It had been a strange week, with several of the days masquerading as others which, among other things, meant that I berated myself for missing an important anniversary… only to discover the following day that it had been the previous day… and that now I had.
Some less usual activities on Friday and Saturday, bending under rafters whilst carrying things in a loft, wielding the hedge trimmer at shoulder height etc, left me with knots in various muscles… particularly in my buttocks. And before your mind goes into a tailspin, Mark has already cracked most of the possible jokes about that, believe me!
Sunday morning found Mark and I back at Jack and Jill for another 9am run… and it was going to be a hot one! We ran the same route as last week, along the ridge almost to Blackcap and then right and down to the A27, following the route of the South Downs Way. Once more conversation flowed freely, although this week I was finding the running to be way more difficult.
We passed a myriad of people en-route and as per normal, I hailed pretty much each one… people are much more sociable up there than they are on Brighton seafront and most people responded in kind.
One group of walkers quipped that they thought they themselves were mad until they saw us… I said to wait until we ran past them a second time going the other way before they decided just how mad we were! Having turned around and run the two or so miles back up to the ridge, we eventually caught them up… the picture tells the story.
The caption should be what they shouted after us as we ran on: ‘you don’t have to be mad to do the South Downs Way… but it helps!’
A combination of heat, tight buttocks etc meant that I was struggling pretty much all the way around and particularly on the home stretch. I was quite delighted therefore to learn that, although we were slower than last week, it was the outward leg that took longer, meaning that we must have returned at pretty much the same pace on both runs.
So 14 miles in 2.25, 5.8mph.
It’s the Three Forts Marathon next week… not that I have any intention whatsoever of joining Mark, Cliff & Andy in doing it! I’m just hoping that I will have figured out what day of the week it is by then!
