Category: Races
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Enivrez-vous! The third day of Juneathon, the day of the Seaford half marathon
Still drunk on the company of poets and two pots of green tea taken at last night’s launch of the Frogmore Press’s Languages of Colour anthology, I rose this morning to the sound of the Newhaven fog-horn. After a racing breakfast of porridge, toast, honey and tea, I put on my fading Seaford Striders vest…
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The Petworth 10k
A distant view of Petworth House across the lake in Petworth Park by J. M. W. Turner. Image from Wikimedia Commons What could be more agreeable, as Kenneth Clark would often say, than a 10k on a fine May evening in the grounds of a stately home? Nothing, I thought, so I took myself,…
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The Rye Ten Mile: reading Henry James while drunk
I have been comparing races to works of art recently, in the hope of finding my place in Pseuds’ Corner. Today’s Rye Ten Mile was not a symphony or a dance—it could only be a novel by Henry James, who lived in the town. The bewildering winding lanes were very like a Jamesian paragraph, twisting…
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Eastbourne half-marathon
The omens were not propitious. Marathon training had slipped, losing about twelve days, I had a hard swimming coaching session the day before, I had been woken frequently in the night by importunate cats and the weather forecast was foul. Moreover, the last time I ran this race, in 2009, I did not enjoy it…
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A double first
Though my undergraduate career was a little less distinguished than the title of this post suggests, today, rather late in life, I achieved a double first, to wit I ran in the Brighton Park Run for the first time and ran a 5K for the first time. My time of 26:47 may therefore be considered…
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The Brooks Brighton 10K, with some reflections on Moyle’s law of steatopygia
@Sweder, who was off running up Antipodean mountains, recounts somewhere on the Running Commentary fora an observation the late Moyleman made at a Brighton race. Both of them arrived late and, as they caught up with the back of the race and, as they made their their way through the field, Moyleman observed that the…
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In which I run a 10k on very little training
/p> Since being baked alive on the Lewes Downland 10 mile, I have run little: a short-ish outing every Sunday and that is it. For that reason, I abstained from last weekend’s Barns Green half and was in two minds about today’s Crowborough 10k. In the event, I went and enjoyed it. This race had…
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In which I break my silence
It’s hard to know which has been slacker, my running or my blogging. For the past few weeks I’ve managed little more than a short run on a Sunday, and no other running in the week. Consequently it was almost a relief to have to withdraw from today’s Folkestone half marathon, which I was to…
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In which I aestivate
There is some debate about whether I am a worse runner or blogger. I have not put pen to paper since the end of Juneathon. I’ve been feeling lethargic, and run once or twice a week at best, mostly with the Striders. True, I did run the Brighton Trailblazer, finishing in just over an hour,…
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The Lewes 10k
The Lewes 10k is a wonderful occasion with, as Anthony of Sussex Sport Photography remarked, something of the atmosphere of a school sports day. Held on Easter Monday, I ran it last year when it was a sub-aquatic affair, with mud. This year the paths and tracks were hard. Clearly I prefer firm going, as…