On track

I did my first run with a running club and my first track session in over a year tonight. I took a drive out to the Exeter Arena on the other side of town for the South West Road Runners club night. I had planned to go out on their steady nine-mile run - out across hills and fields - but at the last minute decided to stay and join the track session.

It was a lovely, still evening, and it felt good to jog around on the red tartan surface. The track always feels like the domain of the most serious runners. The same gladiatorial circuit the world over. From Kenya, to Jamaica, to Exeter, runners following the same curves, striding up and down the same straights, preparing themselves for battle.

Our session was 6 times 800m, with a short walk recovery between each one. I was the youngest runner in the group (four men roughly aged between 40 and 55, and one woman in her late 30s). The guy taking the session told me to take it easy and to sit at the back for the first one, as it was my first night. I wanted to tell him it wasn't my first night running, but I did as he said. By the third 800m, though, I was itching to go faster and I started passing people like I was Seb Coe making a move down the back straight - well, it felt like that, in reality it probably looked like one tired, middle-aged man edging his way past an even more exhausted, red-faced man whose legs were struggling to move beyond a laboured shuffle.

Still, by the end I was pushing the pace up at the front, to the obvious surprise of the rest of the group. "Very impressive," the man taking the session said afterwards.

I doubt the Kenyans will be so easily impressed.