Last Sunday, our Goodgym Track Attack crew joined Area Activator Simon for our first time trial session of the year. Meeting up outside Pavilion Coffee in Victoria Park mid morning, we thankfully missed the majority of the ice and snow from the previous week.

This training session was a little bit different to our usual set-up!

Area Activator Simon set up a nice 1 mile loop course of the south side of Victoria Park (following the paved section around the pond, and past the Sunday markets). Our objective was to run a clean 5km (3.1 mile) effort around this route to complete the course in a chosen time, but we were not allowed to use watches or pacing assistance to do so.

Also, we set up the run as a "blind handicap"- John, Matthew, Harvey, Alison and Kim would set off on their runs at different times with the objective to complete them as close to 12.15pm as possible. For example, a runner aiming to complete a 30 minute 5km would run at 11.45am, and plan to finish as close to 12.15pm as possible. A runner aiming for a 20 minute 5km would set off at 11.55am, and so on.

Every runner who completed the course were able to finish within 45 seconds of their intended time, which is super impressive! Kim had baked a collection of delicious vegan cupcakes for the runners who got closest to the magic 12.15pm finishing time, but we were able to share them between all our runners (which felt right, considering the excellent performances!)

Keep an eye out for our next Track Attack Session in February. Great running everyone!