A little help from my friend

[HeavyFoot]

Today was the day for my hilly 3km “fun run” against the clock.

Five minutes in, on the first hill, my friend the gazelle Seb silently draws up behind me. He’s half my age and runs 12km every day despite working a 15 hr day owning a cafe.

He slowed down to act as my pacer (felt a little patronised at first TBH) but he led me to take 30 seconds off my PB.

Do other people like or avoid running buddies?

[Oldfloss Administrator 60minGraduate]

Sounds fun? No.. I am alone runner... no one near me... my only running buddies are you folk, the birds that tease me by flying up and down in front of me... and the voices in my head

[Dexy5 Graduate10]

I love running with others and my best runs are parkrun and races. My OH runs with me a lot of the time which works for both of us but I do escape on my own every now and then.

[nif100]

hi my running buddy is my niece she is 20 years younger than me. We started C25K together our aim to do the 5k race for our hospice this month. For the first 4 weeks it was fine, but I noticed gradually that she was starting to run at a faster pace than I was comfortable with. I begged her to go on but no she would stay by my side. On those occasions I would find I ran faster times, but I have never been a runner obsessed with how many mins or seconds I took to run a particular course. She is now way ahead of me and pushing on to 10k, she is a natural and I am back (hopefully soon) to running on my own. I love solitary running have always been a lone runner and even back in the day 30 odd years ago when I ran marathons I would go out for 3hours running on my own. It was sort of escapism for me and I love the peace the chance to change my route and do it my way. Don't get me wrong love my niece to pieces and she laughs at me when I say she is my pace buddy.

[Gwenllian1 Graduate10]

I'm an alone runner too. My husband and I will leave the house together but go in different directions and meet up again at the end. Love hearing how he has done and sharing my experiences with him but when I'm actually running, I like to be in my own. That said I have done a couple of park runs and lived that as a very different experience.

[Gwenllian1 Graduate10 in reply to Gwenllian1]

Looks like the i on my keyboard might have gone off running on its own too!