Category: Photos

Once again I tootled off to my parents house for my run, although having got absorbed in re-reading David Eagleman’s book Incognito, the Secret Lives of the Brain this morning, I was even later in starting out than last week.

Eagleman writes beautifully: ‘Your consciousness is like a tiny stowaway on a transatlantic steamship, taking credit for the journey without acknowledging the massive engineering underfoot’.  If ever there was a great Christmas present for someone who is curious about life, this is it!

I ran up the hill to the top of the village, delighted to see that at least one of the latest units on the old Sunblest Bakery site has been let… clearly to Reflex, the sports nutrition company… nice design guys!

Sunblest, with its neatly kept lawns, had been baking on the site for decades until the early 1990’s and I seem to remember that my eldest brother worked on the doughnut line whilst on break from university in the early 1970’s.  Legend has it that one of the permanent workers asked him what he was studying and when he replied Pure Physics, she said ‘how boring’.

The site slowly decayed from its closure in 1994 until 2002 when it was levelled for redevelopment and this year  (in fact last month!) is the first time that it has been a net visual asset to the village since then.

At the top of the village I turned left and ran across to Brighton Race Course before, on a whim, dropping down the steep steps to Bevendean.

My parents and elder siblings used to take this route to see my grandparents in Moulsecoomb  the 1960’s but unless it was in a pram, I don’t remember having been down here before… probably because my Dad was one of the first people in our street to get a car.

I followed my nose and ended up exiting onto Bear Road, giving me a great opportunity to run up at least the top part of one of the steeper main roads in Brighton.

Back on the racecourse I headed the mile and a half down Wilson’s Avenue to the Marina then turned left and ran down onto the Undercliff Walk.  It was a very different scene to last Sunday, not least since the tide was out.

At Ovingdean I ascended the cliff where I descended last week, the steps seeming somehow less dramatic approached from below.  I then ran up the valley to the church where my good friend Ric, who died in 2009, rests with a marvellous view up towards Woodingdean and down to the sea.

From the church I once again had a steep hill to climb to the ridge at the top of Ovingdean, which I then followed all the way up to Woodingdean Primary School.

When I was growing up there was only a pair of derelict houses next to the school, but my Mother was Chair of the Scout Group working party which erected the Scout hut, from memory in the very early 1970’s.  The group of parents first dismantled the building at it’s original site in Sunbury and then rebuilt it, much to the excitement of all the young scouts at the time.

Since then the derelict houses have also been reborn and the previously utilitarian school has had a neat pitched roof installed.

From the school I crossed the grazing land (which used to be a ploughed field) back to my folks place.  9 miles in 1.43 is a chug at 5.25mph, but to be fair there were a couple of steep hills and more than one pause while I paid my respects to the past.

With only two weeks to go to the deadline, I have but one entry to the competition, published on the Competition Stories page.  Bearing in mind that there are three £40 vouchers up for grabs, it could be well worth your while penning a few words and sending them to me.  I’d hate to have to send two of the vouchers back!

After a fun-packed day of sculpting and Scouting yesterday, the alarm this morning was an unwelcome intrusion… especially as it was still dark.  I even fell asleep again on a chair in the space between putting the coffee-pot on and it boiling! But it was all for a good cause as I was meeting Mark at 8am for a run.

Kim and I had returned to Skelton Workshops yesterday for a very pleasant morning to push our sculptures on a little more… it really is such a relaxing environment to work!

Then it was off to Denton for the unveiling of a Blue Plaque, in memory of Ralph Reader of Scouting Gang Show fame, on Cliff & Nessie’s house, which was followed by a mini Gang Show in the local Scout hall.

Last night we had been due to go to a gig in Ardingly, but alas it was cancelled, so instead we used the firewood that Kim had reclaimed last weekend (back when it was hot!) to start the first fire of the season.

This morning was a grey day that threatened heavy rain, but since it was milder than the cold snap in the week, both Mark & I arrived in shorts.  I told Mark that he wouldn’t need his jacket (as I put mine on over a t-shirt) but he wouldn’t listen and stripped to the waist (fortunately from the top down) in the now-filling car-park in order to copy me.

We basically ran to the A27 at Newmarket, with a slight variation on the normal route and then back again.  Neither of us was particularly on form, Mark having picked up a cold from his daughter (for the second time) and me with lingering backache.

Our detour en route took us through the Bronze Age settlements above Plumpton and whilst there were none of our forbears around, it was still lovely to see the landscape where they lived.

Nearing the turn-point, the view of the fields was also worth pausing to capture.

We reached the halfway mark at 1.10, six minutes behind our run with Mach 2 two weeks ago, though some of this difference might have been in the diversion which included a stout hill to climb.  However, the return leg was a slowness of a whole different level… it took us 1.26.  We just got slower and slower.

To be fair, we were, as ever, in deep conversation, but something wasn’t right when a guy walking his dogs caught up with us!  Admittedly he was an ex-runner and was using walking sticks (one of the secrets to our speed in the TMB walk), but it was still disheartening to be caught up with by him not once, but three times in about half a mile!

As we neared the end, Mark admitted that he would have been happy to run a shorter circuit, a feeling that I echoed in spades… a perfect example of the Abilene paradox if ever there was one!  And we didn’t need our jackets either!

So, 14 miles in a laughable 2.36 (I’m not even going to work out how fast that is) before a return to the horizontal on the sofa!

At the point that I met Mark this morning at 8am at Jack & Jill I was feeling a little jaded.  Kim and I had given Karen & Fergus a lift back to East London from an interesting dinner in North London and then driven back to Sussex to arrive very slightly after 3am.  Still, four hours sleep is not bad compared to the first night on the TMB a couple of weeks ago, so I shouldn’t really complain!

The reason for such an early start arrived moments later in the form of another Mark, his being required to work later on in the morning and thus get a run over with early.

We set out and it was quickly clear to me from Mark 2’s easy gait that it was going to be a fast run!  In fact, I reckon that he spells his name Mach!

Surprising then that this was only Mach’s third long run with Mark… although the fact that he is a sprint cyclist might go some way to help explain the obvious power in his legs!

We ran on in an affable way, admiring the scenery as we headed for Blackcap… or rather the path before Blackcap that runs down to Newmarket.

Having had to work hard to keep with the pace, the downhill section finally allowed me to stretch out my legs… but alas, neither of my colleagues was phased in the least by my increased pace.  In fact, when we got to the steep uphill section they continued going like it wasn’t there and disappeared on ahead.

One more downhill and we reached the halfway point in 1.04.

The return leg started as it continued, with Mach stretching out an easy lead up the first hill, Mark following not far behind.

Despite some ungentlemanly behaviour on my part further up the hill (closing a gate behind me and running on, rather than waiting for the Marks), they caught me easily… and again, every time they graciously let me get ahead!

Despite running (way?) more slowly than my companions, I was actually feeling on pretty good form and the dreaded lapse in energy never materialised.  Instead I just ran on (slowly) right to the very end.  I’m not sure whether this was a PB for the route, but it was certainly one of my fastest and I could have run on, which is always a good sign.

So 14 miles in 2.18, almost 6.1mph.  Not bad bearing in mind I’ve not run more than 10 miles for a month.  And a big thank you to the Marks for hanging around for me!

I can say unequivocally that I did not want to run, such that I sat in the sun drinking coffee and avoiding it for a couple of hours this morning.  The excuses that I offered myself included a stiff back from an uncomfortable night bivouacking Thursday, exacerbated by bending over a craft table mounting & framing ten of Karen’s photos yesterday for her exhibition which opens near Old St tube next week; a dodgy-feeling left knee which is probably showing accumulated strain from running with a rucsac for the last few weeks; a general sense of tiredness.

At the end of the day though, none of these feature in the Sussex Men’s League list of allowable excuses so I finally got with the programme and launched myself out the door.

Since I had worn my battered old runners on Thursday night, for the sake of prudence, this was the inaugural outing of my new Saucony splodge.  I wore my thicker spring/autumn socks to pad them out to give them a good trial (based on the likelihood of slightly swollen feet in the Alps)… and quickly forgot that I was wearing them!

Other than pausing to say hi to BeerMatt, m route was unremarkable, following the pavement for the oft-followed five miles to the other side of Hassocks… without any hint of a rucsac to give my back a chance to recover.  I wasn’t exactly running quickly and it took me 47 minutes to get to the turn marker.

My body felt as if it has relaxed a little on the return leg and I began to focus on landing on my outside heel and pushing off from my big toe as physio Andrea Wright taught me… not that I was running any much quicker.  Around the 8-mile mark I ran into a very late April shower and within a few paces I was drenched through, such that my phone became as slippery as a bar of soap!

I ran on regardless of the impulse to soap-up and reached home in 45 minutes.

So 10 miles in 1.32, my back feeling looser, but left ankle having come out in sympathy with its adjacent knee and still feeling generally tired.  So what’s new!