Category: Long run

After a week of chilly weather, such that I wished I’d put the wood burner on Friday night, this morning was a spectacular return to summer.

Having sat in the tea-house to sup my way through two quadspressos, I felt that I had to get out for a run… especially as I didn’t feel up to a run last weekend.

I started off in the normal direction, but then a path caught my eye that I’d not run down for an age and I followed it. Unfortunately the first section was full of stinging nettles and my legs took a real hit! But then it led me across the fields to old Wivelsfield and an old corner of Burgess Hill that looks as if it is still delightfully rooted in the ‘fifties.

I crossed Rocky Lane (perilous!) and ran up through Bedelands Farm nature reserve, then crossed back across onto Theobalds Lane and ran round the back of where I used to live. I’m always curious about old neighbourhoods so I paused outside the house to take a quick look. The front garden landscaping that I designed has really stood the test of time, although the plants have been allowed to grow huge… I guess that it is almost eleven years ago now!

Overall Strava estimated that the run was 7.2 miles in 70 minutes… circa 6.15 mph.

According to Strava I ran 7 miles in 69 minutes, a shade under 6 mph average.

My friends will tell you that I rarely drink and that I will often drive so that I have an excuse which is plausible for those people who have already started drinking (if you follow the logic).  Part of the reason for this relates to an intense dislike of hangovers and part to a preference for retaining my faculties in unpredictable environments.

This said I do really enjoy an occasional G&T (Blue Sapphire of course), a few glasses of wine over dinner with friends, or a glass of Hepworth’s Old if I’m cooking Bolognese sauce (which gets the rest of the bottle).

All of which bears no relation to my post this morning… I’d be under the table (rather than writing this blog) if I’d drunk eight shorts.

The unseasonably warm weather has continued and I couldn’t face the thought of wearing my longs again today… so the shorts made a reappearance.  Not that I particularly wanted to run this morning and though Kim assures me is a normal Sunday sentiment, this was a different kind of reluctance.

Nevertheless, after imbibing a couple of quadspressos and a chapter of a good book, I duly turned up at the front door in my running gear.  So clean was I when I returned to the front door 80 minutes later that Kim actually accused me of having sat the around the corner for the duration.

Good idea (for future reference) but not what happened.  Instead I opted for a rare road run, choosing a boring out and back route which simply saved me the effort of thinking where to go next.  Added to which I know roughly where the mile markers are, so it’s easy to gauge when to turn around.

I actually turned around at the 4 mile mark, scaring a few people by stripping off my base layer and putting just my t-short back on.  Then, feeling slightly less hot on this December day, I retraced my steps, most of which looked a lot like this:

Overall, according to Strava, I completed 8.2 miles in 75 minutes, an average of 6.5mph.  Now for another drink… maybe a tea without the G.

After a really lovely meal with my school friends on Saturday (aka a late night, for me), meeting Daren at 8.30 on Sunday morning at Jack & Jill was a bit of a stretch.  I got up at 7am to make sure I was fully awake by the time I left the house… though I very nearly fell asleep again whilst imbibing a quadspresso!

The weather forecast was for gusts of 40 mph, but that wasn’t quite right… it was a steady 40 mph wind and it kindly blew us up the hill, across to Ditchling Beacon and then on to Streat Bostall with barely a chance to get Daren’s new runners dirty.  Running down the bostall was also easy, but then we had to run back along the main road as far as Westmeston.

The current breed of (nameless and faceless) UK road planners like to slow cars down by reducing the sight-line at the apex of corners… once you know this, you tend to notice the way that hedges, trees etc are allowed to grow out just where it would be helpful to be able to see ahead.  This obviously means that runners (or walkers, cyclists etc) are effectively hidden from view along roads like this one.  Cars also can’t see if there’s anything coming the other way, so they are forced to stay right in (& justifiably so), close and personal, when they come across pedestrians.  Not nice for either party, but better than crashing into someone driving the other way.

In the scheme of things, however, it was of little consequence.  We were soon onto a quiet narrow lane and enjoying ourselves again.  In the lee of the Downs, the wind was barely a breeze and we trundled gently along until we reached the bottom of the tank tracks.

Then the really hard work began… the path goes directly up the scarp slope, which makes it steep, added to which we have a rule that we’re not allowed to stop until we get to the gate at the top.  I think that we were on comparatively good form and we made good progress right up until the ground flattened out at the top… and we got the full force of the wind against us!

From the gate at the top it’s downhill all the way back to the cars, which allowed us to really enjoy the wind blowing any remaining cobwebs from our heads!

According to Strava, we ran 7.7 miles in just under 80 minutes, an average of 5.8mph.  Despite having had only one early drink the night before, I then spent the rest of the day recovering on the sofa as if I had a hangover!  Oh the joys of getting older!

The mild weather clearly could not last for ever and finally ended yesterday… this morning there were seasonal ice-covered puddles along the road.  Thus my longs and other warm gear were retrieved from the bottom of the drawer and replaced by my shorts, which I dare say will not now be seen until the Spring.

I started out on the normal muddy tracks… it obviously wasn’t quite so cold in the woods, though it certainly felt as if it was.  Surprisingly though, once out of the shade it was super-warm, no I didn’t feel over-inclined to remove either of my layers!

When I reached Wivelsfield I decided to run on the road for a change.  I ran through the village for a way then turned up Hundred Acre Lane.  Half way along there I paused to take a photo of the landscape just as a beautiful old car drove past, honking it’s horn at me in a good natured way.

Rather than return to the mud I ran to the other end of the lane and turned right along Middleton Common Road (or similar) which took me right back into Burgess Hill.  The houses along Folders Lane have changed so dramatically over the past few years, with plots being subdivided to form a series of small cul-de-sacs, or pairs of new houses.  Some of these are actually of a more contemporary design, unlike the hundreds of boring cardboard rabbit hutches that the mainstream house-builders have foisted on the town recently, with seemingly little push-back from the planners.  Burgess Hill could so easily have been a beacon for contemporary & sustainable design, but instead its design standards appear firmly rooted in the last century.

According to Strava I completed 7.2 miles in 65 minutes, an average of 6.65 mph.

It was warm again outside this morning but I didn’t realise, until I started running down the road in my shorts and t-shirt, that it was also drizzling.  Warm can quickly turn to cold when wet is involved, so I was happy to get into the woods where it was only leaves that were falling gently around me.

I’ve been thinking about the subject of goals over the past few weeks, thanks to a series of different tangential contexts (articles, books, discussions, courses etc) and I spent the run thinking about the implications for the students I work with.  Over the past few years I’ve been encouraging students to think more fully about their goals, using a simple framework, but I have some new and more profound thoughts forming in my head… I think that even I have been underselling how critical goals are.

The run wasn’t long enough to resolve this challenge and it was plenty muddy enough to require a good deal of focus elsewhere, such as in the grip department.  In the summer I tend to avoid puddles, but once there is more mud than not-mud, my preference is to run straight through it.  Trying to skirt around the edges inevitably leads to running on sloping ground, which along with the increased number of direction changes creates a much greater risk of slipping over… into the mud!

The only downside is soaking wet trainers, muddy legs and the occasional lapse of concentration regarding other obstacles, such as brambles looking to steal my hat!

According to Strava the run was 7 miles, completed in 64 minutes, a respectable 6.5 mph.

With a thick mist it looked pretty chilly this morning, but it was actually still warm enough for shorts and I quickly shed the hat and gloves that I had worn as a precaution.

I started out along the normal loop, but was drawn to run along a neglected path from a previous loop… neglected by me and everyone else by all accounts.  It was muddier than my normal route and the brambles had made a really good job of reclaiming it for the wood.  It took me across behind the former Royal Oak, which has been sold for some time yet is still awaiting redevelopment.

Then it was back to the normal route, through the end of West Woods and down Hundred Acre Lane.  One of the pleasures of being an Occasional Runner is that the opportunity to stop to chat with people is as important as completing the run.  As I came back through the woods, so I ran into Lew in his truck and stopped for a natter… we’ve not caught up for ages and though it seemed like a ten-minute conversation (before I started to get chilly), we were actually there for almost an hour!

I ran back through the relatively warm mirk and wet mud via the Common, completing 7.3 miles in 66 minutes (not including talking time) according to Strava, an average of 6.6 mph.

It was a lovely day and having had a midweek run I was happy to run the larger of my normal loops.

As you can see below, autumn was well underway… the colours were lovely.

Part way round I was surprised by  something crying in the tree above me as I negotiated a stile.  I paused to look and realised that it was a squirrel, singing (or maybe scolding, since it sounded pretty annoyed) from the branches.  I can’t remember ever having heard them do this before… it seems by the comments on Gardeners World that I’m not the only one to be surprised.

According to Strava my run was 7 miles, completed in 64 minutes, an average of 6.5 mph.

Before my good friends at the Framed Bicycle Company in Snowdonia get excited… no, I haven’t bought a bike!  You would have seen it already… before I had picked it up from you!

Rather, I have been racing cyclists, rather successfully as it turns out!

Kim and I have had the pleasure of Karen’s company this weekend and I capitalised on this by getting her to take some new photos of me for my various on-line personas… chief amongst which is the relaunched Rally Strategic site.  What was funny was that she really liked the photo that I have used as a placeholder on there… not realising that it was one that she had taken five years ago with a little extra background added in by my good friend and website designer Simon!  The updated photo won’t appear there straight away, but I welcome any comments on the site itself.

The recent wet weather has finally returned the brown summer stubble to green grass, such that I spent yesterday cutting & edging the green and the verge in the Close, sweeping the roadside etc… the grass was long despite me cutting it only last weekend!  A quick glance today at the other local green spaces, which are looked after by the either Burgess Hill or West Sussex County Council (which involves neither of them cutting, let alone edging them!) reminded me why my neighbours are so happy that I make the effort.

It was a beautiful morning, but with a chilly edge, so I didn’t hurry to get out for a run.  When I did finally get out, I wasn’t really sure where to go or how far and this was exacerbated when I went to take my first picture of the day… the iPhone was FULL, despite deleting more than half the photos from it a couple of days ago.  Since part of the reason for running & blogging is to keep my folks looking at places they’ve not been lately, this put a considerable dampener on proceedings.  As a result I meandered and eventually stopped at a stile to sort the phone out.  The temporary fix was a brutal cull of apps, though later I realised that when you delete photos from the iPhone, it assumes that you don’t mean it and keeps it around for another 25 or so days just in case.

The stile was out by Ridgeview and thus it was natural to head in the general direction of Ditchling, even if I didn’t have the energy for a Beacon run.  As I crossed the Ditchling Road I had to wait for a load of cyclists to pass… it was strange to see so many outside of the middle of June.

I was expecting it to be really muddy going this way, but it was just soft… the parched ground had clearly mopped up all the water that the weather had thrown at it.  All the meadows were lush and the various livestock (mainly sheep & chickens) looked well-fed.  As I reached Ditchling I took a path that led me out onto the High Street and found a lot more cyclists.  I asked a couple of cyclists what was going on… it was a second London to Brighton bike ride, focused on raising money for charity.

I followed the cyclists up towards the bottom of the Beacon and decided that, in view of the comparatively low numbers, it would be safe to run up the road for a change.  This is a rare treat and I think I’ve only done it once before… it’s normally too dangerous and even during the normal London to Brighton there are too many cyclists on the road.

I started to climb and quickly realised that most people were walking rather than cycling… I should have counted how many I passed, but it was easier to count the number of cyclists who passed me.  One.  A second one (number 705, I think) caught up with me near the top and we chatted as we finished off the ascent.

I then ran the short distance to to top of the Beacon.

On a whim I chose to descend the really steep way (Cliff’s route) which basically drops down a steep spur and then goes straight down the rest of the scarp slope.  I then followed the road back through Ditchling, smiling at all the cyclists as they chatted about stopping at the top of the Beacon.

Towards the end of the village I turned left and ran up to the ridge and then along to Oldlands Mill, where they clearly had an open day… the smell of food cooking was amazing and made me want to stop, but I had no money with me so I would need to have done a runner afterwards!

My legs were starting to complain towards the end of the run… quite fair really, given that I didn’t plan to have a long run, nor to race so many cyclists!  According to Strava I completed 10.5 miles in 108 minutes, an average of 5.83 mph… not quite as quick as last week, but not bad Foster.

Since then I’ve had a cold shower & a hearty breakfast, said goodbye to Karen and washed Kim’s car… I can still smell the food from Oldlands Mill so it MUST be time for dinner soon!