Tuesday 7 January 2025
Week 1, Day 2: Cheltenham Harriers’ Session
Right, to work. None of this rest-business.
It’s the first Tuesday of the New Year which means, drum roll please, Cheltenham Harriers’ Track Tuesday is back!
It was freezing!*
*Though not quite cold enough to freeze my car shut with my bike in it, which happened last week as we headed out to training, and which was the reason for yesterday’s bike-shed-measuring-exercise.
So it was pretty tough to leave the relative warmth of the house and cycle off into the dark.
But it was lovely to see everyone again. Jo was there, in her four coats and Michelin-man puffy trousers, telling us shivering runners how she was ‘too hot’. Lucky her.
The session was a good one, a sort of k-reps / 200m-reps sandwich.
3 x 1 km [90 seconds] @ 5-10k pace
2 x (5 x 200 m [60 seconds] @ 3-5k pace
3 x 1 km [90 seconds] @ 5-10k pace
With [3 minutes] between sets
The track, especially on the 200m bend, was icy-as-hell, though.
I got myself in a great group for the first kilometre reps, working with Harrison, Stew and a new guy, Dom, who had just moved to Cheltenham a few weeks ago.
We knocked them out, clocking 3:33, 3:30, 3:30. The 200s were faster (37-38s) and then we finished with another consistent set of kms in 3:29, 3:30, 3:31.
Unfortunately, Stew and Harrison mis-read the session, and only did one set of 200s, but Dom kindly stuck with me and did the second set. We worked well together, me leading, him pushing me on, with him giving me a stop-start background to his move to Cheltenham during the recoveries.
I really, really enjoyed this session, despite the cold. So Day 2 of marathon training was a good one too, it turns out.