A visit to Run Club

I decided this morning that I could not face the prospect of another 20 minutes of swimming, and decided, after a small amount of persuasion from EliseS, to attend the Freespirit Fitness Run Club with her. Legs had felt basically back to normal on Friday and Sunday, so figured it would be a good sighter as to how the recovery was going so I could make a decision on the Aths NSW XC event this Saturday.

Caught up with Tim and 26 miles before getting into the session proper on a very cool, still and clear evening at about 6:40pm, with a group of 25 -30. We did a fairly short warm-up, some stretches and some drills before heading over to the shoreside path in front of Balmain Shores. The session was 3 x 2km, the course being two laps of a straight out and back course. Gaf had the course slightly short, running between 1.9 and 1.94km, probably exacerbated by the 180 degree turns.

Reps went:
6:52 - just settled into a rhythm and get some feel for form, plus do enough to keep 26 at bay.
6:41 - pushed a bit harder, looking for a 10 second or so improvement, although did the first km a little harder than I really wanted and copped a slight positive split for my trouble
6:29 - decided to stretch out and push harder for a time, although I again probably overcooked the first 500, with the legs going a little dead from around 1200 to 1600. Bigger positive split, but pushed hard in the last couple of hundred metres.

Good fun session with a big group, and nice to catch up with a few people. No real feeling of the marathon still in the legs, although not having run on tarmac for a week the energy return from the surface probably helped a bit. Be interesting to see how I pull up.

I've got an easy half hour tomorrow, and a swim is scheduled for Wednesday before returning to squad on Thursday evening.