I will dance Jerry

As promised I texted Nayoung on Friday to inform her we were going start running around the park but the plan was to run for 90 seconds then walk for 60 seconds and then repeat for about 5-6 times depending how we felt.

Arriving outside her house at 8.30 am I was amazed to see Nayoung was ready and waiting on her doorstep and was already making her way to the car. This week we got a prime slot in the car park and so after a short period of getting my Guide bib on and Nayoung putting her coat in the car we were off, gently at first but soon chatting away about the route. I am really impressed with Nayoung, she is so confident and we were soon transitioning between tarmac to grass, grass to mud and mud to tarmac with hardly a break in step.

We soon passed 6 sets of run to walk so decided to take it up a notch to see if we could do another lap which we took very gently with a little bit more walk than run. By the end on the session we were quite tired but with big smiles on our faces.

On the way back home I told Nayoung that we both had some homework to do before we met either a long walk or a run. Nayoung told me " I may be able to go for a walk but I sometimes run in my house." I asked "On a treadmill?" to which I was informed that she did it on the spot.

"This week I will dance Jerry!"

Who am I to argue, a perfect cardio-vascular workout, what a great idea. 

I received a lovely email last week via England Athletics from a lady called Nayoung who is blind and asked if I would be her Guide Runner. It transpires that she lives about 2 miles from me so we exchanged a few emails and agreed to meet at Goddington Park, Orpington at the parkrun; Nayoung was very happy as was I.

It is important that as a Guide Runner for visually impaired (VI) athletes you arrange to meet at a venue where there are lots of people so that they feel safe and this worked perfectly for us today as Nayoung came with a friend who was her chaperone. After introducing ourselves to the Race Director, Peter, who I have run hundreds of miles with in the past, we dumped Nayoung's coat and stick to go off to the centre of the park. Here I explained to her that we needed to get to know each other and do some drills together. As always I had a planned session that lasted 45 minutes where we did the following:

• Right Turns
• Left Turns
• About Turns 
• Gradual turns to the left and right
• Rough trail
• Uneven trail

Nayoung was a natural, a brilliant VI runner who was happy to tell me to slow, walk or run. We learnt not to say "Sorry" if we bumped elbows, everything I needed as guide so she could get the best from her run with me.

As for myself, I had a lovely time, what with meeting old friends and actually running (Which I miss terribly) and meeting a new friend. Next week I am picking her up from her home so that we can do a slightly longer, in duration, run around the park and then progress to hopefully run a full parkrun in a few weeks