Category: Short run

With a three-hour project management exam looming large on the horizon tomorrow I felt it was important to get out for a run, despite the fact that the weather was really warm and very close… my notes (I’m writing this, ahem, three weeks later!) say that it was almost raining!

I decided to run the normal short route, with a few tweaks to miss the stinging nettles that I have been wading through lately.  The major tweak was that I ran the route in the opposite direction… something that I cannot remember doing before, thought I find that hard to believe after all these years!

Inevitably my feet were drawn to different tracks and I found myself out on Hundred Acre Lane and then running down a path to the middle of Wivelsfield.

Those of you who have followed my blog over the long-term will know that I have a Jekyll & Hyde approach to mud.  In the summer I tend to avoid it, going to great lengths to keep my runners dry, but in the winter I relish running through the thick of it.

Thus, in the midst of my summer run, with dry trainers, my first thought when I came upon a big muddy patch across the path was to run round it.  However there were two couples carefully picking their way around the margins, one on each side.

The opportunity to play to the crowd was far too appealing and I splashing noisily through the worst of the puddle, leaving big smiles on both sides in my wake!

One of the couples took a short-cut across the fields and I caught them up again on the other side having run the long way around.  Curious about the other characters I’d just passed by the side of the road I stopped to chat… it was the village day yesterday and I learned that there were 20 or more different people represented around the area.

My serotonin levels refreshed I returned home.  The run was 6 miles, completed in 65 minutes… 5.5 mph average.  And muddy runners!

I had worked on my hidden shed on Saturday and though I don’t seem to have taken any ‘before’ photos, it looked like this by the time I parked it.

I was feeling a little brighter so I upped the pace around same circuit as last week, the 5.2 miles taking only 52 minutes, an average of 5.75 mph.  That was not bad bearing in mind that the undergrowth was encroaching on the path in may places… mainly stinging nettles and brambles, but also 5-foot tall ferns in one place, which I had to wade through!

Every couple of years or so our neighbours grant us a little more afternoon light by having their vast eucalyptus tree trimmed back.  This year I was amazed when the tree surgeons carried on until they got to ground level!

I thought I would at least get outside, even if I didn’t run very far or very fast.  It was a glorious day and I just pottered along the short loop route to Wivelsfield, taking photos along the way.

5.2 miles took me 59 minutes, an average of about 5.2 mph.

I’ve been laid low with illness for the last couple of weeks and am only just starting to get back on my feet.

However on the 18th May, just before I started spiralling downhill, I managed to choose a beautiful day for a run in the woods… which I hope the pictures below convey.

6.2 miles in an hour (from memory).

It was grey and drizzly outside this morning and having completed some administrative work I thought it would be easiest to run on the machine.  I guess that’s the downside of having a machine to run on!

I’ve read a couple more chapters of Richard Askwith’s book this weekend.  His visceral descriptions of running on cold winter mornings and the amazing sense of well-being that you feel afterwards really resonated… and made me feel a little guilty that I was going to run inside.

In the end it was Kim who helped me make the right decision… she was engrossed in work, sitting right next to the running machine.  Thus it was that I pulled my long running tights and gore jacket out of the gear-drawer, rather than my shorts.

When I got outside it wasn’t actually raining at all and I felt quite good as I ran along the road.  It’s always difficult to pace yourself at the start of the run… fast enough to get into a good habit (and to complete the run while it’s still light!), yet slow enough to have the energy to get all the way round.  Especially when you’re not really quite sure how far ’round’ is.

I wrote a lightweight blog called England Garden Gang for a couple of years, commenting on the local grass verges and running little experiments (each of which usually involved me in hard graft!) to see how easy it was to make a difference.  It wasn’t, but after a couple of years of looking really tatty, the verges looked a little better this morning… almost as if they had been cut more than once in the last few weeks.  Is there a local council election looming?

The run proper starts at the end of the road, where the path crosses the railway tracks and tarmac turns to mud.  It felt really good to make that transition… all memories of the running machine forgotten.

You’ll be able to see from the photos that Spring hasn’t reached the branches of the trees, but the shallow depth of the mud suggests that the year is progressing nicely.  Er, well most of the way round at any rate!

My route took me out past the old Royal Oak pub, ripe for development apart from the main road that runs along the front wall of the building.  Rounding this corner in a spirited manner, one morning in about 1986, I lost control of the lightweight van I was driving.  I caught the slide but ran the front corner of the van neatly along the length of the steel railings leaving a pinstripe paint mark… which neither the landlord nor my boss at the time (who owned the van) were very happy about.

Having touched on the corner of Wivelsfield, I ran up into West Wood, taking a dog-leg out to Hundred Acre Lane and back to increase the distance a little.  Partway into this section I had to take my jacket off before I started to cook.

Back on the main path I passed my friend Lew helping a neighbour in his tractor, which was making heavy work of lifting a one-tonne bag of something.  Lew’s one of those guys that you would expect to be able to lift that kind of load without the benefit of a tractor, so it must have been heavy!

And then I finally got to the Magical Path, a narrow track with ends which used to be hidden.  It’s quite straight, but over the decades trees have grown up to turn it into a twisty route round big adjacent trunks.  It always feels special to be there, hence my name for it, like a little throwback from a previous age.

What was not so magical was the deep wet mud near the start, nor the fallen tree that was all but barring the way, but these were small distractions.

Then it was across the Ditchling Common and back to base.  I remember that there was a point in the run where I started to flag, but something must have distracted me as I have forgotten where exactly and was on good form by the time I got back.

6.2 miles in one hour and one minute is 6.1 mph, only marginally slower than I did this run on July 23rd last year… the big difference is how good I feel.  Last summer I had to retire to the sofa, whereas today I am (almost) ready for more!  It seems like a winter of treadmill runs may have had a positive effect after all!

One last thing: is this a photo of a fieldmouse?  It was playing merrily on the deck yesterday… I’m just hoping it’s not a baby rat!