Cliff is well known for his organisational abilities but today they were tested in-extremis.
But I must first mention that yesterday I spent the afternoon in the garage making a new piece of furniture for my office… a two-storey bookcase for my London Business School folders (although I haven’t managed to find the box with the rest of them in yet!). My point though is that it’s difficult to gauge how different excuses measure up against one-another, but at least mine was a different one to last week.
Anyway, having got my dig at Cliff in early, I pitched up at Stamner Park with only a vague idea of who else would turn up, or how many… and it was to be many indeed: Mini-me Mark, Duncan (I feel like we’ve met before?), Big Man Daren, Pete (having run from home, show-off!), Lotta (parter of Leigh from last week), Robyn and the indomitable Clifford, who was wearing a t-shirt that somehow managed to accentuate his already huge shoulders!
The merry band of eight set off and somewhat inevitably, instantly spread out, making it difficult for the front runners to know where to go and the back-markers to know where to follow. Cliff did a sterling job as choreographer, sending faster people up the steeper hills and allowing the slower ones to take sneaky short cuts so that everybody kept together, more or less.
No matter how fast we ran though, Pete would always pull effortlessly ahead, as if gravity was somehow lessened in his vicinity.
And so it was that the ensemble reached Ditchling Beacon for a quick team photo.
Here we split into two groups, Cliff being of the mistaken belief that Mark and I could run as fast as Pete to cover an extra couple of miles and still catch the rest up before they got back. Fat chance!
We chose to run down the north side of the Beacon, along Underhill Lane and for some obscure and probably hilariously testosterone-fuelled reason, run back up the steepest path in the whole area… the one above Westmeston. It was here that I discovered that, small as Mark might be, he still makes an excellent break for the headwind if he is running two paces in front of me… as he was an extra few feet further up the slope!
It’s difficult to describe the downhill on the other side as anything other than extremely painful… the wind was so strong that it blew the entire contents of my sinuses up into the back of my head somewhere, where they stayed waiting for a more inopportune moment to be repatriated.
We ran on down, and down until we eventually reached Stamner village, where, devoid of any money between us, we glumly ran past the overflowing tea-rooms with its delicious cakes.
Rather than run straight down through the park, Pete took us up through the woods again, allowing me to demonstrate to myself just how knackered I was!
Thus Pete and Mark had pulled ahead as we ran down the final hill but as I hit the mown grass I started to sprint to close the gap. Fortunately for me they didn’t notice until I raced past as they were now sauntering along… a chase ensued and there was definitely a winner, although I’m not really sure who it was!
Cliff, Robyn and Lotta were the only ones left to witness our final pirouette, the others having danced off already. Mark duly disappeared back off up the hill, presumably to go around again… we had only covered 9.2 miles in 1.39, 5.58mph.
Meanwhile I went back with Pete for coffee and was presented with this simply amazing picture by his daughter Lucy, aged 10. Thank you again Lucy!
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