Finally the wind blew from Southern climes and after a day of rain yesterday, Spring sidled in and made its mark on the weekend.
And what a day it has been… windows open, sitting outside to eat, car washing, grass cutting and prefacing all this, the first run of the year in shorts and a tee-shirt.
In a nod to those friends who were running in the Brighton Marathon today, I took to the pavement for a 10-mile run down to Hassocks & back.
The first couple of miles were hard going and then I started to run into a warm southerly wind which meant that it didn’t exactly get easier as I warmed up. Somehow I managed to reach the turn-point in 46 minutes, just outside of a 9 minute per mile pace, which gave me an incentive to push a little harder on the way back.
Out of interest, you’ll note from the pictures above that the hedgerows and trees and all still brown… the photo in my post from the same run on April 15th last year shows a thick green hedge!
With the wind now behind me I did my best to make up for the lost minute as I retraced my steps. A quick glance at my watch with one mile to go showed that I was back on track, but alas not ahead.
That meant that I had to push really hard up the steep part of Junction Road and keep the pressure on when I reached the flat part at the top. Knowing that I couldn’t possibly do it, my subconscious was telling me to slow down and take a breather, but I pushed on through regardless.
And somehow I managed to do it! 10 miles in 90 minutes… a full 10 minutes faster than that same Brighton Marathon-day run last year!
One thing was clear though… I would never have been able to run the other 16.2 miles! Congratulations to all those who did!