Big man Daren and I had agreed to meet at Jack & Jill windmills this morning for a run and it’s fair to say that the weather was very kind to us indeed! It was a glorious day, with a slight mist making the place look nicely atmospheric and (since I’d forgotten my sunnies) usefully taking the edge off the bright sun.
Our runs together are infrequent enough that we tend to run the same route each time… but it’s a good one! From Jack & Jill it drops down into Pyecombe ahead of a long slog up to the top of Wolstonbury, with it’s amazing views.
Then there’s a big downhill to Clayton that has a steep vertical kink (a bank that is almost too steep to run up) in the middle… today this left me gasping for air! Towards the bottom end of this path is a section that is notoriously muddy, even in summer, but not today… workmen had laid a new section of path which we ran down, despite it not yet being officially open.
The mist provided us with a nice view of the Windmills on the hill from Clayton Rec.
The route then takes us along Underhill Lane to the bottom of a section we call the Tank Tracks… the path goes directly up the scarp slope to the top of Home Hill. We have a rule that pausing is not permitted, so we have to run the whole way and I really suffered on this today! We’re never speedy, but I note that on Strava this section took us 11.25, putting us way down the leaderboard compared to the ‘course record’ of 6.16!
At the top we did pause!
Then there’s a gentle run back down to the Windmills. Our run was 6.4 miles and according to Strava, our running time was 71 minutes, giving an average of 5.4 mph… not bad considering the 1082 feet height gain and the fact that we were deep in conversation the whole way round, even on the steepest sections..
For all the challenges that we each face, I think it’s fair to say that (especially on a day like today) life is good!