It's Australia Day here in the land down-under and Australia Day means pretty much the same thing to millions of people around the country - that's right, a sleep in!!! Unfortunately for those members of the Gale Force Running Squad it meant something quite different. For the dedicated few of us who are totally addicted it meant getting out of bed before 5am to be at the Queensland Uni for a special, extended version of our usual speed session.
Talk about value for money. Usually it's $5 for a one hour session but today we got 50% extra for no extra cost - except for the physical cost of muscle pain and copious amounts of sweat. And sweat we did! It was 23 degrees when we started and 24.5 when we finished and the humidity hovered around 80%. It was the closest thing you could get to running in a sauna.
Coach Chris split us into two groups - the fit and the less so. I'm in the less so at the moment and we got to do the ladder session. 200m, 400m, 600m, 800m, 1k then back down again with a 200m recovery in between. One of the guys who'd been out for a while thought that I'd be a good bet to run next to for consistency. Boy was he wrong! I explained about overtraining syndrome (it was a very gasped explanation) but he didn't quite get it. He thought I was just going through a flat period so I elaborated a little further about doctors and sciency things like blood tests and cortisol/testosterone imbalance and he realised that it was a little more than just a flat period.
We were rewarded for our hard efforts with an outing to a local cafe for breakfast. Good food. Good Company. And a good start to a good day.
Happy Australia Day! Sounds like you had a wonderful one. Now I know you stay so speedy- doing speed work in a sauna! Strong work!
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