The Return of the Friday Five

It might sound like a reference to a children's book by Enid Blyton but....

About three years ago, when our work and other commitments would permit, my running buddy Liz and I would meet up on a Friday during the day and go for a run.... we usually ran about five miles and so it became known as the Friday Five.

There wasn't anything particularly special about these five miles from a training sense; we weren't doing speed work or setting ourselves a particular running goal. We had a couple of regular routes - along the canal to Birches Head, or along the canal towards Trentham. Sometimes we would throw in a bit of variety and the occasional hill. In winter, we stuck to main roads and tried to avoided ice. A couple of times we went a bit further afield or ran a bit further.

Friday Five on Tour... Getting lost in Hope

But it was never really about the run or the route... the Friday Five was an opportunity to meet, chat, catch-up on our weeks and the five mile run would just be a happy by-product. It would take us somewhere between 50 and 60 minutes but we rarely looked at our watches. If injury or illness struck, the Friday Five would sometimes be a walk or just a coffee or lunch instead. If we were training for something or feeling strong, we might aim for a bit of a quicker time or at least finish with a faster mile.

Over the last few months, the Friday Five has been a much more irregular occurrence. Work and life have been getting in the way. Since the start of 2019, we've tried to meet a couple of times but it's not quite worked out. It's been tricky of late to get everything lined up to make it happen; leaving work as planned, remembering my kit and where we are meeting, being fit and healthy and ready to run...

But this week, everything worked out, the Friday Five was back and we really enjoyed it. We got to run in daylight for the first time in months, we caught up on a busy few weeks for both of us and it was fun.

Hoepfully it won't be too long before the next time... I've missed my Friday Five.

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