More sprints

It’s Friday morning and it’s raining.

Trevor and I are out in Bicester, standing on a street corner, looking slightly sinister, and I am getting some good advice.

‘Nice and steady….400m…fast as you can…repeat ten times…’

And I think….’I want to be in bed…’

I hate running sprints. I loath it. I find it so difficult and yet it is an incredibly important part of my training. So I grit my teeth, try to calm my breathing and off we go….

1min 38…

I want to puke. I want to cry. One minutes rest and then we run.

1 min 37…

And it goes on, with various degrees of pain until we have done ten reps and then it’s back to the gym for a leg workout which at least I can enjoy. Later, at home, nursing a protein shake, I reflect on the sprints. There is no sense of achievement here; there is no sense of anything beyond pain. I don’t come home, shower and feel good. I feel sore, tired and slightly denuded and know that in six month’s time I will still hate this part of training and probably won’t have progressed too far. It’s all rather soul destroying and no one ever brags about a particularly good sprint workout the way they would about a long run or a heavy weights session.

However, I have faith in Trevor and his methods and so three times a week I am out doing my sprints. I don’t claim to enjoy them but I do take immense satisfaction of ticking them off my training plan and look forward to when we get back from Siberia and I never have to do them again.

-Philip