Round, like a circle in a spiral

There are only 74 days until Seville Marathon. 74 days to complete my transformation from ultra-plodder to marathon-speedster*, a transformation which is going to be severely hampered when I join the extreme commuting club in the New Year. So when my training plan called for a long track session on a wet and windy afternoon, I hardened my heart, chucked the cat off my knee** and headed to the local athletics stadium.

As usual, the place was deserted, and all bar the final one of my 37 laps*** was run in glorious isolation. I am fascinated by how quickly track sessions fly by. You’d think that multiple laps of a uniform 400m loop would be tedious in the extreme, but they suit my aid station to aid station mentality very well. The overall structure is warm up, main set, cool down, and within the main set are multiple reps. Each rep splits into effort and recovery, and within each effort are more milestones. 100m, 200m, 300m, lap 1, 100m, 200m, 300m, lap 2, the list goes on. I spend so much time doing bad mental arithmetic that I forget to be bored, and the level of smug generated by the end keeps me going for weeks.

I’m going to miss track sessions when my commute kicks in.

* It’s a relative term.

** The very cute, very settled, very warm, very soft, very purry cat