A beautiful morning for W9R3, and for the first time I was accompanied by himself: Mr SecretJogger, to cheer me out and back on my final C25K run. He settled into his newspaper in the sunshine with swans, ducks and fishermen, and I set off around the lakes, anticlockwise: my contraflow way of avoiding the indignity of being overtaken seems to work a treat.
Strangely more runners out than usual today. Hoped to equal or better my last run of 4.8km in 30 mins. That was soon scuppered after the 5 minutes warm up. American Constance (active.com coach) drawled “Now start to jog” and at the same time English Laura babbled “get ready to run”. On the only 50m stretch of public road I have to cover: a car stops me to ask for directions! Disaster!!! Don’t they SEE I’m on a graduation run and planning a brave attempt for a PB??? Nothing more but to de-earphone and advise.
The run was nice but for the rest uneventful, apart from realising that an organised club run had just started in a clockwise direction. I was offered a bottle of water half way round from their table setup with puzzled and sympathetic looks. But I ran the 30 minutes and finished the final C25K 
Clearly unexpectedly fast as Mr SJ still had head in paper and the photo finish had to be a rerun (not total, of course). Well I came in at 4.8km again, but including kind citizen feat and some serious oppositional jogging traffic. Still happy about that: in 11 weeks from zero fitness, at age 58, with a dodgy back (two disk ops. when I was young). I have a sense of disbelief that I can now run of sorts, though the Brussels 20K that passes by our place tomorrow is way beyond my wildest dreams. I have a sense of achievement, more energy, a smaller jeans size and a new but maybe slightly unhealthy relationship with lycra. Nearly all good then.
And finally to the family in the red VW looking for the British School in Tervuren early this morning: my apologies: I hope you got there in the end. Being British I couldn’t ignore you. I didn’t actually lie: going straight on and turning right does get you there: IF you’re walking, or even JOGGING ON A MISSION, but the road has been completely dug up for weeks. I knew that of course. Any detailed explanation of how on earth you could take a long and complicated diversion around the delightfully-named town of Wezembeek Oppem would have taken me way too long.
Graduated 🥳 - C25K Completed
Graduated!
C25K Done! Woohoo!!!
C25K Done and dusted ! 😬
Graduated!!
