Training XLV

I should title this one Training XL5 in honour of what my mum tells me was one of my favourite tv programmes as a kid ... Fireball XL5. For you young people (just about everyone I know is younger than me!) out there we had a choice of BBC1, BBC2 or ITV when I was growing up. Channel 4 and 5 hadn't been launched and Digital TV in the form of BSKYB hadn't been invented AND we often watched tv showing black&white programmes!

Anyway we nearly needed all eight lanes on the track tonight. I arrived first, with Fat Lad and Titfer soon turning up. Then we had the return of Zico, who seemed to have had a breast enlargement operation over Christmas (not really she just had a skin tight Nike Fit top on instead of a loose shirt) and was the butt of a few jokes for the first few minutes. We also had the two newbies from last week turning up and pounding out the laps, all in all 6 laps filled!

Having had Fat Lad moaning about running lap after lap after lap in training, I decided to get a little innovative in our training. After the full warm up, I set our group jogging for 50m before getting them to run at 3/4 pace for 50m, then jog for another 50m before running for 100m. At this point we decided we should walk the gaps and after walking 50m, we ran 150m before walking another 50m and then running for 200m and walking for 150m.

So that was set one and then for set two we did the whole thing in reverse starting at 50m jogging, 200m running, 50m walk, 150m run, 50m walk, 100m run, 50m walk, 50m run and 150m running. We took a five minute rest and then repeated both sets again. It was a good hard session. Zico crashed out after the second set and Titfer went some time soon afterwards with a thigh strain. Fat Lad and I just pounded out the runs and sucked in the air on our recoveries. He though we'd finished after the second set and might even have been longing for the laps again by the time we finished. A full warm down and then it was off home for pre-match preparations for Saturday's game.

A good hard session burning 1073 calories with a 99% max and a 75% average (the mid point recovery was too long).