Team Spirit... well, Competitive Spirit

I was writing here recently, saying how you don't need to run as part of a group, or with a friend to run, and I stand by that still, you don't. On Mondays though, I will usually run with Biscuit Boy, we run a 4 mile loop around a London park. We only have an hour to get changed, get there, get running, get back and changed and back to work. So, there's no messing around.

Usually the run takes us around 33-36 mintues, and yes, we do time it that precisely.... two weeks ago it took 36 mintues it was a nicely paced run usually we run relatively slow as usually we will both have done some form of longer exercise the day before.

This Sunday, neither of us got a long run or bike as 'Project Kitchen UK' is in full progress. So I glossed, and Biscuit Boy painted.. So Monday was a good day for a run. Later that morning Biscuit Boy called to say he could not make the run. A colleague that I sometimes run with mentioned that he could run, so we arranged to run together. Great. As luck would have it on the way to the changing rooms I bumped into Biscuit Boy he was back, so we could all run together after all. And what a run it was, right from the off we set a good pace, we all took it in turns to 'lead', just quite naturally, none of it was planned before. It was an excellent spontaneous run, that left my thighs aching and it was great to see that the guys were just as exhausted as I was !

Biscuit Boy checked his stopwatch when we got back - 32 minutes- a whole 4 minutes quicker than previous weeks, and that is the great thing about running in a team like that - the competitive spirit takes over and you draw each other into it, that urge to win, that urge to go faster, that urge to not show yourself up !! And yes it works, and when you run like that you end up getting an overall better workout.

Of course you can't run like that every day. Today, I was back on my own in the woods and whilst the weather and the views were glorious, I saw not a single soul the whole time I was out, and that really is part of the beauty of running, it's essentially the same thing, runnning, but there you have two totally different experiences. Joy.