Keeping up with the Pace

He started off his run after some basic stretches and a quick warm-up, as it was customary. There was a chill in the air that had been there for over week now (or was it from the week before that, but did it really matter cause it was the perfect weather), carrying forward from the weekend, the perfect running weather. He planned to do an easy 10 trying to recover from the strenuous weekend half.

So he switched on his music, started his Garmin and Nike Run Club app, and he was off. He tried to keep a steady pace, trying not to up the pace, trying hard not to give into temptation, promising himself to take it easy, hoping to keep that promise. He greeted his friends who were doing their time trial, waving as he passed by, once again trying hard not to up the pace to match them.

He completed his first lap and was almost done with his second when he spotted her from the corner of his eye. She was running at a steady pace striding with confidence and striding strongly. She easily caught up with and matched him stride for stride, even getting ahead of him.

At first his ego urged him to get ahead of her, after all how could he let her get ahead of him, how very sexist of him. But he once again reminded himself, rather sternly, that this was a recovery run that was meant to be easy. In the end he finally gave in and coming to a compromise, he decided to keep pace with her.

Now she was running quite well, although he didn’t struggle to keep up with her, it had been a while since he pushed himself to be at this pace (barring his interval training) continuously for a longer duration. So there they went down that road, at times side-by-side, at times behind each other, as the road permitted them, but always at the same pace, keeping up with each other. They didn’t utter a single word, just focused straight ahead, each serving a pacer for the other.

When they came to the end of the lap, she took a turn at the divider while he went on to the end of the road. For a moment she turned around to see where he was. He upped his pace finally catching up with her.  He gave her thumbs up and an applause continuing to enjoy the company and the challenge of keeping up with her. They encouraged each other when they felt the pace slacken, when the they needed it the most. Even then they did it with gestures without uttering a single word.

Now by the fourth lap he felt her pace slacken, though he encouraged her, urged her on, he felt that may be she had achieved her target for the day. So he carried on, keeping up the pace they had maintained, in fact he could go faster than he had gone before, faster than he had gone in a while. 

As he completed his fourth lap and turned, he saw her on the other side of the road. He smiled and waved. She smiled and waved back at him. He continued with his run, now with an added confidence, causing him to up his pace. When he finally came to end of his run, after the 10th km, he tried to see if she would be at the place where everyone cooled down, but she was no where in sight.

So once again, without uttering a single he knew he was grateful to her, who without uttering a single word helped him maintain the pace, encouraged him and in those brief moments became his pacer (hopefully the other way too), helping him keep the pace.