Here I was shoulder to shoulder with an elite athlete. I felt strong but could I hold out to the finish? I was pushing hard and just had to maintain my pace. Would I prevail?
We turned the final corner and before us lay 400m of tarmac. 400m to define perhaps the greatest moment of my athletic career.
We searched each other for signs of weakness. I felt strong. I sensed that maybe victory was mine - my opponent would not get the better of me this time round.
200m to go and up ahead I could see my team-mates waiting on the line, relaxed, bathed in sunshine - a stark contrast to the shaded battle of attrition going on down the road from them.
Hold your form. Keep running strongly.
It was then that I heard the words that will live with me forever:
"...must...slow...down..."
I crossed the line victorious. In front of my team-mates I'd beaten the 50-something over-weight recently-injured former-elite Mike Gratton, London Marathon winner 1983.
OK, it was the third of a set of mile reps, and not exactly a race, but I'm getting as much mileage out of burning off Mike as I can. We take what we can get!
Mike was visiting the club to give us a talk about endurance training. He joined in our mile reps session beforehand. I did 4 reps of 6:40, 6:42, 6:30 (the glory rep) and 6:36 off 3 minute recoveries, max HR 158bpm (about the same as last time, but my HR was lower and I felt stronger). Mike did the first one storming off ahead of me, but then needed 10 minutes recovery before his second and last rep - my third (to be fair it was his first interval session in a long time!). It was fun Mike - thanks!
His talk afterwards was very good - he's such a knowledge of athletic history in addition to his training expertise - well presented and entertaining too!
Shame that the usually graveyard-like leisure centre bar had a load of noisy footballers turn up half way through, but it went well.
So now the challenge, club-mates of mine, is to take what Mike was saying to heart and put some good training together. Over to you!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment