Category: Short run

We had a great weekend, but the consequence of having a delicious meal at Philip & Isabelle’s in London on Saturday night, followed by an early morning drive home, was that I had no appetite for running on Sunday morning.

And once I had finished the novel I had been reading, I sat & read HBR instead… although it was not exactly Sunday reading!

Last thing last night I decided that, if the weather was clement this morning, I would go out for a run rather than sit & read (since I had already made a good start on HBR!).

It took me a few minutes to remember my plan when I got up at 6am, but by a quarter past I was running off down the road into a shepherds warning morning.

I took my default short route (Royal Oak, Wivelsfield, West Wood, Magical Path) to the accompaniment of six bars from the end of Stairway to Heaven which I’ve been driving Kim mad by playing repeatedly on my guitar… by the end of the run, I was going mad listening to it go around in my head too!

The sun made an appearance while I was running around, at one point vividly lighting up two or three trees in the relative gloom ahead of me.  I couldn’t help but smile!

Bearing in mind I had got up and gone out with nothing more than a banana for sustenance (no, no time even for a quadspresso!), I felt pretty good, butI knew I was not running especially quickly.

As I came across the backlit Common, I stretched out my stride a little, but soon returned to a more circumspect pace.

So 5.2 miles in 48 minutes is a great way to start the week and at 6.5mph, is not such a bad pace either.. especially for a pre-7am run!

It had been hissing down with rain all last night and generally blowing a hoolie, so it was with some surprise that the day was glorious by the time Daren and I met at Jack & Jill.  That doesn’t mean fabulously sunny, mind, but rather just that it was marvellous to be out in!

We followed the same route as last week, the only difference being the amount of mud and general slipperyness underfoot… requiring a degree of circumspection lest one of us oldies did ourselves an injury.  [you can see already that I’m setting the scene for a slower time!]

We chatted amiably as we ran up on to Wolstonbury where the view was sublime.

We ran gently down the rather slippery grass side of Wolstonbury and into the next valley… the one that would be great for sledging.

It’s hard to believe how deceptive this looks… what may look like a short bank is actually a deep valley with steep sides.  In fact, the other side was steep enough to cause us to stop just beyond the stile to get our breath back… not even the tank tracks do that!

Then it was across through Clayton and up, up and more up the tank tracks, up to the very top, from where we looked across and down onto Wolstonbury.

From here it was all downhill to the cars.

In fact, the round trip was something like 900 feet of descent, so apart from it being slippery underfoot, it was probably pretty easy.

So 6.25 miles in 1.10 or 5.35mph.

Can I just say, that despite all the downhill, I had SUCH an enjoyable run… thanks Daren!

Earlier in the year circumstances conspired to prevent me from accompanying Daren on one of his new running circuits and rather than try to figure it out on my own, I waited patiently for his return.

Today we ran that circuit.

Daren was describing how amazing it was swimming in the sea this morning despite the low water temperature… and how quickly he changes into dry clothes on the beach afterwards.  He said it was a small pleasure, although I might have got this muddled up (as if), and maybe it was Claire who called it a small pleasure.  I know it might seem like a trivial point, but if the water was cold then it’s probably a little wonder.

Our route took us down through the golf club and into Pyecombe village before we started the long drag up to the top of Wolstenbury Hill.  Daren had persuaded me that it was warmer out than the car-park at Jack & Jill would indicate and by the time we reached this point I was inclined to agree.

From there we dropped down into a valley that would make a perfect bowl in which to sledge in the snow… before we found how hard it was to run up the other side.

We soon got back to Clayton at the bottom of the hill beneath the windmills and then, opting for a slightly longer return, we ran along to the tank tracks.  Readers might remember that this was the location for the Blighty Grouse Grind (inspired by the route that Daren found in Vancouver), but fortunately we chose to make only one ascent today.

It was a good job that we were both there, as we each suspected that we would have otherwise paused for a rest half way up.

The great thing about the top of the tank tracks is that it’s all downhill back to the cars.. just as well!

Daren’s delightful circuit was 6.3 miles and we completed it in 1.06 (my watch said 1.10, but the difference is that he stops his Garmin when he pauses to look at the view).  A great pace either way, bearing in mind the severity of the hills that were included and a fantastic start to the year!

Somehow (don’t ask!), after a round of toast, a shower and another quadspresso, and with the weather now remarkably cloudy and cool, I found myself back in Wivelsfield on the start line of the 4.5-mile Wivelsfield Woodland Wobble.

The cooler turn of weather had been one of the reasons for me changing my mind, but as I stood waiting for the off, so the sun came back out and the temperature and humidity notched back up a gear.  Also, as I looked around me, there was a sea of different AC shirts… this was not going to be a walk in the park on any front.

The whistle sounded and we were off… in fact, about half the field just disappeared in a cloud of dust.  I settled into a more enjoyable pace, doing my best to shake loose of a girl listening to her iPlayer who clearly didn’t realise just, er, how shall we say this delicately… how laboured her breathing sounded.

Once clear I found an ideal carrot to follow – for those of you not in the Men’s Sussex Fitness League, this is generally a female bottom (or in the case of the paradoxical women members, a male one), although in my case a simple ponytail is a much better lure.

This particular Steyning Runners ponytail was perfect insofar that her pace was just faster than I wanted to go… I hung on as best I could, but she eventually got the better of me around the 4-mile mark.

In the dim and distant past, when I was younger and fitter, I would count down 3.5 minutes from the last mile marker and then start sprinting.  Being now more circumspect, older and definitely not as fit, I counted down two minutes from the last half-mile marker and then started merely to stretch my stride out a little.  With my long legs, this tactic enabled me to catch and pass the Steyning ponytail as she legged it down the final straight… sorry!

Even without a flat-out sprint I kind of just wanted to retch, but looking around at the gentile ensemble with their children milling around, I was persuaded that this was probably not a great idea.  Instead I spied a man with enough brains to sit on a covered bench, out of the now hot sun and I staggered across to join him.

Colin, it turned out, had only taken up running a couple of months ago having turned 50 and after a shoulder operation.  The fact that he had already taken up residence on the bench indicated that this injured newbie, four years my senior, had just beaten me round the course… curses!  But I forgave him on account of him turning out to be a bally nice chap!

It also turned out that he had joined the Burgess Hill Runners, which made me think that maybe I should cramp Kim’s style by joining up too.

So results to follow, but 4.5 miles in around 38 minutes… say 7mph.  Not fast, but not bad for my second wobble of the day!

Just one final mention in case you’re thinking that age or infirmity is some kind of barrier to getting out in the fresh air.  As I started my final charge to the line, so I left behind a guy from Haywards Heath Harriers who had pretty effortlessly kept up with me to that point.  I’ve run with him before (I think his name is Mark, but I’m not certain) and he is blind.  He was running with his own ponytail guide who was verbalising the course, which is largely off-road, as she went.  All I can say is Bravo!

After a slightly more intense (not to mention hot, as their air conditioning had broken down) than normal 9-hour immersion session with a new client on Friday, followed by an almost 2-hour return rail journey, I did very little yesterday other than read, relax and, um, sleep.  And very restful it was too, laying on the recliner in the heat of the afternoon, imagining I could hear the swish of the waves gently lapping at the beach.

Until about 6pm when the heat dropped sufficiently for action-Foster to dash a second coat on most of the back wall of the house.

This morning, despite rising relatively early, I was captivated by my new book (Robin Dunbar is right when he says that we are fascinated by people and behaviour… this book is about the behaviour of the small number of people who drove the recent financial meltdown and it is riviting) and didn’t emerge to run until 7.40am, by which time it was already hot.  My intentions had been grandiose, but I soon realised, having run in the open as far as Ote Hall, that I needed to find some tree-cover lest I melt.

Thus I found myself running through Wivelsfield as the Burgess Hill Runners were setting up the course for this morning’s Wivelsfield Woodland Wobble.  It was a shame I didn’t know it was on as I might have run it, but starting at 11am it would surely be a scorcher and I was already feeling somewhat humid.

I headed for home through the cool shelter of the Magical Path, covering 6.2 miles in 1 hour exactly.