Category: Photos

When it comes to planning to run with other people, I realise that I tend to put it off until the last minute to see how I feel on the day.  Just as well that I’d not planned anything today as I didn’t roll out of bed until the normal kick-off time.

A couple of hours later, having stimulated my mind with a challenging work book, I finally set off, alone, with the aim of running to the Beacon.  The route, which took in Ockley Lane, Oldlands Mill and Ditchling, is pretty much exactly 5 miles and I was disappointed to run it in 52 minutes… I’m sure in the distant annals of these pages I have run it in 45, maybe even 44, but not for some time!

I did stop for a few moments to see how my favourite new build was coming along… it’s not in Odette & Michael’s  league, but tres avante garde for Burgess Hill, nevertheless.  I would most certainly like to live there!

Feeling in need of another hill, I ran down Westmeston Bostal and on reaching the path back up to the left, the one that Pete, Mark & I ran up last week, I took it.  At the top I ran back down the bostal and may well have run up again but for a well-timed call from Cliff.

At the road I turned right, then left across the fields past a dilapidated barn that is very much in need of my design imagination.  Dreaming on, I ran down past Middleton Manor, then realising how thick the mud would be further along this path, turned right up to Streat church.

I first ran down Streat Lane only a matter of weeks ago and it was fun to revisit it in the opposite direction… some of the properties are gorgeous.

At the end I did a left-right into Hundred Acre Lane and then ran to the left across the fields, around behind the industrial estate and onto the Magical Path where I surprised a young canoodling couple sitting on a tree-stump… actually, they surprised me too, so unused am I to seeing anyone down there at all.

It was a short hop back across the Common to home which I reached in 2.16.  13 miles on the map gives a speed of 5.74mph which is fast becoming my default speed these days!

No company, not quite a half marathon distance and not half slow either!  Just perfect for a paratelic!

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!

Comments ARE welcome!

Kim and I have had the pleasure of a full house over Christmas with the number of diners ranging from 3 to 10 and up to eight of us sleeping overnight… and occasionally during the day too.

Alas for me, Kim wasn’t one of them: she spent a wonderful Christmas with her family instead and I only got her back in time for the end of the year!

Suffice to say that between delightful guests, kitchen duties and the icy remnants of the snow, I didn’t really have the inclination to go out running.

On Saturday however, I decided to get out and force-feed my lungs with some fresh, New Year air.  In answer to Cliff’s comment, I have only now got around to posting, as today is the first lull in visitation!

It was a comparatively mild day with a little light drizzle and I ran out past Oldlands Mill and Lodge Hill to Ditchling Beacon, returning via Sporting Cars of Brighton, East End Lane and Ditchling High Street.

At Ditchling Beacon I was, for a few minutes at least, the most elevated man in the area… although technically speaking I was standing about four feet above the ground on the top of the trig point.

As I neared the end of my run, the sky cleared to allow the sun to stream through, like a spring day and this was equally as uplifting.

I was only moseying along and taking in the surroundings and it took 53 minutes to get to the Beacon and a little less to get back once I had taken in the airy view.  Overall I completed 10.2 miles in 1.47, 5.7mph.

And so 2011 began…

Have a great Gregorian year… and if, like me, you favour the older, Chinese calendar, then enjoy the last month of Tigerishness before the Year of the Rabbit begins on the 3rd February.

Happiness is a clean car, so I was more than a little unhappy when I realised my car was sitting outside, rather than tucked up in the garage, utterly filthy when I had a visitor on Friday.  More so, as the kind of people who notice these things and think anything of them (like me), tend to reverse park into unfamiliar spaces… which is what he did.

This meant that the key task yesterday was to wash the cars, which I spent most of the afternoon doing, happy as a sand boy… finishing when it was too dark to clearly make out the readings on the tyre pressure gauge!  I was very glad that it was quite a pleasant day, although even today there are lumps of snow that still haven’t melted so it can’t really have been that warm!

I expected to wake up this morning suffering from these exertions but it was too beautiful a morning to notice.  I sat reading my current non-work book for a while, which is this year’s Booker Prize winner, Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question… Kim bought it some time ago and I had made all sorts of excuses not to read it, but it’s actually very enjoyable.

But before the morning had totally expired, I kitted up and got out running.

Mindful as ever of Cliff’s attention span, I’ll try to bring as much brevity to the description of my route as I can, but he’ll have to give me some leeway as it was slightly tortuous… I suppose he could always ignore the words and go to the pictures below.

I ran out of town on the Keymer Road, turning right to Oldlands Mill, left towards Ditchling then right, which took me to the back of Keymer.  I ran through Keymer and Hassocks on the main road then took the path left before the railway bridge.  This took me to Clayton, up to the windmills (the car park is open again, by the way) and across to Ditchling Beacon.

En route I stopped to admire the parascenders floating effortlessly on the steady breeze… I think the collective name must be a school of parascenders, as the van at Ditchling Beacon  said Learn to Parascend on the side.

I don’t often run down Westmeston Bostall, possibly because most times when I do, I end up running back up the steep path as a test of my resilience.  I was thinking about this as I ran down to the gate at the bottom, where there were a couple of cyclists starting the trek up.

It was a classic piece of grandstanding, but I turned around and ran back up, drawing comments of ‘you must be mad’ from both them and from the couple walking down the steep section further up.  Once at the top I ran back along and down the Bostall again, with the cyclists asking if I was planning to do it a second time as I passed them again, half way down.

I was tempted, but time was getting along so I demurred and instead ran along Underhill Lane and back to Sporting Cars in Ditchling passing Westmeston Place en route.  Here I ran up East End Lane and took the path through all the chicken farms back to Ditchling Common.  Then, cutting the corner off, I ran down through the new Folders Farm housing estate, through Folders Lane and back to base.

Photos for Cliff

The weather that had been glorious had turned sour by the time I got back, but it was still a really fun run.  14.4 miles in 2.42 and though 5.3mph is not anything to write home about, I don’t (yet, at least) feel particularly tired from it.