Our beginnings in trail running

                                              View of our just over ten kilometer run

We started running jogging a couple of months ago in December as a way to lose a little bit of weight and stay fit.  It was tough at the beginning, running a little and having to walk a lot, but we are progressing slowly. It helps us to be able to monitor our speed and length of each run using the runtastic application on my phone. 

Our average speed per kilometer has gone up from a snail paced 7km per hour to a more acceptable  9.1km.

Our aim is to get to over 10km per hour before May and increase our endurance so maybe we'd be able to do a trail race before the year is up, our only expectation would be, to finish the race and not be last.

Last weekend we ran for over an hour  for the first time and managed to complete just over 10 kilometers in 1hour and 7 minutes. If we can lose those seven minutes, I'd be very happy.  

The circuit we completed starts and ends at our front gate, there's a hill to climb (another harder one later) almost straight away then we're off the road and on a track for about 6km then cross down through a neighboring town and then around 3 km along side the River Seine. This was the worst bit, because there must be about fifteen barriers you have to get round (there to stop motorbikes I suppose) and here's where we lost a lot of momentum.  With the benefit of hindsight we can learn for next time how to become quicker for this part and hopefully run this circuit in 1hour and 5 minutes.... we tried twice to run again this weekend, but with inscriptions pending for Oliver's post bac, prepa's and competitive entrance exams to fill out on Saturday, that pretty much scuppered our plans and on Sunday our neighbors came round just when we though about running again and instead we shared a lovely apple tart that our neighbor Réné had made, and had a nice cup of tea while listening  to Edith stories from the past about our small village, especially during the war and I really enjoyed that. Edith is 76 and has always lived here, different houses, but always in this village.