Summertime ends, but the legs are still out

In our garden, in the midst of the ‘burbs and surrounded by trees, houses and tall hedges, the beginning of the GMT half of the year was heralded by a gloriously calm, warm and sunny morning.  (you have remembered to put your clocks back, haven’t you?).  I felt that the Gore jacket and beanie hat may well be superfluous, but took them anyway, just in case wearing shorts turned out to be a little keen.

Just as well, as it was a somewhat different story at Jack & Jill, where the car door was nearly ripped out of my hands by the wind.  In fact, with hot sun, whistling wind and even a little rain from the scudding clouds in the course of my run, I was reminded of autumn, summer and spring… like a timely recap of the year we’ve had, ahead of the onset of winter.

I cannot say that I was flowing along today as it was darn hard work, even with the wind bowling me along from my rear starboard quarter, but there were a lot of other runners and walkers around today and one simply HAS to keep up appearances.  At one point I saw two runners on the hill ahead of me and I felt a familiar surge of energy push me up the hill in pursuit.  It took me a while to catch them, but not long to leave them behind when I did.

I got to Blackcap at 43 minutes, thanks in part to the thought of running with Mark Johnson and then I pushed onward to do the loop that he likes to do down to Lewes racecourse.  As I did so, the wind brought a brief but heavy smattering of rain, as if to suggest that this might not be a great idea.

The turning point, which once again I have had trouble spotting on the map, was at almost exactly one hour… and the thought of the other hour-plus to get back made me wonder why I had come so far.

The first hill back up from there is about 2 miles long and was hard going indeed, especially with the wind pummelling the cobwebs from my head.  In fact the balance of the run had this same characteristic and even the downhills were tough work.

I paused briefly at Ditchling Beacon 1.43 into my run and wondered whether I could make it back to the car in 17 minutes, bearing in mind it had taken me 19 minutes to get here at the start of the run.  I decided to give it a try.  This involved stretching out my stride going down the hills and just keeping my nose to the grindstone on the uphill sections.  As I came down the final hill towards the windmills and into the blessed shelter of gorse on either side, so my stride lengthened and the people I ran past must have thought I was completely barking mad.

As I turned into he car park I hit the stop button on the stopwatch… at exactly 2 hours.  Along with a GREAT feeling of satisfaction, I felt a real need to collapse in a heap!  It was a total relief to get into the car and out of the wind.

I confess to being slightly less joyous right now however, having looked back to my post from November 25th 2007 when I ran the same route with Mark… 9 minutes faster!  So much for progress… although it reiterates the additional speed that you can conjure up just by running with someone else… something which will hopefully play to my advantage come marathon day!