Sunday club run

Another short night after dinner out with friends and Nico and I drove to the club for the Sunday run. We both said that we'd take it easy after yesterday's session but we knew that this would be hard as we were running to Joyenval around the golf course with Michel's group. There was another good turnout with notably the return of José after some hamstring problems. The plan for the session was to run up to the golfcourse at Joyenval and then do 3 x 8' at cross-country pace around the golf course before heading back.

After our warm-up to the edge of the golf course, it was obvious that the session wouldn't be as straight-forward as it appeared since heavy rain had turned the paths into mud pools. In fact when Miguel blew the whistle for the first interval, Nico put his foot in a mudbath and promptly lost his shoe to the mirth of all around him. I ran with José, seeing how he was doing after a few days off and in his normal trailer style, he ran hard up and down the hills, shortening his stride and it was all I could do just to stay with him.

The second interval saw the same runners ahead with Yoan running from the back to the front of the group followed by Ilyes, Sébastien, Jean-Marc and Frédéric. I was just behind with José who started to slow as the pain reappeared in his thigh. Nico caught us at the end of the interval and we all started together for the third. 8 minutes later and it was finished. I hadn't run too hard, feeling the stiffness in my legs from Marly and the hills. My breathing was easy but the legs were tired and it was nice to run back to the club at a comfortable speed (4:20 pace) with Yoan and Ilyes.

18km all up in 1:42 and it brings my total mileage to the week to around 60km so not too high. My achilles is improving but still aches at the end of each run at the moment.