The XT Memorial Mile...

Once upon a time, my friend Nic (channel swimmer, copywriter, journalist and now champion bodybuilder!) had a black and white canine training partner called XT. Sadly, a couple of years ago XT passed away suddenly, and every year since then Nic has run a mile in his memory (and in memory of the other dogs we've loved and lost). She posted on her blog asking others to join in - running, walking, swimming, cycling or otherwise ambling a mile at some point over the weekend.

And my mum and I joined in - we're doing a Race for Life on Saturday 23rd so I dragged Mum out for a bit of a training session! We did three miles and I'm dedicating the first one to XT, Basil, Ruddles and everyone else who's lost a dearly loved pet recently. I ran my Memorial Mile in 10:50, which is ridiculously slow compared to my usual 9-minute mile pace, but understandable when you consider the fact that the entire mile involved running up an absolutely enormous and very steep hill! I did then do another two 9-minute miles afterwards!



You can read about everyone else's XT Memorial Miles on Nic's blog.