Ohhh I’m a bad blogger. 😦 I hold my hands up and admit that I forgot about the most important event in the athletics calendar: the XT Memorial Mile.
It should have been on 13th July. But I only remembered (with a start!) this morning. By which point it was too late to hold the event on the 13th, but not too late to hold it this weekend.
For my newer readers: my training partner wasn’t always brown and stripey with a baggy face. Nope, once upon a time I had a black and white training partner with disproportionately huge ears.
His name was XT, and you can read about him here (if you’re a dog-lover, you might want to have a hankie nearby).
It’s been a couple of years now since XT left us suddenly, but he’s far from forgotten.
The day after he died in 2009, I went to the track in an attempt to run the pain in my heart out through my legs. Last year, deep in my running-groove, I celebrated him in the best way I knew how: by running a mile at our local track.
Since then, I vowed that the XT Memorial Mile would become an annual event, and I know a lot of you pledged to run/walk/jog/swim/cycle/whatever the distance this year.
So, we’re a couple of days late, but will you do your own XT Memorial Mile this weekend? Shall we say Saturday (tomorrow)? You can do it Sunday if it suits you better, and of course you can cover the distance wherever you like and however you want. You can even do further if you like: if you’re running a 10k, just dedicate one of the miles to XT and dearly-departed dogs we’ve all known and loved.
Please let me know in the comments if you’ll be taking part, then come back and let me know how you got on.
I don’t expect to run anything like as fast as I did two years ago, or last year! I might even run it as intervals. But I will run it.
Will you run/walk/swim/amble the 2011 XT Memorial Mile? is a post from The Fit Writer blog.
Nicola Joyce – the Fit Writer – is a freelance copywriter and journalist who writes for the sport and fitness industry. Her main website is here.
The Fit Writer Nicola Joyce 
I’ll try and do it on sunday my love. xx
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Thank you 🙂
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Buddy and I will do it today……a wallk/samblette along the tow path. XT was a lovely fella! x
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Yay! He was… although he wasn’t hugely impressed by Buddy when Buddy was a baby! ;D
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Mws and I will go for an amble tomorrow.
Sally x
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Fab, thank you!
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I will get a mile in for XT on the X trainer (see what I did there?!) tomorrow morning. I’ll come and tell you all about it after that!
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Awesome, thank you!
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I’m going to drag my mum out on a three-mile run on Sunday, so we’ll dedicate one of those miles to XT! And I’ll do a blog post about it and everything.
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Great! Thank you! Cheers to Basil (RIP) too x
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Hi. A friend referred me to this post. I lost my sweet boy in March, and I, too, began running as a way to cope with my grief. I started a blog about my Mastiff, http://www.fortheloveofbubba.blogspot.com, and at least two of my posts talk about running. It’s nice to know someone else is a grief runner. Thank you.
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Aw, I’m so sorry for your loss. They break our hearts when they go, don’t they? I have been running for a long time, long before XT died, but yes running was one of the first things I thought of to do. I will check your blog out now. Thanks so much for reading my post. Take care.
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I will dedicate my two mile walk tomorrow evening to XT!! 🙂 I might not be able to check back in because of everything going on with the move — but I pinky promise to do it 🙂
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Yay, thank you! 😀
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I am running one for XT tomorrow, right after my boot camp class, either there at the track or at home.
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DONE 🙂
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Thank you so much 🙂
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Cuán, Xena, Jet, Tiggy, Simon and I all walked two miles for XT this afternoon in Swinley Forest – we got very wet but all bar Simon and I didn’t seem to mind……
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Thank you to you all! Horrible weather for walking so extra appreciation is coming your way x
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Well I completed my XT mile of my session on the X trainer this morning in 12 minutes, listening to Swedish Death Metal (Scar Symmetry’s Dark Matter Dimensions to be precise), reading my course text book.
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Nice! 😉
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[…] you all so much for your sweet and positive responses to this year’s XT Memorial Mile even though I sprung it on you a little […]
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