It was a glorious day today, but there was a really chilly wind. I ran from my folks place again and my brother questioned whether I really needed the three layers & hat that I was wearing. Oh yes, I did! In fact as I ran down the ridge path towards the sea, the wind was so biting that I was glad that I’d also sneaked a pair of gloves out with me!
I ran down to Ovingdean Church, on down to the Undercliff Walk and then along to Rottingdean. There are days when I have less physical energy, but today it was more like I had less mental energy as well. I even stopped at the window of an Estate Agent to look at the houses… a very thinly veiled excuse to pause for a couple of minutes!
At the top of the High St I turned left onto a path I’d not been along before (which is always odd when you’ve been in an area for 50 years!). It turned out to be a middle path between the one I normally take past the windmill and the main road up the hill. After a slippery ascent, it eventually led to the top of Ovingdean, from where I ran back up onto the ridge.
It was at this stage that I received an apologetic call from someone at Barclaycard. They have been inundating me with direct mail for the last couple of years and my cheerful calls asking to be taken off the database last year obviously had little effect. A month ago I asked in a more pointed way. Yesterday I received another letter so I had another more robust conversation… the last two of the three agents I spoke to across 30 minutes assured me that I was no longer on the list as of the beginning of January, but that they print mail 8 weeks ahead so I may even receive another letter or two before they stop. The nice lady today (remember that it’s Sunday), called to say that the job had not been done properly in January after all, so the 8 weeks would start from today.
I mention this simply to point out how effective having a phone conversation is at taking your mind off running… by the time she rang off (having presumably endured the sound of the biting wind that I mentioned earlier in the earpiece for at least five minutes) I was almost at the top of the hill. The rest was easy.
According to Strava I ran 6.3 miles in 63 minutes.
