Training Log Archive: AC

Took advantage of the girls being away this weekend to head down to Fontainebleau for a long terrain run. Pretty grey and cold, but rugged up well. Had the forest to myself. Set myself a course beforehand that I thought would take around 90 minutes and pretty much stuck to it, just skipping a control up the top of teh course when it looked like I would be away too long and tacking on an extra loop at the end when I was looking like I would be a bit short. As it was, I overshot my estimated time and struggled a bit the last 20 minutes. Stopped at the control points to make sure I was in the right spot - always requires careful checking in Fontainebleau as it is very complex terrain. Wasn't running particularly fast, but kept plugging away and really enjoying the forest and the orienteering - was having no trouble navigating and found the controls pretty well on the whole. A great run and pretty sore and tired afterwards.

Shortish warm up before parkrun.

Parkrun in the Bois. Very cold (around 0 degrees) and grey with a hint of snow (it did in fact snow a little later in the day). Not very conducive to a great run but decided to head out anyway with the plan of making it a tempo run. Only around 20 people turned up and I was the only local runner - the rest were from UK, Denmark, Australia. The run itself was quite tough. Felt very tired and heavy, probably from a busy week at work, lack of sleep a,d some tough training sessions during the week. First km felt okay but then started to struggle and slowed up. A guy from Denmark caught me with 1.5km to go and I ran with him comfortably for a while before he dropped me with around 300m to go. Tough run and not a great time, but a good training session.

Jogged home, pointing the Danish guy from the parkrun the best road to take to the Seine on his way back to his hotel. He had jogged 7km from his hotel to the parkrun, did the race and was now heading back to his hotel via the Eiffel Tower - a real tourist run! Slightly longer cool down than normal as both local boulangeries were closed for the holidays and so had to go a few hundred metres up the street to one that was open. One good thing about Paris is that one never needs to go very far to find an open boulangerie!

Jumped on the turbo trainer for a quick session at the end of a long and tiring week. Just turned the legs over ...

Back to the Turkish Embassy street for some more hill intervals - henceforth known as Ave Lamballe hill intervals. Another cold day (around 4 deg) and was hoping for a better showing than last week. Didn't really happen but did feel a little stronger than last week. Did four intervals, as per last week, and the times not getting faster - 1.21, 21, 18, 19. Jogged back via the boulangerie to grab a sandwich...

Probably a bit too ambitious on this interval training session as I was still feeling quite stiff and tired from Sunday's orienteering race. But never letting commonsense get in the way, headed out for the session anyway, with the only concession being that I decided to do 8x500m intervals with 1 min rest rather than the planned 1km intervals. The first one was hard but okay but the second one was a shock to the system and really struggled badly. Nearly called it quits then, but decided to compromise and just do 4 intervals. The next two were quite tough but I managed them okay-ish. Decided to not wimp out and hung in there for the last four. Times were not very good but reasonably consistent except for the second one (2.06, 20, 7, 9, 11, 11, 10, 9). Chalk this session up to toughing it out and hope the training effects are worth it :-).