I got home at lunchtime and the sun was shining. Time for a sandwich? Poppy was stood by the door. Time for a walk? She wagged her tail, it's been boring being a convalescent dog. I looked at my running shoes and I looked at the clouds. Rain on the way but there might be 28 minutes of sunshine left? I put on my running shoes and Poppy was beside herself with excitement. We did a deal, she could come with me and take the lead so that she didn't go too fast, if she got too tired I'd carry her (much like I'd had to do for her in the early weeks of c25k).
We set off and it felt good. Not too fast, not too slow and avoiding most of the hills that had been such a disaster last time. Poppy was clearly enjoying herself, tail wagging high and ears flapping as she skipped along. I think that she might even have been singing along to the music - no-one else around as we yelled out "mee aand Juuulie!" to the birds in the trees. It may be a drought but we splashed through muddy puddles on our gently sloping route.
We seemed to be much further along the route than normal at Laura's time checks - was the music running slower or were we, in fact, running faster? Perhaps 5k isn't such a distant dream after all? I did some mental maths - we're doing about 1km per 10mins at the moment so it would take us 50mins to do 5k ... Back home to a mug of hot chocolate and bowl of cereal (water and chicken treat for Poppy) we sat on the couch to consider our progress. Poppy was asleep within seconds. We enjoyed this run so much (and it's good to have Poppy feeling better too) that we're going to declare week 8 compete.
Thanks to everyone who's encouraged us over this hurdle, you've been great. Roll on week 9!
Parkrun on your 8th birthday!
Mr and Mrs Bob go parkrunning
Week 1 run 1
