A jog in the dark with Felix

Felix is a very good friend of mine, and also Hannah's other half. He's also been cajoled into running a bit with us! So for his birthday she was kind enough to buy him some running shoes. However, due to a snowboarding injury he's not been able to run until today. But at 6.30 we were heading off on the 5km run out of the back of the village to see how he got on with it. He didn't think he'd manage the whole 5km on the first go.

Felix has had a slightly better start to running than I did. He turned up dress in all the right gear, and thanks to Hannah, the right sort of shoes. It doesn't help that my partner also thinks he looks better in lycra than I do!! But even I will admit that he has a lot less wobbly bits than me, the git.

I tried to run at a medium pace as I was leading and didn't want to go out too fast. The first bit of the run I find tricky as it's hard to get a rhythm going on the twisty footpath. Warming up might help with this, and it's probably something I should start doing! But things carried on well, with the pace being fair for Felix's first run, especially as it was getting dark. The traffic was higher than I had expected, which has a impact on pace. Despite being 6'3" and wearing day-glo yellow, as well as a head torch, I still nearly got a BMW to the face! Felix did seem a bit concerned about having to turn round and run all the way back, so I managed to get him to the 2km mark and suggested he take a quick break there whilst I carried on to the half way mark.

Once I was back with Felix, I wanted to try and get him back in one go. He wasn't so keen on this as an idea! Despite his protestations, we managed to keep up a reasonable pace of a bit over 6mins/km. Not bad going for his first run, although this bit is down hill! Once we got back into the village, I wanted to see if Felix could really push on for the last few hundred meters. His only comment was he thought we already were! But as the pace chart shows, I had been pushing him on for the last 1km already, but I wanted to go up a gear again. As such Felix finished a short while behind me, so the charts show my overall pace rather than his. It was therefore my turn to take a photo of him looking despondent.

As said above, the charts show my times and don't reflect Felix pausing at the 2km mark or his finish time. I think they do a fair job of showing how being unused to running will make your pace drop off, but how you can dig a little deeper and press on once you know you're near the end. Knowing there isn't much farther to go can do wonders for finding a little extra to push on with! It is however quite annoying to run with someone who barely sweats at the end of run, whilst my chunkier self is pouring with it. I'll just have to push him harder next time!!