Club session - random

Officially there was no club session tonight. Officially it was declared a rest day before the Sartrouville cross country this weekend for the best runners and for the St Germain corrida for some of the others. Officially, Miguel didn't even turn up to coach the session as he had sent out his training plan weeks before and it said rest and recuperation. Officially, I should never listen to Nico...

There were very few people at the club tonight. the fact that it was only 2°C, with a nasty ice-cold wind and offically a rest and recuperation evening might have had something to do with this. No José, no Wilfried and no official session. We went for a warm-up and then back to the track with Nico, Bruno, Jérome, Gérald and Jean-Marc to decide what we'd do.

Nico was all on for 500m intervals but I talked him out of this, explaining that Tuesday evening was speed workouts and Thursday evening was threshold plus. He accepted and then declared we'd do 1000m, 2000m, 1000m, 500m off 200m recovery. I reluctantly agreed, thinking all the time about the 82km trail that I'm doing in 2 days time on Saturday, and declared that I'd run at 3:45 pace.

We set off and Nico went ahead with Jean-Marc from the start. I followed at a pace that was hard but not exhausting. The distance between us grew immediately and my legs felt heavy and the back straight into the wind was just awful. The cold permeated my body and the going felt very hard. I couldn't see what pace I was running at but I just gritted my teeth and bore the whole session as every rep was the same. Jean-Marc pulled the plug and the others did 1000m intervals instead so it was just me following Nico at a distance.

We ended the session and he said that he was running 3:20 pace all evening very steady. It was only when I got back home that I saw what I'd managed :

3:26, 7:03, 3:29, 1:37

All of this 2 days before a race. Happy to see the progression and the achievement for a session where I didn't bust a gut. Not ideal race preparation though.

11.6km all up in just under the hour.