Week 3 Session 1 : Empowered by feedback, the glass is half full

Difficult training session last night!

The conditions were tough, cold and wet, with lots of puddles on the albert park track.

Time was an issue as we didn’t get started on our warm up until about 6:35 and our intentions were warm up jog, running drills, 8 x 400m sprints with 400m jogs in between, cool down and stretch – all before a 7:30 talk from a guest speaker, a nutritionist.

We knew meeting those intentions was not possible but it was not clear what we would cut to make it work, which was tricky for me, I like to know exactly what I am going to have to do so I can pace my level of effort accordingly.

Warm up was nice and I got to chat a bit to Dave who has done marathon training with Can Too in Sydney before and recently moved to Melbourne, he is a mentor to us and it was good to find out a bit more about him.

Only half of me was present in the running drills but after reading part of the book "chi running" on the weekend as well as our notes on running form prior to training, when we set out to do our sprints I was TOO focused on form. I set out on my first sprint very quickly (for me) with high knees, chest up and out, pumping my arms, and was utterly exhausted by the end of it. Yes, exhausted at the end of the first sprint, with 7 more planned to go.

Instead of jogging between the first and the second I walked to recover. I did this again after the second sprint until coach Brian caught me and advised I’d recover better with a slow jog. I found this extremely hard to believe but managed to jog between the remaining sprints (due to time constraints we ended up only doing 6).

My middle two sprints were absolutely terrible, not much more than a slow jog, after having gone out too hard and fast to begin with. When I knew there were only two more to go I was able to regain some control and run well and actually enjoy myself. On the fifth spring I focused on appreciating being at training, being in the moment, concentrating my effort on the rhythm of my breath and my footfalls, and on the sixth I basically just hammered it, gave it all that I had left.

Rushing straight from that high intensity into sitting down for a talk was not ideal. I stayed at the back of the room and stretched for most of it and I had some hot tea in my thermos to enjoy once my body had cooled down (It was an absolutely freezing night). The nutrition talk was very informative and reiterated a lot of my recent reading. The irony of us discussing the importance of getting carbohydrates into our system in the first half hour after finishing training was not lost on anyone (Noone was prepared with food to eat during the talk). Last Saturday I had a smoothie with me for right after training and I will try to organize something similar (with perhaps less preparation) to take on Wendesday nights in future.

On the negative side, I was disappointed with my lack of control over my level of effort and outcome during the session. On the positive side, I showed up despite the difficult conditions (There was only a handful of my group who did), I gave it a red hot go, and I made sure to do plenty of stretching afterwards! And for the first time on a Wednesday night after training, instead of having takeaway I made a healthful dinner at home afterwards with a carefully calibrated mix of carbs, protein and veggies. The glass is half full, I think.