May 2014

[Sweder]

A bit of a curate's egg of a run this morning. Another stunning start, sun lamp full on, the whisper of a cloud-kiss smudging an otherwise clear blue sky. Cool breeze, fresh damp under foot, birds cavorting. All the ingredients for a fab dash through the hills.

Yet this was a stop-start affair, a run that ever really got going until it was pretty much over. Van Morrison told us there would be days like this. There's no point griping, just suck it up and look forward to the next one. I'd gone to bed early with plans for a full Black Cap circuit. When the alarm sounded I hit snooze twice, a clear indication that my body had not prepped well. I ended up doing a run/ walk of my new short circuit, gallops, all-weather track, across to the copse, drop down the flint track to farmland and back up through the trees to meet the Moyleman start.

I managed to find a few redeeming features, including, on the 750th anniversary of the Battle of Lewes, the birth of parliament, stumbling upon a cabal of rabbits and rooks muttering darkly behind the hedgerows at the top of the long climb. The hounds put paid to their plotting, scattering all and sundry with their clumsy charge.

As sometimes happens with these disjointed affairs I felt ready to run just as we reached the last turn for home. I gazed wistfully up the Moyleman trail. Another time, perhaps.