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RE: It begins... (again)
Track running. This is not how it’s meant to go.
I received an email mid-morning from the Herd Leader setting out the evening’s torture. I run in group 3a (this is an important point which I will come back to later) and the plan was simple. 10x 400/100-meter compound sets. For those of you who don’t understand such things (i.e. you’re not stupid enough to go track running) this means that we run 400 metres at a 5k pace, and then speed up to a sprint pace for the last 100 metres.
Another important piece of information in this jigsaw of torment, is that for group 3a, the 5k pace is 22:00 minutes, or 1:45 minutes per lap. In my language, this works out at a pace of approx. 7 min/mi. By the time you’ve done 10 of these, the body is starting to smart a little.
The last bit of information required here, is the weather. It started pissing down around lunchtime, a full on delude that lasted well into the night. This meant that quite a few of the usual track running crowd suddenly discovered other things they needed to be doing. We were pretty thin on the ground. Thus, it was decreed that we would only have two groups. There would be a group 1a (seriously fast runners – 1:25 mins per lap); and a group 3a (because the Boss had run a race the day before and was happy to take it steady). Just the ticket I thought.
But then we started.
The first lap we ran at a 6:40 pace. Somewhat quicker than planned. I mentioned this to our esteemed leader... he just smiled and pointed out that I had kept up. But of course, he would ease back, muttering something about how difficult it was to adjust his pace downwards.
Lap two came in at 6:28. This is taking the piss… so not being one to moan… I mentioned once again that we were running somewhat faster than group 3a should be at this point in the proceedings.
I wish I’d taken the time to fully appreciate the joy of the second lap, as it was the last soddin’ time we ran at such a pleasant pace. The next lap was at 6:19 before we went on to hit a glorious 6:16. Having completed lap 8 at 6:23 I decided to call time. I couldn’t breath and my legs had actually fallen off.
But not being one to give up, we went again. This time I pulled back and only managed a 6:47 pace (almost embarrassingly slow, but still quicker than the 3a group was meant to be running). Having hobbled around lap 9, I clearly had to finish the set. The last lap was the quickest of them all. The bastards made me do it in 6:11.
We walked to the pub.
It took four beers to even start the recovery process. As we left the pub it was still pissing down, and now cold… so I ran home.
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