Training Session 2 Report from Maggie

Tuesday night was the first of the track sessions open to Uringa and friends, run by Spot Anderson of Bondifit. The night was dry and cool, perfect for the ‘test for a man’ session that Spottie had set us! After a lot of stretching of important muscles – hammies, glutes, jaw muscles as we met the other squaddies – and some insider information on how not to fall over in the warm-up exercise, we were off curve running; fast around the curves and a gentle jog on the straight. By lap 3 we were nicely warmed up, and after some run drills to make sure we looked like champions, we were ready for the anaerobic threshold set. This involved 1km repetitions starting at 60% effort and then taking off 20 seconds per km until you could do no more. Before we started the main set Spot asked which of us had been racing at the weekend. A forest of hands went up as lots of the squad had been running the Sydney Half Marathon. Racers are granted a 20% easier time only having to build to 80% effort rather than flat out. Hmmmm. There was a momentary hesitation amongst the orienteers and then all their hands went up, too – well, SL3&4 count as races, don’t they?!

Spot split us up into newbies and old hands, with the newbies given special treatment with the other coach for the evening, known as ‘the Run Through King’. A brief chat to decide on starting speeds, which ranged from 8 minutes per km to 5 minutes per km, and some maths lessons on how to split a km into 200m slices for pacing purposes and we were off. This was the point at which those who hadn’t brought a watch which could mark laps looked around for a new friend to pace with. Despite a determination to only run to 80% by the end of the session it was clear from the warm faces and heaving sides, that the speed bug had affected us and a good effort had been put in by all. A warm down and the first track session for orienteers with Bondifit was complete. And who came along? Well, look at the photo and when Garingal beat us at the next Metro do not be surprised...

We’ll be there same time next week, folks – look forward to seeing you there.