New training partners.

Today's long run was interesting. I ran with a woman I had never previously met. I met her husband at Masters swim. We spend most of our time with our heads in the water and/or talking about swimming, but on my way out of the parking lot I stopped and chatted with him. He was telling me about his wife's training for the New York Marathon. She had her big 20 miler this weekend and was trying to figure out where to run it that wasn't too freakishly hilly. I told him 1. I'm not sure that kind of (flat) terrain exists around here and 2. to give her my email address and tell her that I'll run with her. Not the full 20, but whatever I can manage depending on the pace.

As I thought about it more I thought that running your LONG run with a complete stranger might not be all that appealing so I wasn't sure I would hear from her, but I did and we coordinated to run loops around Lake Waramaug. I had never been there so I thought it would be a nice change and doing loops would allow me to hang with her longer.



She told me she wanted to run a 9min pace. A-okay. And off we went. As we were warming up (at 8:45 min/mile) I asked her what her plan was.. she said she needed to do 4 x 3miles at 9min pace after a warm up. Uh, we're going faster than your 'pace' times in warm up. Perhaps we should slow down. We played this game the entire 15 miles I ran with her.



It was great running a new place and with someone. I would have otherwise run by myself. It was also an interesting perspective. This is her first marathon, this was her first 20 miler. In the past (prior to her marathon training) she had laced up randomly and would just go run 16 miles for the heck of it. She would just run whenever and however far she wanted. I found this to be interesting. Prior to my training there is NO way I would have knocked out 16 miles. (it actually ended up being 17 because she got home at 16.5 and figured she may as well round up)

She was a trooper! We held an 8:40 pace the entire time and she was feeling great! The running community is so awesome. We were able to come together with this one thing in common and share our morning all because we are runners. It was great to be able to support her and to have support for my run!

When was the last time you ran with someone new? How did it go? It was so easy to run with this woman. We weren't nervous about pace or anything. We just enjoyed the nice fall morning!