Nine Minutes at a Time
I went to the running club with Miss 19 again tonight – we're now half-way through the “Couch to 5K” programme. We ran three lots of nine minutes, with one minute walking in-between, which added up to a little under four kilometres. Next week we move on to twelve minutes running at a time, which I imagine will take us over the ultimate finish line – then it's a case of slowly taking away the intervals and turning it into one long run.
It's been interesting to see how the programme is run, and see everybody around me progress from week to week. I've had to keep almighty quiet about how far I probably could run, because I don't want to be “that asshole”. This evening I ran near the front of the group for a time, and quietly listened to everybody breathing as they ran around me – and noticed how hard some people were working. It was a pretty inspiring feeling – being surrounded by so many people busting their arse to improve themselves.
At one point – perhaps half-way through the run, we turned down several alleyways and I completely lost my bearings – commenting to the lady running next to me “I have absolutely no idea where we are”. Thankfully the river appeared from the evening mist to one side of us, and my brain did some sort of navigational form-fitting exercise. I carried on running, grinning at my own idiocy.
I'm back home now, still sitting in my running shorts. I'll have a quick shower before bed (he says, looking at the clock, and realising that it's already half past his bedtime).
Where the HELL has the evening gone? This keeps happening. How am I supposed to read all those books, watch all those movies, and all the other things when the clock is obviously speeding up when I'm not looking ?