It was just like the old days… I turned around and there was Mark Johnson, least where I expected to find him. Of course, having chanced across him so many times in the past I’m seldom now surprised to bump into him when I’m out running, although I might have been if he had been sporting the gear he was wearing on Friday. Suit, shirt, tie and shoes.
It was a lunch event and afterwards in the bar the conversation went something like: M Been running lately? D Not for two weeks. M Fancy a run? D Yep, Sunday? M Where & what time? D Jack & Jill 9am? M See you there. This was much to the amusement of the other people surrounding us who were more interested in partying the whole weekend with Gay Pride running in Brighton.
In fact, my understanding is that Mark might have partied for half the weekend, but he still managed to arrive at the allotted time and place.
It was a beautiful, hot and sunny morning, as I sat outside to eat my breakfast. Unfortunately, by the time I parked up at Jack & Jill it looked like this.
The reason you can see the top of the car was that I was sat in it trying to keep warm!
Actually, once we got going it was okay… a pretty good temperature to run in and the murk that looked as if it was going to envelop us never materialised. We ran to Blackcap and although Mark had to get back to take his daughter to the park, he agreed to run a little further down to the ‘gate’ so that the run would get into double figures.
As normal we conducted a conversation more or less from start to finish which I’m sure slowed us down… either that or I’ve got the figures mixed up somewhere.
Our run was 10.3 miles and it took us 1.47 which equates to 5.78mph… bearing in mind that on the way out I could hardly keep up, I find this odd, but hey!
As we parted Mark said that he looked forward to reading my nonsense…
NONSENSE?! I’m a serious writer I’ll have you know!
It’s certainly not apparent today though… I’m still recovering from falling asleep on the sofa for a couple of hours when I got back!
And though I doubt it very much, if you are wondering ‘why the sofa’, it was because it was once again too hot to sit outside!