New record

Well actually it wasn't any of my personal bests that were beaten today but I ran with Henry and we managed a new record for him over the Chateau du Val course.

I'm tapering down for the marathon next Sunday and so the training has been reduced dramatically for this last week. I decided that I would run the 7.2 km course with Henry today and then do the usual Sunday run with the gang tomorrow before calling it a day (or a week even).

We set off in the late afternoon and the weather is perfect for an Autumn day: sunny, still and mostly warm. I set the pace for Henry and we did the first kilometre in 5:30. I was hoping that we could keep this up all the way around and go under 40 minutes but over the next 2 kilometres we slowed down a little. By half way we were around a minute behind my objective for us but Henry did a lot better over the second half of the course and even managed a sprint finish to end in 40:08 or 5:36 per km. Not bad at all and 2 minutes better than his previous record.

So what was the secret to motivate an almost 13 year old in producing such a good performance ? His mother's iPod, what else ? Thank you Steve Jobs !!