Running in the Family

I started running in March last year and got into it to the extent that I ran my first 10k a couple of days before my 60th birthday. Which led to my sister entering us both into the Aldi Chester 10K Race, scheduled for March 2021. Not a problem for my sister, who runs regularly and has a couple of London Marathons under her belt, but I needed to do some work.
Despite picking up several injuries over the intervening months, I was running at least one 10K distance each month by March this year. At which point the race was postponed until July 18th due to us being in lockdown. As we now know, this was the day before “freedom day” and we were told that covid restrictions would still apply - masks when not running, staggered start times and no spectators at the finish (or along the route if possible). Didn’t really want to race under those conditions so we took up the option of transferring our entries to a “virtual” race. Basically, we needed to do the distance before 15th August and upload it to the organiser’s website, in order to be classified as finishers and receive a goody bag of t-shirt and medal.
And today was the day. We were both free, I was down in Chester and my ankle/tendon was as good as it was going to get. My sister very kindly let me dictate the pace and I was aiming for sub 1hr 10mins. Despite not being used to running with somebody else, I soon settled into a rhythm and even had enough breath to chat occasionally! The picture is as we did the last 50 metres or so - knowing a photo was being taken I attempted to be just in the lead!
And the time? Well, it was a personal best. But unfortunately I just missed my goal, completing the 10K in 1hr 10mins & 11seconds! Looking at the splits, I noticed kilometre 3 was 20 seconds off the pace (no idea why) so a sub 1hr 10 is obviously still in me. I’ll go out on my own next time on a cooler day and see if I can crack it. For now though, it’s feet up and chill!