Duke of Edinburgh Award

I had the great privilege to pass and chat to a whole Dukedom of D 0f E teams this morning whilst out running, and lovely young people they were too… as were the team that claimed they had been trying to get the Award for forty years and were currently looking for the nearest pub!

One word of advice to those considering taking the award though.  Keep stepping forwards.  Teams have similar dynamics whatever their purpose and it is easy for one or two negatively inclined people to render the rest of the group literally immobile… one of the teams I passed had progressed but one mile by the time I ran back past them having completed ten miles.  Here, as with many things in life, it can pay just to keep moving, even when you’re knackered having had a bad night’s sleep in a leaky tent.  And don’t I just know that!

Apart from the bad night’s sleep in a leaky tent bit!

As I ran up the hill from Jack and Jill, I already felt pretty knackered, but after last week’s ten-miler, I knew that I had to run at least seven miles.

In direct contrast to the training runs along Brighton seafront at the start of the year, pretty much everyone was happy to engage today… and boy, were there ever a lot of people out to say good morning to!

Aside from the numerous D of E teams, there were cyclists (including one guy, Damian, who had a similar experience to me in the Brighton Marathon, coming in at 4.02 when he wanted a time with a three on the front of it), kite flyers (including a father who had just walked up the way-steep scarp slope with his children, including his three-year old son who didn’t even look tired) and walkers galore.  I must have said good morning to over a hundred people!

It was hard going on the white path as I neared Blackcap, but I was following the route that Mark and I did a few weeks back so I knew that there was a two-mile downhill section ahead.  Alas, the wind that had been spirited and behind me all the way along the top was now, with the gradient in my favour, full in my face so the going was still hard work!

Before you reach the A27 at Newmarket, there’s a sneaky and really sharp incline and I had to follow my own instructions to just keep going… despite tired legs.

And then there’s a long hill down to the road and those of you who know how it feels to turn around at the bottom to run back again probably know what I mean when I say that I really wished that my car had been there, rather than at Jack and Jill.

Rather bizarrely, it was.

Eh?

I set off up the hill with the wind at my back and made surprisingly light work of the gradient, passing some young hikers sullenly edging northwards as if they were dragging a nation behind them.  It’s roughly a quarter of a mile to the first rise, the same again down the perilously steep section (fortunately it was dry) and then just over two miles to the next rise on the top of the Downs.  This section is a long slog and was fairly littered with D of E teams walking or reclining against their rucksacks, but they were generally in good spirits.

I reached the top in 28 minutes, which is actually a minute less than it took me to run down!  And then it was the long haul to Jack and Jill against the wind.

Unusually, my car was absent, my having left it at the other end for a change.

In case you’re still puzzling over what you have just read (and are familiar with Hobbits), this here is a tale of back and there again.

I turned at the windmills at the 1.11 mark and with seven miles to the car and t=with the big downhill section at the end, had great hopes of knocking at least five minutes off the time Mark and I took to do the run (the other way around) a few weeks ago.

Alas, as a result of my few short stops to chat to people, I managed only to beat it by a minute.  But there’s no shame in that, as I didn’t have the irrepressible Mark to drag me kicking and screaming along… even though he has completed the run a full ten minutes faster on at least one occasion.

So 14 miles in 2.24, 5.8 mph and a whole lot less sleepy afterwards than last time around.  All in all, a great day!