A few days I received an e-mail from someone who had read my blog and recently moved to Ireland from France with her husband, asking about running in Dublin etc. It turned out she had been down at Ringsend last week when I had been running the 5K race, and was also interested in that. Naturally I offered support etc, and the offer to go for a run together was taken up and tonight we arranged to meet up - with no pre-set idea of what we would be running.
Karolina, my new buddy, is originally from Poland, married to a Frenchman who has started work with Google here in Dublin. They are both runners, although he didn't join us this evening, and Karolina ran the Berlin Marathon last year in an excellent time of 3:48, and is training for Chicago this fall.
I jogged down to meet her, and immediately she looked fast - slim, young (well mind you everyone looks young to me these days), and raring to go. She is following a training plan based on a 4 day-a-week schedule, with tonight's plan requiring 10x500 at 4:22 per km pace - A tad fast for me, but I agreed to assist and help her achieve this. We checked out the park by jogging a lap, and gauging an approximate distance. I raced here last week and a full lap is around 950m.
When we started Karolina was off like a whippet. There was no way I would be able to keep up with her, so I cut across the park and met up with her as she came through. That first lap was a little too long, more around 750m, so we decided to cut it short for lap two. I jogged with Karolina as she recovered, then set her off again, this time for a 600m lap. I cut across the diagonal of the park, approximately 400m to meet her as she finished in 2:32, then we jogged the 350 back to the start, and so we repeated a further 8 times. She was brilliant at pacing, with only one lap over 2:40, and that was when the rain bucketed down and we got soaked, with the 10th lap another 2:32 for a good workout session for her, and although I didn't run the speed session, I ran each warm down 350, and the 400 across the park each time, so making around 7/8 kilometres myself.
We then ran a warm down session of around 2 miles, over the quays, before my very fit friend ran home along the canal. Whilst I couldn't keep up with her tonight, I really enjoyed the session, as it brought back my days as a coach, and I actually got a real buzz seeing her deliver the steady, even paced times for each lap. I will certainly be aiming to keep up with her times in the weeks to come, assuming that she will want to return and run with me again some time. Her pace will encourage me to sharpen up as my training develops. She is 6 weeks ahaed of me in her training programme too, so something to aim for.... All in all, I can log around 8 miles for tonight, not bad at all.
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