No, I don't have a lisp.
Today Madame Truffe and I did it together, for the first time, despite the fact that we have been together so many years and what a lovely thing it was. She's played hard to get, but decided yesterday that we could do it. So, I was on a promise and woke up excitedly this morning. I like to do it first thing, while she prefers to have a bit longer to wake up, before committing.. I waited patiently. I won't go into all the details, but we got hot and sweaty together for 35 active minutes and I am proud to say that I managed to keep going for another half an hour after she had declared that she was satiated.
Oh how the British love an innuendo!!
Yes, today we swapped our Mid Devon fields, which are beginning to resemble the Somme, for the clean and level banks of the river Exe and the Exeter ship canal, for our first run together. Lady da Truffe, who rejects her aristocratic heritage in favour of the more continentally exotic nomenclature of Madame Truffe, recently graduated from C25k and eventually allowed me to run with her, having declined my company throughout the programme. She apparently doubted my gallantry, even though I insisted that I would remain three steps behind her and would only speak if spoken to. So with Gwendolen Runkeeper discreetly in my back pocket, we set off in glorious sunshine along the canalised banks of the Exe. It seemed strange to see so many runners. Cows normally outnumber runners by about two hundred to one, but this morning I didn't see a single cow.
Running through mud, on uneven ground and gradients does not prepare us country types for the hard and unyielding surfaces of the city and my dear lady came a cropper on a treacherous concrete step, having wet shoes after running off the soaking grass. The minor scrape was not enough to stop this plucky lady though and we ran upstream, over a bridge and back down the other side. When we reached 35 minutes and covered about 4.5k she declared that she had had enough and we were a convenient distance from our car at that point. We had agreed that I would run on, so I left her and completed a loop which brought me back to the car, once round the football field and Gwendolen announced that I had covered 10k. After a warm down walk we were reunited and basked in our mutual satisfaction with the expedition.
I hope that this will be the first of many runs together and I am thrilled that my good lady took the C25k challenge to keep me company occasionally. One other bonus of this morning's run was that I managed to achieve a negative split run for the first time ever and completed my second 5k in under 30minutes.
Thank you C25k for giving us both a new lease of life and vigour.
Would highly recommend this new lease of life too. 
Free at last... escaping the garden
Proud and excited!
