March, Week 4: BST

[Sweder]

Time of day: 09:10 (BST)
Route: Brighton Marina/ Telscombe Tye/ North Face/ Yellow Brick Road/ Big W/ Castle Hill/ the Snake/ Rottingdean/ Brighton Marina
Conditions: Cool/ Overcast/ light Easterly breeze
Duration: 3:35 hrs

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

It’s a cliché to quote Kipling at times like this, but justified none the less.
It wasn’t motivational need that steered me to reach for my tome of poetry this morning. I have all the motivation I can eat, looming large on the April horizon. Rather I felt unsettled, unsure and apprehensive. I sought solace in familiar verse.

The planned run today was only 2 miles further than last week – but what a two miles. I’m familiar with the Jog Shop Jog route, and the related legends and tales of horror that echo around Sussex running clubs. Late March is hardly August, the usual time for the annual race, but that same terrain lay in wait, daunting, laden with runners’ sweat and tears, the tattered remnants of dreams fluttering from the downland gorse.

Happily the whole mad clock thing caused me no trouble. I set my alarm and re-set the main clock in the kitchen on Saturday night to avoid that most embarrassing of faux pas, the old ‘I forgot to change the clocks’ chestnut. Against the advice of my sensible inner voice I joined Mrs S for a Chinese Takeaway on Saturday night, and felt obliged to boost the carbs in the pre-run hours. Banana and Maple Syrup sandwiches washed down with black coffee, followed closely by 2 rounds of toast with blackberry jam. That should do it.

Easter Sunday demanded some attention before I left, so I made tea for Mrs S, taking up a tray with the exquisite packet of chocolate smothered coffee beans purveyed from Middle Farm. Phoebe drifted along the corridor, the most wonderful bed-head bouncing crazily above her sleepy face.
‘Happy Easter Dad’ she sang, revealing a box of mini chocolate bars. How sweet, literally and as a gesture. Pressed for time I couldn’t bring myself to leave just then, and dashed to the car to retrieve our Easter gifts. Mrs S surfaced, I faffed about for another 15 minutes . . . and then it was 8:45.
Bloody hell!

‘Gotta fly! Bye Girlies!’
I grabbed my gear (gels, water, car keys, wallet . . . Vaseline!), flew across the front lawn and into my truck. I made the start point just as Sam and Tony, our (cycle) mounted escorts, performed the bird-like head movements from watch to left to watch to right that said ‘Right – we’re off.’

. . . continued . . .