Something new for Thursday

Emjoyed a glorious 8 hour sleep - having made the decision to train at Centennial Park with Sean William's group, we made the call to set the alarm for 6:20aam. Ahhh.

Did feel a bit odd having not trained in the morning, though. Funny how habits form.

Got to Centennial Park ) at about 5:30 - wasn't expecting the drive from St Leonards to take less than 20 minutes - got changed and pottered around trying to pick where the group was going to meet. For the record, they meet on the little hill at the back of the netball courts.

There were a few Striders there - Keith Bateman, Mohammed and Martin Matthews. Went for a 4km warm-up in around 20 mins whilst the course was set up (basically a 1km loop around the park between Robertson Rd and the busway) and chatted to a very pleasant fellow named Ali. He was eastern European, and ran a 2:18 back in the early '80s. Looking at him, I had no reason to doubt this.

We did some stride drills, which were deeply humiliating. If you've ever battled with the dance bit of aerobics, I guarantee you'll hate this bit. Still, I'm sure it's doing good - I've never actually done any specific technique training, and Sean was helpful without poking fun. We then did some hard sprints, 4 or 5, and then down to business.

Basically, it was more of a formal fartlek session. From the start point, it was basically 5 laps of a 1k loop which started out easy at the netball courts as described above, turned right, and then left for the short hard section near Anzac Parade (probably 250-300 metres), left near the change rooms there for a short easy section, then left again parallel to Robertson Road for the long hard section of probably 400-450 metres to the softball diamond, and left for the easy section, and left again to the finish. It's all on grass.

Sean's comment was that the easy section should be floating, 'a little easier than your 5k pace'. I got sucked in and ran the first loop at 3:29, and it near killed me. I took the easy sections fairly easily (but still reasonably firmly) while belting the hard sections, but it was pretty well hanging on from about the 2km mark onwards. Good hard hit out - I reckon it's good to do the odd session where you're clinging on for dear life, just to reinforce how much it sucks to blow pacing. Managed 18:55 for the session, and it felt like 5k.

Jogged a 4k cool down with Lyn who I seem to run into at race meetings around the place - last saw her at the Australia Day races. We chatted about SW's training regimes and generally caught up.

A good session. I'll definitely be out there again. Good way to build more high speed gears, and it's always better to train with other people, especially the shorter distance runners at that session.