Before I tell you about tonight's session I must say I feel a bit of a fraud after all your comments about my run yesterday and the graph of the route.  If you look you'll see the climb of around 350 feet was over at least 5 miles so no really steep climb just continuous incline. Then the down hill was over a round 3 - 3.5 miles  so good running all the way! 

Tonight's session had no hills - despite what my garmin sometimes says the track is flat!  I did a mile in 7:57 before the athletes arrived and then we had a session of 1 mile warm up, running drills, then 3 x 1 mile hard with 400m jog recovery, then 4 x 100m sprint with a walk back recovery and then 1 mile to warm down.

Totally messed up the garmin and didn't get a time for the first mile interval but guessed it was around 6:30.  After the 400m jog we set off on the second mile and Mark set off strong and I tucked in behind him, going through the quarter mile the garmin said 6:20/mile pace and Mark kept that going into the second quarter.  As we hit the half mile mark, I moved ahead and worked hard as I know the third lap is always the hardest in a mile or 1500m race.  I dug deep round the third quarter and we went through still on 6:20 pace I realised that I'd got a little bit of a gap on Mark and pushed hard down the back straight.  Despite finishing strong I finished in 6:27.  And it felt hard.

I knew the last one was going to be tough but still set off way too quick and going down the back was running sub - 6 minute pace.  By the end of the first lap Mark was ahead and I realised I couldn't pick up to go with him.  He pulled away a little to the half mile mark and on the third lap Jane passed me and went after Mark.  I was just a little too much adrift of them and not able to use them to pull me along.  I kept working but they went further away on the last lap and I came home in 6:25 so really pleased with the time!

The 4 x 100m sprints were tough but I managed 14.91s, 15.32s, 15.43s, 14.93s which felt very fast for me! Then 1 mile jog to recover but when we were jogging round we cut it to 3/4 mile jog as we realised the distance of the session - I did 7.59 miles in total!

I forgot to let you know how the Oldham Town team did in the Greater Manchester Schools Cross Country on Saturday.  From my group we had a winner - Adam Howard won the Year 7 boys race in superb style and has been selected to represent Greater Manchester in the FLM Mini Marthon!!

Emma who ran well last week in Leeds finished 16th in the Year 8 & 9 girls race even though she's only Year 8 and was racing against girls a year older than her.  Jane had a great run for 10th in her race and Mark was 21st in his race.  All the lads that trained with me for the last month did really well but we've not got the results yet so don't know how well they did as teams.  And 2 of them turned up for training tonight and are joining the Club!

Doing a 4 mile run on my own tomorrow lunch and then out with Wendy and Jenny a couple of times this week.