WFC Runners - 22nd November

This week the runners met outside the River Park leisure centre.  We had 23 runners though in an excellent turn out for the first proper winter session.  It was a bitterly cold night so there were lots of hats and gloves on display!  

After some chatting and the register we wandered round to the fields where we warmed up. We then had a jog up to Courtenay Road.  This itself was quite a warm up as it is virtually all uphill!!

Once at Courtenay Road I explained the session.  The focus was on pacing and trying to judge effort over a short, hard run.  

Starting at one lamppost the idea was to run hard for 45 seconds, I then blew the whistle, and everyone had to run hard for another 45 seconds to get back to the start point.  If paced well the runners would get back to the start point exactly on the second whistle. If the runners went off too hard they would be short of the post, and if they went off too easy they would finish beyond it.

This was all repeated 8 times with a short break in between.  

On the first rep almost no-one made it back, but over the course of the session everyone was getting closer to the start point.  As the course was slightly downhill on the way out and uphill on the way back they had to really work hard on the return leg to get back to the start!

I was really impresses with how everyone improved as the session progressed and with how hard everyone worked.  

After finishing we headed back down the hill to the North Walls Rec where we cooled down. After this we all tucked into an amazing cake baked by Simon H's mum for Wendy's birthday.  It was great to see everyone tucking in to huge slices of chocolate cake immediately after a run!!  Text book recovery!

Next week we will be heading to the pub after the session for drinks and more cake, this time to raise money for Anne's chosen London marathon charity.