It’s been a really interesting week with two student business pitch events at Brighton Business School and a day spent at TEDx LBS, held this year at the Royal Geographic Society. Whilst the former are always brilliantly thought-provoking, the latter was really excellent brain food.
The speakers are generally talking about really challenging subjects and the fascinating conversations with the other delegates between sessions are icing on the cake. I could happily spend a day every month at one of these events!
You can see the talks from last year on the site at the moment and I’m sure that in due course they will add the ones from Friday… I can highly recommend listening to Shoshana Clark talk about her work in Kabul which I found incredibly inspiring!
I was immersed in an HBR article this morning, sitting in the sun on the deck and could happily have stayed there reading the whole day. But a run was needed to stay in shape and to keep the writing here going, so on went the running shoes and off I ran.
It was a beautiful sunny day but there was a distinct chill in the wind… not enough to make me regret wearing shorts and a tee-shirt, but enough to give me painful ears and make me fantasize about ear muffs!
To start with I wasn’t really sure where I was going, so I followed my nose out onto Folders Lane, across the common and down the Sussex Border Path to Ditchling. When the ground is wet, this path is a quagmire but the recent dry weather made it a really enjoyable route, along behind the garden centres and right into the middle of the village.
Even the route South across the fields here was firm going, which is rare indeed and then I was faced with a choice. I could turn left or right and still do a lovely loop, but instead I chose to go straight on and up the Beacon… there’s something about the lure of a steep hill!
I reached this halfway point in 57 minutes and set about retracing my steps. With the chilly breeze now behind me and the sun higher in the sky, my ears started to warm up, though I now noticed that many of the walkers I passed were wearing jackets and trousers.
I found the return leg to be harder work, despite the absence of a big hill. I’m definitely fitter than I was (maybe last year) as I was still able to keep pushing ahead, but there was nothing left to really push hard over the last quarter-mile.
Surprisingly this route is slightly longer than the one via Oldlands Mill, so I ended up running 10.5 miles in 1:53… averaging just over 5.5 mph… and I’m definitely going to run this way to the Beacon again as the weather warms up.