Once I joined a brand new running club down the local park. There were a few of us that joined at once, all from other running clubs. I'd say maybe 8 or 9 in total. We all enjoyed race running, we weren't overly good but we tried. None of us had ever won a race we discovered. There was one girl who really looked the part though. She was the daughter of some local running champion or something and she too joined for our first meet/race. Rather than joining from some pathetic local club like us she was from a well regarded running club in another city. She hadn't done much of note in that club but it had some very good runners. Plus she was a young lass, getting faster and still learning the ropes to be fair. As we set off we all settled down to a pretty stiff pace. After a couple of laps of the park one or two were starting to feel it, 24 stone Carol in particular was only just managing to go with us. By the time we set off on the 4th and final lap we were all gasping for air. All except one of us, the girl. Her face was expressionless and she seemed to be cruising but she was still only 5th in the race! As we headed to the final 600m or so it looked like it was going to be a close finish. Someone would be breaking their duck, perhaps me? But then this girl, Cath, angled wide and skipped clear like the rest of us were in quicksand or something. It was a joy to behold, I've never seen anything like it in my experiences of local running club. Steve, who finished 2nd and is 78 years old hadn't either. Sure enough me and the lads got talking over our all you can eat Chinese that night (turns out we all love a couple of takeaways a week and it's now tradition that we go for food and a few beers after running club) and we said she has to go for the City Park Run championship. Yes it's a few levels up, bringing together winners of all local park running clubs but this girl was special in my experience. It had been only my 3rd go at running club but the winners of the other 2 weren't like her. We knew she couldn't be beat so we entered her and said we thought she should give it a crack. So she did and she was ****ing ****.
FFS George...................first rule of running club........................
