Okay, okay, so it’s not often (ever?) that I’ve been called oi sexy! by someone from a car while I’m running, but I haven’t let it go to my head on account of who shouted it… a couple of twelve year-old Longhillian boys in the mould of a young Mister Richard Marsh!
I’d started from Woodingdean and was planning to be out for a couple of hours and the first decision I had to make in Rottingdean, once I’d stopped laughing, was whether to turn right towards Brighton, or left towards Saltdean.
It was a super-windy grey day and ordinarily I would have headed into the wind on the outward leg, but I felt like some new scenery so I turned left.
With the wind behind me I made light work of the hills and by the time I had run for an hour, I had covered almost 7 miles, through Telscombe, Peacehaven and onto Rusby Hill above Newhaven. Now all I needed was a convenient marker to turn around, but I couldn’t see anything suitable so I just carried on.
For the sake of a view across the bay to the next headland I followed a cycle path sign and ended up at the docks, turning right again to reach Newhaven Fort.
With the easy half of the run over (outbound with the gradient and wind behind me), I set about running back a more convoluted way, starting with a cliff-top path back to Peacehaven Heights.
When I say cliff-top, it was a little like running along the top of a grassy cornice in places and I was glad that, whilst the wind was pretty forceful, it was at least on-shore and blowing me away from the edge!
Chatting to Cliff a while ago he mentioned making his circuit-training group run up and down a load of steps at the eastern end of the Undercliff and I was about to discover what he was talking about… it certainly made no sense at the time!
I carefully descended the somewhat treacherous steps and found myself in alien territory… I didn’t even know this place existed! This presumably newer undercliff walk wasn’t more than a mile and a half long, but it was a pretty awesome place, especially in this weather and bar the one solitary guy I saw, I had it all to myself.
Had the tide been lower and the weather more clement, I might have been inclined to continue along the beach, but instead I turned around and retraced my steps to a roadway which brought me steeply back up to Peacehaven, where I set about retracing my steps back to the start.
The hill you can see in the photo above, which takes you from Satdean into Rottingdean, was particularly hard work, with tired legs and the wind full against, but at least I managed to overtake two cyclists. Okay, so they were walking… and in their seventies… but a cyclist is a cyclist!
I arrived at Rottingdean in the full knowledge that it would be heavy going ascending to Woodindgean. But though my legs were tired, they seemed to have more power than this time last year and it was less of a drag that I had envisaged. Either that, or my pain threshold has increased!
I reached the end of a wholesome 16.5 miles in 2.55. This was an average of only 5.66mph, disappointing after the speed early on, but this was not really surprising with all the twists and turns I took.
A GREAT run… I shall definitely go that way again!
you’re not meant to ‘carefully’ descend them, you’re supposed to run up and down them! Two landings up, one landing down, then all the way to the bottom, and all the way to the top! So what did you do with the rest of the time you were out?