 and then ran the second half of the course at under 4:10 pace. I zipped down the hill to finish at 3:49 pace and all up in 54:57 for the 12.8km giving an average pace of 4:17/km.

I only just made it to the club in time so missed my moment of glory. It was great to see everybody again and plenty of congratulations on my performace and encouragements to beat Nico next time! I received instructions from Laurence that they were heading down to Poissy so I ran down in that direction in the hope of catching them having arrived 10 minutes late at the club. After looping round the railway in Poissy there was still no sign of them so I headed back up towards the track.

I was running along the cycle path from Poissy when I spotted a gaggle of female runners in front and was fairly sure that it was Laurence and the gang so I put in a spurt to catch them. True enough, they'd been good enough to come and search for me and I ran back quietly with them. It's actually quite easy to be quiet because they talk enough for double their number. Really pleasant running and we headed back easily to the club before finishing around the track.

11.5 km all up in 58:45 so an easy pace at 5:06 per km. 24 km for the day.