A partner in crime

Once again, I found myself at a low key social event standing with a beer in my hand. I was chatting to one of the other friends who'd walked the Caledonian Challenge with me a few years before.

"You still running?" I asked him. We'd swapped notes on running during a few of our training hikes. He nodded.

"Say, you remember you always said you thought we could have completed the Caledonian Challenge in about 17 hours instead of 22.5 hours if we'd pushed the pace a little harder and taken shorter breaks?" Of course, I knew he would remember as he'd mentioned it on several occaisions since then. He'd definitely been the fittest member of our hiking crew. He nodded again.

"Well, if you're keen, there's a 50 miler not too far from here. In fact, we did some of our hike training along the route." He looked interested so I continued: "it's got a 13 hour cut-off, though, so we'd have to be even quicker than you talked about. In fact, we'd pretty much have to run all the flats and downhills..." He paused, but it could see he was thinking.

We've swopped a few email since then and agreed we'd start a training regime and "see how far we can push our bodies". But we've not yet done or committed to do anything. Have I found a partner in crime, or have we both already learned that it is best not to commit to taking part in endurance events over a couple of pints?