Wednesday March 4th 2009 Being caught by the wife

I would not describe Lynn, my wife, as competitive except when it comes to shopping, then she's a demon. She runs 3 or 4 times per week and swims once or twice, this is as much about catching up on gossip with her buddies as it is about staying fit. She enjoys racing 5 - 10k's, does not mind running the odd 10 miler and has even run a few half marathon's. Her training as stayed more or less the same throughout the 30 or so years she has been running.

Now since it's conception in the early 80's we have both run in a local 10k race most years and it as come to my notice that Lynn manages to run very consistently year after year, where as I get consistently slower. This year she ran faster then she ran twenty years ago, I did not. Twenty years ago I ran 18 minutes faster than Lynn, ten years ago I ran 12 minutes faster than Lynn (Lynn ran the same time as she ran this year) and this year I could only manage to run 7 minutes faster than little miss consistent (have you noticed how you can go off people).

By my working out she is going to catch me somewhere in the next 10 - 15 years, I have already started to practice my sore hamstring limp for that fateful day when she overtake's me. Maybe I should change my training, should I stop during training runs and look in shop windows, do I need to talk more while training, should I concentrate on arranging shopping trips and not worry about my running. Answers on a postcard please.

Posted by Lynn Ferris at 12:31 GMT