Author: andy

Crikey. End of week 4 already. Further than I’ve got before on this programme. And plenty of enthusiasm still in the tank according to my dispositional dipstick. Friday: Arrived at the seafront at about 11 and parked by the Treasure Island Theme Park. I’ve never entered this entertainment facility as I’m baffled by the description given on its website. It boasts of combining “an indoor soft play area on 2 levels with slides, zip lines & lots of other fun” with a “pirate-themed 18-hole miniature golf course”. What’s the target audience here — precocious tots who might fancy a round of golf after a session in the soft play area? Or senile oldies who might want to retreat into … …

Retirement is by far the best job I’ve ever had. The hours are formidable but the duties are varied and not too onerous. The pay could be better but I make do. I’m living the dream. Men on YouTube with manicured grey beards gaze out at me with gimlet eyes and prattle on about time, health and money being life’s golden triangle. The vital ingredients for opportunity, even happiness. I don’t much like these glib formulas, especially when I didn’t think of them first, but there might just be something in this one. At a rough average, the 10 or 15 years after retirement seem to be the time to get stuff done. For my wife that means travelling to … …

Rambling round the ‘hood in recent days, I see more heartening evidence that spring is just around the corner. One of those refreshing, cold-but-sunny mornings yesterday proved ideal for a pre-match stroll past the daffodil-lined front gardens and into the deserted cemetery on the hillside. I’d not describe Ocklynge as a riot of colour at the best of times but the signs are there, with buds erupting on the shrubs and leaves starting to unfurl. The great sense of optimism that the season represents was consolidated later in the afternoon when Brighton won at Newcastle to push them into the quarter-finals of the FA Cup. Cemeteries too are strangely cheerful places. They may seem like an obvious intimation of mortality, … …

Yesterday’s C25K instalment took me to Hampden Park. Not the celebrated Glasgow football stadium but the more modest patch of greenery in Eastbourne’s northern territories. It was uneventful. A dog peered at me suspiciously, as if I was some sort of weirdo — a bit rich, I thought, for a Bedlington Terrier. I saw a couple of squirrels and some truanting schoolboys smoking weed. I listened to part of an audiobook called the Slow AF Running Club. The cartoonish author, Martinus Evans, tells us he’s ‘a badass on a badass journey’ which, as an English speaker, I didn’t find very illuminating. But he’s essentially a large fat man — even fatter than me — who embarked on his running odyssey … …

There’s nothing like a war memorial to stop me in my tracks. Late this afternoon, en route for Holywell, at the end of the seafront, I drove through Meads, along an unfamiliar road, and happened across a great arch that was once the entrance to St Vincent’s School and later, evidently, a war memorial. Situated in a quiet suburban road, the archway was so visually arresting that I felt compelled to stop and investigate. The inscription reads: In memory of 49 gallant men who were at school here in their early boyhood and gave their lives in the service of their country during the Great War of 1914-19. At the going down of the sun and in the morning we … …

The survey of local running locations continues, this time with Sovereign Harbour, Eastbourne’s marina and lifestyle hub. It’s a good place to bring visitors, and to mooch round the inner harbour, peering approvingly at the moored boats groaning and clanking in the breeze. Landlubbers have a fascination with these craft and their gnarly denizens though it’s hard to pinpoint why. Despite the charm of the place, it turns out not to be a great running location. I couldn’t get going for 50% of the time I was supposed to be running. Overcomplicated. Too many people, narrow paths, sharp corners, single-file bridges, and locks that constantly open and close, disrupting the silky gazelle-like motion of the dedicated athlete. And annoying for … …

For Eastbourne athletes like me, there are stretches of the local coastal path that neatly lend themselves to primitive plodding tasks. Holywell to the Redoubt (2.2 miles). The Redoubt to Sovereign Harbour (2.2 miles). Sovereign Harbour to Pevensey Bay (2 miles). Pevensey Bay to Normans Bay (2.2 miles). As these are straight point-to-point routes, you obviously double these distances if you want to arrive back at the place you started from. Around 4 or 4.5 miles is, or used to be, a decent midweek running distance for me. Perhaps they’ll become so again though my current half-hour-or-so C25K legs don’t yet stretch to a full out-and-back trip. At the moment, about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way through my running … …

A day so dismal that I went to the local cemetery to cheer up. Ocklynge is a remarkable location and handy for a walk or casual plod when I don’t have the time, the inclination, or the emotional buoyancy to head for the seafront. It was here, this afternoon, that I executed my Week 2 Day 1 C25K duty. Week 2 means the running spells have rocketed by 50%, to 1.5 minutes, but there are just 6 of them rather than the previous 8. So the total scuttling element has eased upwards from 8 to 9 minutes. By way of compensation, the walking intervals have expanded to a leisurely 2 minutes. To add an aggravating edge, the looping path I … …

The lobby thermometer inside my house reckoned it was 4ºC early this afternoon so the seafront must have been hovering somewhere below freezing. I may have to rethink these coastal plods. Or is it that there’s no such thing as the wrong weather for a cold coastal jaunt, only the wrong clothes for a cold coastal jaunt? There’s an awkward relationship between insulation and mobility which explains why, outside the London Marathon, you don’t see many runners dressed in thermal 4-layer polar expedition outerwear. Being uncharacteristically practical, it’s probably helpful to reconceive what I’m really doing here. Instead of trying to fool myself, and certainly anyone reading this, that I’m going for a run, it would more accurate to describe … …