A text from Mini-me Mark on Saturday night settled any question about where I was running this morning. Jack and Jill, 9am. Alas, the balance of the text outlined how far we would be running: 14 miles. Ho hum!
It was a beautiful Spring morning and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the London Marathoners who might be dehydrating if it stayed like this. Mark & I had no complaints on the matter though!
Our run took us along the route of the South Downs Way as far a the A27 and back again, though as other runners and regular readers will know, there are a couple of challenging aspects to this route. Somewhere after the six-mile mark, there is a steep hill that really belongs in the mountains… and it becomes a tortuously steep descent on the way back… though, mercifully it is relatively short.
Worse, is that the first two miles of the return leg, barring the aforementioned, is a draining uphill slog, after which there’s another 5 miles to complete.
Still, Mark is great company and the miles fairly whizzed by, especially as he agreed to let me practice a presentation on him, as best as I could remember without the slides, for work next week. Despite helping the time pass more quickly, this actually makes for a harder run since the dialogue is controlling the exhalation… I had the stitch for quite a while early on.
Our discussion inevitably got around to marathons (for the avoidance of doubt Mark, NO!) and ultra marathons (DEFINITELY NO!). Mark has completed about 44 marathons (including Ultras) so far and is thinking about a three-day event later in the year which would add three to that number… circa 35 miles each day. C-R-A-Z-Y! Count me OUT for that one too!
So our 14 mile run took us 2.20… a shade slower than the leading woman took to make it round the London marathon course… but hey, we had more hills, and probably more fun too!