Sunday Soaking

                                        Englands Newest National Park, The South Downs

There may well be Daffodils bursting into bloom wherever you look at the moment but it was hardly spring like weather at 8.30 am this morning. It was drizzling as we got into the car dressed in winter running gear and heading up to Blakehurst for our Sunday run today. The few days of warm weather was obviously blown away by Storm Doris as she tore branches away from trees and completely uprooted a number of them.

The little Robin, that I am now carrying a bag of bird seed for under the passenger seat of our car for, was again not in the correct spot but I left a sprinkle of seed anyway. On the other hand, the bright and beautiful Yellowhammer had come out of hiding again and sat boldly on top of the hedge where we had seen him many times before but not since December.

We got completely drenched on our run this morning and that was hard enough anyway since were both paying the price for the hard turbo session we have put it during that last few weeks the last of which was only yesterday. It was horrendously muddy in parts and because of that also very slippery. 

Of course the weather was starting to improve just as we ran the last few hundred metres. We all bowled into Arundel and graced Osteria in High Street with our presence and loud chatter. Steve had stupidly left his money at home and so poor Birgit was lumbered with the bill for our coffees for the second week running. So we are in the chair for next few weeks.

Earlier this week we had watched the quite delightful BBC Four programme about Englands newest National Park; The South Downs, the programme was titled ‘Englands Mountains Green’. It was presented in a very special way by Peter Owen Jones and you can still see it online at BBC Four and I am sure it will be repeated many times. Our only slight disappointment with the show was that Peter Owen Jones dwelt largely with his own beloved East Sussex home area and the far western area and there was very little of our most beautiful expanse of these green rolling hills and woodlands in West Sussex apart from a brief peek at Cissbury.

The club swim session last evening was most enjoyable even though a few people were missing for various reasons. Both lanes had roughly the same schedule but with very different timings.

10 minutes Warm Up

1 x 400 metres

1.x 300

1 x 200

6 x 100

6 x   50

6 x   25

Swim down