Sole mates
Sole .. see what I did there 😉
Earlier this week I read this really cool article about Willie & Angela Gillis, a US couple who had started running together. Back in 2011 they were managing 5-10 minutes on a treadmill and now they are both Marathoners (and in Angela’s case an Ultra Marathoner).
I’ll be honest and say although in theory couple’s running together is “O for Awesome” I’ve had some meh experiences. There was that time during the inaugural Orewa Half Marathon where I yelled the F word at James as he encouraged me to run faster up a hill and then there was that time where I farked up my knee trying to keep up with him oh and don’t get me started on how he would constantly walk beside me as I ran (annoying the bejesus out of me) …
BUT in his defense he’s gotten so much better these days now that he’s realised that I’m just a really shite runner and perhaps more importantly that I’m TOTALLY cool with that.
The last couple of Saturday’s James has joined me on my weekend run, which although limits my options as I know he hates being out on the trail for hours on end, it’s been nice. In fact last Saturday he was a Godsend! We had driven to Shakespear Regional Park with the view to run the outer sections of the Tiritiri, Look Out & Heritage Trails. This loop would basically cover the entire Regional Park and since (for us) it’s a long way to go and neither of us had been there before, it was a good way to get the most “bang for our buck”.
We parked at Te Haruhi Bay and grabbed a map from the information centre (which will turn out to be fortuitous) and started up the driveway attempting to locate the Tiritiri track which in the end we stumbled across more by chance than through any real map reading skills.
Once on the track it was just a matter of trying to find the marked poles in large farm paddocks (which turned out to be harder than you would think) nevertheless we were tracking along (if not backwards and forwards a few times) through empty paddocks (which I’m used to as you go through a couple on the Whatitiri Track) when as we neared the third paddock I noticed that there’s a large cow on the other side of the cow stop ..
If James wasn’t there I would have immediately turned around and headed back BUT (being the fearless country boy that he is) James wanders up to the cow and tells it to piss off – which it did …
From that point every paddock we entered had livestock grazing and I made a point of not looking any in the eye and did my best to keep James in between myself and them.
He thought all of this was hilarious.  We had passed some cows grazing near the bottom of a paddock and as we were making our way up the hill towards the next gate I’d slowed down because it was steep and I was puffed. James, who by that stage was about 20 metres ahead of me then turned and yelled ..
“Quick dove! The cows are coming!”
He’s so funny … #eyeroll
If you are wondering – no I didn’t run up the hill BUT I did consider jumping over the electric fence to my right. Thankfully (for James) I thought to look behind me first to see the cows hadn’t moved one inch, I wouldn’t have been a very happy wife had I been electrocuted getting away from non existent marauding bovines!
In hindsight I guess they wouldn’t put “evil” cows in an area that is so heavily frequented .. but you know who thinks clearly with a 600 kg cow watching every move you make 😉
Till next time
PS – If James tries to tell you I was scared of the sheep – he’s mistaken. Just because I was worried a Mummy sheep might be very protective of her young, doesn’t mean I was “scared” just cautious. LOLOLOL