Thursday night is club night at my running club (Plymouth Musketeers) and so tonight I took myself along and joined the 10 minute/mile group on a new route (Honicknowle). At the outset the group leaders were rather concerned that they wouldn’t remember the directions but in the end everything went smoothly and we discovered that the route was a relatively un-hilly and quick one compared to most of the club routes.
Before starting the run and for the first half mile or so I felt tired and wasn’t expecting to particularly enjoy myself, but as the run unfolded I fell in with a few of the regulars and we just ticked along, chatting (mostly) about Plymouth Argyle’s recent upturn in form and football more generally. The combination of a relatively easy route, a whole bunch of runners who were completely comfortable with the pace and the good company and chit-chat on the way round meant that the run went incredibly smoothly, seemed fairly effort free and was just generally thoroughly enjoyable. When we got back to the club base I had clocked 5.4 miles at 9:41 pace so we’d got along at a decent lick and not really noticed it. It was a nice surprise.
The best way that I can describe the run, as I have titled this post, is that it was a run that ran itself. It doesn’t really get a lot better than that (well perhaps it would if it had been light so that we could actually see where we were going and then been running somewhere with good views… but that’s just being picky). I’d be quite content if all runs were a bit like this evening’s.
Tim O'Hare 