The whippet chase

Day 234 Tuesday 21st August 5.9 miles : miles to date 1545.7 It is with some relief - which is perhaps an appropriate word to use - that the No.2 title was passed at least temporarily to Tony Cole at tonight's club speed session. We all ran to the centre point in Chicksands Woods from where the coaches had set out routes. As we were being told about the session, Tony suddenly turned tail and ran up a hill. As we all watched, one of the coaches shouted to ask where he was going. For a poo he bellowed to us all. Crown passed. As for the run, it was another toughie. From the centre point there were five trails through the woods, four of which climbed from the start, with the fifth dropping for thirty seconds and climbing straight back up. Even with the others, once the initial climb was done, after a brief spell on the flat, they all dropped again on constantly undulating trails. Brilliant, far better than all the road running I have been doing even if it was gag inducing in part. We did two minute efforts out hard, minute recovery and two minutes back, times six. We split into groups and I gingerly sidled to the whippets, realising I was going to spend almost all of the sessions at the back of the pack, the only issue being how close I could stay on each effort. The reality is to run faster, you have to run faster in training. I felt it was better to be trying to hang onto the back of the whippets than pushing it at the front of the next group which was likely to be harder. At least with the fast boys - sorry, no girls in the mix tonight - I was able to focus on someone in front of me and try not to let them get too far away. I was as predicted mostly at the back although not in the last two efforts which did give me a bit of a boost. Right, I'm off to reclaim my title....