Long Sunday run

Having accompanied the girls in their marathon training session yesterday, I decided that it would be nice to take part in François marathon training session today which comprised of a long run with 3 x 20' intervals at marathon pace. It was the occasion to do a long run and compared to the 80km of the Ecotrail, this was virtually a sprint, no?

We set off from the club and headed down towards the Seine at Le Pecq where we figured we would meet up with the girls who were doing their own long run along the banks of the river. We ran along the terrasse at St Germain before heading down to the river and finally catching the girls there. We were a small group with François, Wilfried, Bruno, Charles, Philippe and Bertrand. At Le Pecq we began the first interval and although I had initially intended to run with François, seeing Wilfried just ahead was too much of a temptation and I ran with him. This was my first mistake.

I find at the moment that I'm able to run 4:15 /km comfortably without undue exertion. This is 3 hour marathon pace and the speed that François had set himself for the intervals today. Wilfired is training for a 2:48 marathon and was therefore running his intervals at 15km/h or 4:00/ km. This may not seem much of a difference but believe me I felt it. I was happy to end the first interval after 20 minutes and when we turned to run back towards the others they were nowhere in sight. It took us 3 minutes running back along the river to catch them.

The second interval I eased off slightly letting Wilfried do all the hard work and towed along behind him. We average about 4:08 / km now and I was sweating heavily and feeling the tiredness in my legs. I'm sure that this is not advised as part of the recovery process one week after an ultra-trail. I was grateful when we finished this interval and had rounded the half way point at Rueil and were heading back along the other bank of the river now. Hold on, François indicated that for the last interval we were to run back to the girls and then back along the same side of the river so as not to put too much distance between us before accompanying them back to the cars. We were already over 15km now and I could see a 30km run on the cards. This is not what the doctor ordered and I was worried about my state. Needless to say that after 10 minutes when we caught up with the group of women again, I threw in the towel and ran with them. Enough was enough and I wasn't prepared to kill myself in training at the moment with no defined objective in place.

I ran back easily with the women to the car and then lay down sunning myself as they carried on to run the prescribed time (2:10). I'd already run for almost 2:30 by this time and 31 kilometres. That was more than sufficient for the day. An average pace of 4:46 wasn't bad going and I was happy with the result despite feeling the familiar pains in my thighs.

A call from Nico woke me from my sunbathing to tell me that he'd not managed to beat 35 minutes for the 10km in Houilles (36:39). I could tell that he was disappointed with his race but the last few days training and probably been excessive in the build-up.