Shamed out of hibernation by a gently insistent Ladyrunner I strapped on my offies for a plunge through the post Christmas slush. Cold and damp certainly, yet infinitely better than joining the soul-sucking lines outside Brighton's monolithic outlet stores. At Hollingbury a shoal of gleeful Parking Sharks patrolled cars abandoned along the grass verge, issuing tickets like confetti and recording their deeds on digital cameras as the unsuspecting owners crammed themselves into the Next Circle of Hell. Hurry! Hurry! Get 40% off AND a thirty quid parking fine! Welcome to Brighton & Hove, twinned with Salem.
A rather unsportingly svelte Jules greeted me with a cheerful grin. We set off up the slippery slopes where snow melted like a
Boxing Day crowd at the MCG, leaving pavements coated in sheet ice and a drizzle of off-white Slush-puppy. Making forward progress proved a
test of endurance, balance and an ability to ignore the cries of slowly drowning toes as iced mush seeped through my shoes. We circumnavigated the Stanmer Park
Cresta Run, dancing along the edge of the polished glass pathway, seeking the reassuring crunch of un-fettered snow.
Leaving the park we crossed white fields to meet the stony climb out of Falmer before turning west onto the South Downs Way. Whilst running was a challenge cycling was all but impossible. We met a man rolling gingerly down the hill towards us, feet thrust out as stabilisers, face frozen in a tight smile. A hundred metres further on we met his companion, a woman with utter misery writ large on her ruddy cheeks, barely moving forward, images of log fires, duvets and steaming mugs of cocoa doubtless filling her head as her will to live ebbed down through her frozen feet and into the mud-spattered slush.
Ditchling Beacon loomed before us, northern slopes spiked with naked trees, east face draped in white. We ploughed on, my legs complaining bitterly at this painful departure from sofa-bound sloth. I ignored them, concentrating on posture and stance. Legs bent, back straight, feet beneath my body ... I bet the Tarahumara never encountered anything quite as debilitating as Sussex slush. I needed a piece of music to help shorten and steady my stride so I dug out the staccato violin chorus of Elbow’s One Day Like This from the depths of my chilled noggin. Perfect.
Ladyrunner’s in good form having kept up a steady regimen of run/ walk race/walk training throughout the winter. We chatted about Almeria and I confessed I’d be happy to chug ‘round in two hours. Jules laughed. ‘No, really, a PB attempt would end in tears. My hamstrings would snap if I tried to give it some welly.’ For once this was not deflective nonsense. Running has taken a back seat (eh?) of late. Almeria 2011 for me is as much about Cabo de Gata on the Monday as it is the race itself. As if to back-up my assertion at around 12 kilometres, just as we dropped off the southern slopes of the Beacon, ‘rested freshness’ yielded to lack-of-training fatigue. My legs tightened, calves especially vociferous in their complaint. I knuckled down, trailing in LR’s relentless wake. Within five hundred metres the snow had all but disappeared, leaving smeared ice-trails peppered with sharp-edged flint boulders, nature’s IEDs. Our increased pace made the section like a bizarre, inverted game of Guitar Hero; avoid the yellow/ brown protrusions so as to keep going. Land on one and it’s Game Over, man. We reached concrete and asphalt without mishap, jogging in the last half-mile.
17.89 hard-as-you-like kilometres banked in 2 hours 3 minutes. Hot coffee and a fat slab of chocolate Yule log helped to fire the internal heaters. A variety of cats paraded before me, offering warm fur with which to thaw my frozen fingers in exchange for neck rubs and endless Bond-villain stroking. All in all a fitting way to round off my running year.
