February

[Sweder]

Back to business in the land of mud and hills-a-plenty with my Jog Shop comrades. Despite the freezing start I put my trust in the forecasters and opted for a skimpy vest, leggings and gloves. Sucker! Despite a valiant effort the sun rarely found a way through the maze of thick cloud and dense fog enveloping the route.

Paul the Goat and Steve did their usual, leaving Chris and I for dead at the top of the unpleasantly steep hill out of Saltdean, hammering up the tye in their matching red tops. I agreed with Chris that our aim was more time on our feet rather than blistering speed, justifying our inability to live with the inhuman pace as we loped away from the fog-bound sea.

Our route today would take us on a truncated tour of the Jog Shop Jog route; up the North Face, along the seemingly infinite Yellow Brick Road, across the uppermost tips of the Big W, down through Death Valley, back up the Snake and on home through East Brighton Park. The terrain proved treacherous, the soil recently ravished by giant, rapacious earthworms before some sort of drunken tractor-fest. I bemoaned the loss of my beloved Adidas off-roaders, the new Brookes comfy enough but simply not up to the rugged demands. The North Face is no place for a feint heart. You have to hit the base running, shorten your stride, pump your arms and grit your teeth. All these I did, and to my surprise only stopped once the summit was reached. We exchanged pleasantries with a middle-aged dog-walker between desparate gulps of air before taking half a gel and a slurp of water.

On then to the Yellow Brick Road, or at least the preamble, a couple of Somme-like cattle fields offering more ankle massage before the eponymous concrete track. At the end of the first field, marked by a barbed wire fence and a five bar gate, a group of shifty looking bovines blocked our path, chewing the cud as hoods outside a nightclub might chomp on their gum, observing our squelching approach through half-closed eyes. The largest beast, parked next to the gate, had its head through the wire, bellowing mournfully at the cows in the next field. It was as we drew level, reaching for the gate latch, that I noticed the dirty brass ring through the monsters’ nose.
‘Err, that’s a bull.’
‘Yeah, reckon he’s yelling at his harem in the next field.’
‘Yeah, maybe. Lets get a move on.’

We danced through the gate, across the rutted track and into the next field.
‘For the love of God . . . '
We'd run staright into a small lake of urine and steaming cow excreta.
‘Bloody incontinent cows – it’s like a geriatric picnic in here!’
Chris pointed out that this is why we wear off-roaders, but I didn’t feel any better about navigating through the filth. One of the beasts lifted her tail as if to wave us off, only to expel a dirty yellow waterfall into the mire. Lovely.

The concrete path leading up and onto the top of this section can be a true test of one’s resilience. As you chug up the inexorable rise you catch glimpses of the summit only to find you’ve been tricked; it’s a mirage, a false promise; there always seems to be another section. We were spared this torture by the return of sweeping, impenetrable fog, limiting our vision to a handful of metres in any direction. Heads down we chugged on in silence, focused on keeping a strong pace until finally, thankfully, another wire fence loomed out of the mist. A right turn then left, through another gate and we were running west along the pinched track above the Big W. Dropping sharp left into Death Valley we briefly met two ladies on horseback, holding yet another gate for them as they clopped through onto the slippery stone trail leading into the valley.
‘Nice to see some fit men out’ quipped one obviously myopic rider.

We thundered down the path, the unyielding surface of rocks and stones jarring my legs and back. This route weaves through a collection of hills before emerging at a derelict farmhouse, the familiar mud bowl that is the foot of the Snake proper lurking beyond.

With so many hard-run miles behind us the Snake offered a stern test today. Our pace remained solid up the slippery track, emerging from the fog-bound valley, chests heaving, doused in cooling sweat, steam rising from our hunched backs as we toiled against the gradient. A brief breather at the summit and an unspoken agreement to eschew the double-back route, chugging instead straight on to the race course and the final, painful mile down through the park.

This was a tough outing, my legs aching for hours afterwards despite a decent stretching session at the Marina. Around sixteen miles in a shade under two hours thirty to complete a week of seven, five and eight midweek miles for a grand total of thirty-six.