Beep-Beep!

The 100m of cinder path out of the eleven miles of tarmac

I ran on the road this morning which should make me a road-runner, but alas, any one of the hundreds of drivers who passed me will be able to testify that I was really not moving that fast!

But at least I was out and about on this beautiful morning… unlike all the other mornings this week when, for a variety of reasons, I wasn’t!

Part of the reason for running on the road for a change was to get myself more used to it ahead of the marathon… and part because I’m wasn’t quite yet ready to trash the shininess of my new runners after the torrential rain last night!  I’m sure the Bok would understand, if no-one else!

The route was really not that inspiring and if I’m going to have to train on the road, I shall have to find a more interesting one… the picture above is slightly misleading as it’s the only 100m stretch of garden path in an otherwise flat and hard-surfaced route.

Simple (did I say boring?) route… down to Wivelsfield Station, left to London Road, left to Stone Pound Crossroads in Hassocks, left through Keymer and Ditching to Spatham Lane, left to Middleton Lane, left to Ditchling Common, Folders Lane and home.  And pretty much nothing else of note to report.

Eleven miles took me 1 hour 41 minutes which was actually quite good bearing in mind I stopped four times to stretch my stiff legs… in fact it’s pretty much the pace I ran Berlin marathon at… just over 6.5mph.

Since I’ve got a little space left, I thought I would share with you a childish game that I’ve played this weekend.  Under normal circumstances, very little would get past Kim, but she’s had a mother of a cold this week and has also been pre-occupied with a fascinating mediation course that she’s taking, so she’s not been as observant as normal.

My game was to see how many things I could do that she didn’t notice… although to be fair, I only really started playing it last night when she didn’t notice all the things I’d done while she’d been out.  So here (mainly for Kim) are the things that I did:

Saturday: Clean the insides of all the windows in the house, clean the two glazed internal doors and all the mirrors and glazed pictures, bleach the shower and then polish all the shiny bits (which she would have noticed last night and probably didn’t comment because I had my nose stuck into a James Bond film), clean the fish-tank, treat the exterior wood and decking on the tea-house with teak-oil, paint half of what was left to paint of the east wall of the house (which she would be unlikely to notice, to be fair), paint the facing side of next doors garage (rather more obvious!), clean brushes and implements and change ready to adopt a ‘I’ve been moping around the house all day’ kind of attitude for her return.  This latter she saw straight through, saying that I don’t normally mope around, but other than commenting that she liked the richness of the wood in the rain that later poured down (of the freshly oiled tea-house, otherwise dry beneath its extended canopy), she showed no signs of noticing.

Sunday: Pull the untidy tops off the day lilies and the poppies (seeds anyone?), cut the tall grasses back to give light to the other plants around them, put a second coat of decking protector on the top deck, paint the remaining part of the east wall of the house including cleaning brushes etc, do all the washing & drying (although she would have guessed that I would have done that), including her pyjamas that she had hidden on the back of the dressing room door (potentially less expected, especially as I hung them back there afterwards), drive to Focus to get some supplies but find it closed, go back, shower and adopt a similarly louche (not quite the right word, but you know what I mean) stance as yesterday.  I obviously didn’t do quite so much today, but then I did start with a long run!

Have a great week everybody peops!