Running with a group for the first time

This evening a friend took me to meet a group of people who run every Wednesday evening. They are the Hemlington I Run group and provide a friendly environment with encouragement and gentle competition to run in. They meet at Hemlington Lake which has a path running around it that is about 1.1 km long. We were free to run however many laps we chose and could stop whenever we wanted. The group ranged from some speed merchants who disappeared into the wild blue yonder, to several who simply walked the laps. On every lap though there was someone  cheering you on with words of encouragement, a really lovely environment to run in. So my training tonight was 5 laps of the lake (about 5.5 km) in approximately 35 minutes, not too shabby considering it was 20 degrees Celsius, a tad warm for comfortable running and that I still haven't sorted out the rubbish water bottle situation.