Training III

The moral from tonight's training was always try out new trainers in the environment in which you are going to train with friends before you actually train. I bought some new Nike trainers last week as my two previous pairs both suffered "accidents" recently. I found that half way around the warm up lap I couldn't run properly because of pains in my calves and shins. This continued through the shuttles and I was almost relieved when we moved on to the main event - speed endurance.

It's a measure of Chuckle Elder's commitment to getting me and the Fat Lad fit when he spent some of his valuable teaching time looking up the distances on the field on which we train, using Google Earth!!! Tonight's session was running 150m - roughly equivalent to one length of the field and back to the edge of the penalty area at the end from which we started. Sounds easy enough but when you do it 8 times in a row with 1 minute recovery in between it is very hard work. It started to hurt on the third run and by the sixth time around I felt like being sick. I made it through the first cycle of 8 and then we had a 10 minute rest, which include some stretches to keep the muscles loose.

Once the rest was over we did it again - another 8 x 150m runs. I did better on the second set and was only reduced to a walk on a couple. I even managed to beat the Fat Lad on one of the runs. Then it was over and we'd done another hard session. A short warm down and then it time to check out how hard we'd worked. I averaged 76% of max heart rate with a peak at 91%, burning 756 calories. CE averaged 74% and peaked at 93%, burning around the same amount of calories. So the design of the training session ... to work at your own pace, but to work hard ... seems to be very accurate.

My legs are stiffening up already. It's a good job there's a game to watch on the tv ...