Domain = Pain

Pain in the Domain. That phrase has such a great ring to it!

I’d put it off for too long. Couldn’t do it the week before the marathon – taper time. Then I was in recovery mode for a couple of weeks after the big race. I tried one session in that post-marathon month, but my thighs were shot for the rest of the week afterwards so I knew it was too close and I should stay in recovery mode. Then for the last few weeks the showers at work have been out of order with all the renovations in our building so a hard sweaty lunch session hasn’t been a reality.

But suddenly today I felt pumped! It was time to get back into the faster sessions. I was even willing to work with the lack of shower and go for an awkward sponge bath in the sink instead...

So I headed up to the Domain at lunchtime thinking I’d better take it slowly. It’s been almost 2 months since I’ve done any kind of speed work whatsoever, it’s an unseasonable 27 degrees outside and my legs are feeling rooted after a 22km run Saturday night, a 110km ride on Sunday and 35km hill ride Monday with no real recovery yet.

I figured I’d be netter off going with Group 2 instead of Group 1 and taking things a bit easy. I joined the group of about 15 or 20 guys and when the organiser yelled “Who’s leading the group?” everybody suddenly got quiet and looked at their shoes. I was up front so the organiser said “You’ve got a watch. Do you know the way? Then you’re leading!”

I looked around and asked if anyone else wanted to lead off, but there was deathly silence. Alright then, “Let’s go boys!”



As I just said, it had been a long time since I’d done Pain and my legs were shot so I was terrified of leading out too slow and having the guys grumbling or taking off ahead of me, or having group 3 catching us from behind. I had no idea how to pace it since I’ve never checked the splits on my watch before - the whole point for me has been for someone else to yell at me to motivate me.

I thought the best thing to do would be take it easier jogging between the sprints than I normally would in Group 1 (where I’m often struggling to keep up). I did a slow job in between efforts, but suddenly the pack was way behind me. I was really surprised, so I slowed down a bit to let them catch up, but they seemed to slow even more when I did that.



Anyway it worked at as really fun in the end! I enjoyed yelling out the instructions and the “GO!” at the start of the sprints. A few of the faster guys flew past me in a number of the sprints, but then in others I was at the front of the pack (I think mainly because I started a few metres in front of people). They all seemed really reluctant to keep up, I tried chatting and joking with some of the guys, but got no response and they all sort of hung back. Weird. Other observation were that it was very difficult trying to keep the group together and on a lot of the sprints some guys would zoom past me and then blow up before the end.

I felt like I was taking them too slowly all the way along, and around the last couple of sprints was feeling like I was leading them to a slower time than normal, but in the end when I told them the time (26:20 the leaders) quite a few guys said “Wow that was way quicker than normal”. So I guess I did good. Interesting experience – I quite like the idea of pacing out a group. And I’m very happy that I managed to put in a solid speed session, stay ahead of Group 2 and still feel good at the end.

I have been feeling that I wouldn’t be too competitive in the Sydney half marathon as it’s only a month away and I’ve done no structured training for it and very little running at all for a month. But after today I reckon the rest has done me good I’ll be on fire in that race! I’d totally written off the half and thought ahead to the Bay ride, but now I’m psyched. I’ve got three works of ramping up the speed work and a nice week of tapering and I’m calling sub 85 mins as the goal. EXCITED!