It went better than anticipated, panic over.

[Lizzie_NewStart]

My friend has her sister staying with her while her dad recuperates from his stay in hospital. When at home, she goes running with a friend 2 or 3 times a week and quite often a 5K park run but cannot get there very often now. For Christmas, my friend and her bother bought her a treadmill as she was getting frustrated that she has not been able to go running.

She has a condition that means it would be unwise for her to go out unaccompanied. Although very intelligent, her condition means that she is easily distracted, very trusting of people and easily led. Her friendly nature coupled with her looks means she does attract a lot of attention, not all of which is appropriate. As her condition is not always immediately apparent, she is quite vulnerable and could easily be taken advantage of.

During a visit to my friend while doing the C25K, her sister asked if she could come running with me after hearing us discuss my progress. At the time I managed to convince her that I was not really good enough and put her off for a while. I was worried that if she could run 5K and I couldn’t, I would lose her. Having completed the C25K program for a whle now, a couple of weeks ago I finally gave in and agreed but with some conditions in place.

Last Saturday, after days of planning we gave it a go. Carefully selecting the route, with my friend and her 3-year-old daughter in the car, and her husband on his bike (that was a sight on its own!!) we seemed to have all options covered. My boyfriend and I would run with her and call for backup if needed.

We started off OK and soon realised that the distance was not going to be the main issue, it was her speed. (We later found out she was doing her park runs in about 25 minutes, we estimate we do the distance in about 33 minutes!!). Luckily when I called her, she realised we could not keep up and ran at our speed (for a while!!).

Having read that you should be able to hold a conversation when running we have done so when it was just the two of us, however, that does mean we only talk half the time. With my friend’s sister, keeping her engaged in conversation was a bit one sided and I found it hard. Once we found a topic she was interested in, she spoke while I tried to recover a bit.

Where we thought a straight road with no turn-offs was the best idea so that we had less chance of her going in an unplanned direction, it turned out that the straighter the road, the faster she got. The second point was that although we are happy running 5K with just the two of us at our own pace, trying to keep her at our pace was more difficult than expected and we were struggling towards the end. But we did make it and had no need to call on our backup which was good really as my friends husband found jumping on a bike he has not ridden for 20 years was harder than he thought.

Overall it was a success and there appeared to be no ill effects of our over exertion although I think my friends husband suffered a bit. Best of all, my friends sister really loved it. That does however mean she wants to do it again. I think weekly may be a bit much for us and a shorter route may be called for.

[Annieapple Administrator Graduate]

🍏 A delightful post! You brought your friends sister much happiness I am sure Lizzie in spite of the pitfalls. However you have highlighted the risks of running with someone faster or slower paced especially for our runners in the early days of C25K. Thank you for sharing this lovely story!

[Oldfloss Administrator Graduate]

Just super... what a lovely experience! Running with others .as Annieapple says, can bring its own joy , and tricky bits too. ! Well done you !

[MrsLydiaWickham Graduate]

They are lucky to have you as a friend. 💖 What a lovely generous thing you did!

[Lizzie_NewStart Graduate in reply to MrsLydiaWickham]

I think I am the lucky one. One of the other aspects of her condition is that she does not remember people. She can spend time with someone, then meet them later and not know who they are. This could be as short as 10 minutes or a few hours. I am one of the privileged few outside of her immediate family that she remembers even after a couple of years of not seeing each other. I have no idea why.

I, like the rest of our friends from school have known her since she was born. We often all went round to see our friend and her little sister was always eager for one of us to play with her. On one occasion, she made a bee-line for me and called me by name. Their mother heard was in tears as I was only the second person at the time that she recognised that she did not live with.

I am now in good company. She is into nature and science documentaries and can name people like Sir David Attenborough, Prof Brian Cox and a few others which makes me even more intrigued as to why she remembered me.