FAREWELL HALLOWED TURF, HELLO AGAIN TRACK
Reluctantly I've been forced to make the inevitable seasonal switch with the weekly speed session routine and reverted back to track training with the club on a Tuesday evening. My grass circuit on Worden Park has been a weekend religion of running off-road repetitions which has served me well this Summer. But, with all the wet weather, it's starting to cut up in places and with a view to some weekend races approaching I decided to phase it out last Sunday with a sort of half-session really. But it felt like enough, conscious of keeping something in the bank for Tuesday and rounding off a great week in which an increase of quality running and also mileage had naturally released itself. So a Monday recovery plod would set me up for Tuesday evening and the session went even better than expected. Sparing the tedium of statistics which I will nevertheless detail elsewhere in smaller type, let's just say that it was my best track session since back in my late thirties and, certainly as a forty-something, nothing has come near it. The track at Witton Park Arena felt fast and smooth after a few months of solo slogs upon my favourite grassy loop. I've been fortunate in finding the almost perfect set up in a corner of my local park which at home we call 'Buttercup Meadow'. My very own theatre of dreams. So it's just a field surrounded by mature trees where coarse grasses (and buttercups!) grow wild in the summer. But within this acreage is a perimeter loop of lusher grass that the mowers regularly go over and keep short as a walkway, or should I say, runway.
It's almost as if the park maintenance team has purposely mowed an elongated oval around it specifically for the use of some idiot to run along as fast as he can. The bends are a little tighter and the straights a bit longer than the dimensions of an athletics track and a lap also falls a little shorter at 395 metres, but there is a gradual incline to get stuck in to on the back straight. It's an idyllic place for lonely interval sessions. Some days even the main car park can be heaving but you might not see a soul in this tucked away corner of Worden. I made this discovery some years ago but it's only this Summer that I have done it justice with regular sessions on there. If last Tuesday was owt to go by, they have been paying off.

Sunday Buttercup Reps: 6 x 790m (off 90 sec rec)-av. 2:55, 1 x 395m - 78 secs
Tuesday Witton Park Track: 2 x 1200m(2 min rec)- 2:57/2:52, 3 x 800m (90 sec rec)- av. 2:34, 4 x 400m(1 min rec)- av. 74 secs