Thursday 17 April 2008

The trials and tribulations of Thursday training

Back to the club today.  Debbie was giving this one a miss saying something about sore hamstrings.  In reality she had a works night out with a free bar.  Achh, I remember the days when she was a dedicated athlete.  :-)

I always look forward to going back to the club after a big race like a marathon or ultra when everything has gone to plan.  You feel like nothing can touch you.  You are at the peak of your physical fitness, an Adonis, a running God.  Everyone congratulates you and you are the centre of attention.  That is of course until you start running with your marathon legs and end up at the back like a broken bag of spanners, blowing from your ar$e and wheezing like Ian B at the end of a long run.

Today's back to training run wasn't ideal either.  8 miles and the numpty that made up the route should be shot.  Oh that was me.  In true Marco style I had to incorporate a couple of hills.  We haven't been up Chesters hill for a while and so with the late nights this was the hill of choice.

I was in the car on the phone to Debbie's mum to wish her a happy 60th birthday when I noticed the packs going out.  A quick bye and I was off with no warm up.  I had elected to drop a pack so that I would recover a bit.  Not much use as every week I drop a pack the rest of the pack seems to drop too as the top pack is rather depleted at the moment. The top pack then just takes the first half slow and then blasts the last half taking me with them.  Tonight was no exception.

The route was up Drymen Road from the main gate, down Station Road, up Chesters, back down to Bearsden Cross, then up Stockiemuir Road to Baljaffray into Milngavie and then back to the main gate.  About 8.2miles.

The first half of the run was at a comfortable pace but as we reached Milngavie I could feel wee Robert trying to up the pace.  I went with him and he just upped it more.  I had felt great until now but started to feel the extra exertion on my quads and so couldn't keep up with him.  I was still very happy with the pace I finished at.

8.18mi in 55:52 @ 6:50 /mi

7:21, 6:58, 7:24, 7:23, 6:51, 6:14, 6:21, 6:10, 6:40

3 comments:

Thomas said...

Ciao Marco, thanks for your good luck wishes. Looks like you are recovering well from the FLM. It's a bit of a shame that youre not in the bunch on Saturday.
But the big race is still to come!
And maybe we can meet for another training run in the next weeks.
Stay injury free young man!

Davie Bell said...

Thanks for the good luck wishes for the Fling,who is Thomas going to race now I wonder:-)keep up the hard work see you soon big stuff

Thomas said...

Marco, Debs, how on earth did you know about my Fling result so quickly? ;-)

Thanks for your Text!
The race was very tough for me. I could not eat and bonked heavily
;-)
I Will try to write a decent race report soon.

Davie also finished in under 10 hours! John with cracking 9:44