Last night was training night at Haywards Heath Harriers and once again, Martin was running the show.
There was a good turnout, in spite of the chilly wind and I for one needed the 800m warm-up to do just that, despite three layers. After stretching out we ran another 400m, this time fast, faster and fastest.
Next up was a rough 75 jog before turning to sprint back. There were some quickies in my group so I ended up pushing myself hard and ended up right out of breath after three or four reps.
Which was a shame as the next session was a timed mile. I should have had no problem with this, but instead I had two. First, the chilly wind was giving me ear-ache and second, I couldn’t breathe out enough to get rid of the stitch that I’d got from the spinting.
I laguished home in a sluggish 7 minutes 19 seconds, with only my ease in the last 100m sprint to suggest that I could have got a (much?) faster time.
From here, Martin took us off-track, running down into the local woods to a couple of useful football-pitch-sized grass fields. Useful also because they had a steep gradient, or in fact several. Twice up the hill across the middle of the first field and back around the outside left me hot and shedding one layer.
The second field had a similar gradient, but also had large undulations and by the time I had struggled up the first couple of short hills, I had shed a second layer and was much more comfortable. By the third time around I was coasting happily down the downhill sections and sprinting hard up the final hill.
With twilight fast approaching, we took a gentle jog back up through the dark woods and I really admired the way that the only partially sighted Mike just went with the flow, keeping a smile on his face despite the fact that he clearly couldn’t see the dimly lit multiple cambers, tree-roots, stiles, mud, overhanging foliage etc.
A final 500m jog around the track finished the evening and sitting here the next day, my legs don’t feel too tired… let’s see how they are tomorrow though!