First run of the year: white-fronted geese and soufflés
Under an uninvitingly grey sky, I ran five miles, out to the bottom of Seaford Head, but then through a farmyard and down to the Cuckmere valley, along the banks out to the mouth of the estuary, passing some bird-watchers possibly, if the Sussex Ornithological Society's sightings feed is correct, looking for some white-fronted geese. Then I struggled up Seaford Head and came home by way of the golf club. It was cold, and I was grateful for my long-sleeved shirt, though the hat and gloves I wore became too hot after a while.
I have mentioned before that, while I think many great, world-changing thoughts while out running, I can rarely remember them after having returned home, showered and refreshed myself. This time though, for no particular reason I can think of, I found myself remembering the first time I saw someone make a soufflé. When I was in the sixth form at school, I made friends with an undergraduate couple, four or five years older than me, Cathie, a sociologist, and Dave a medical student. They were immensely kind and tolerant, for I must have been intensely annoying at that age. I remember visiting their house for a meeting and watching Cathie make a soufflé, continuing to expound a complex abstract point while beating egg whites in a copper bowl. Though we ate well at my parents' house thanks to Beryl, who cooked for us, the menus reproduced, though with much more art and skill, the food my father would have been used to at boarding school, at university and medical school and in the army mess. This self-styled 'plain' cooking, plainness being a virtue in those days, was in complete contrast to the dish I saw Cathie prepare dextrously and swiftly, and which we all three ate with pleasure. I had no idea that one could do anything with an egg other than boil, fry, poach it or, with two or three others, turn it into an omelette. Cathie went on to become a brilliant statistician, but to die very young aged 41.
Time: 52:17
Distance: 5.01
Pace: 10.25
I can be more definite about the plan of campaign for 2009:
22 February: Sussex Beacon Half Marathon. I had thought of substituting the Eastbourne half, which takes place a week later, but the glamour of the Brighton event seduced me
15 March: Hastings Half Marathon. This will be the 25th running of this event, and my fifth.
26 April: Flora London Marathon. This will be my tenth marathon and my third London marathon.
7 June: Seaford Half Marathon.
Also in June: Seaford 10K
After that things are perhaps not so straightforward. I need an autumn marathon, and could do the Seaford Marathon, Beachy Head, for the sixth time, or even an event abroad. I am tempted by the Marathon de La Rochelle, by Berlin, or even by the Athens Classic Marathon. Then, in a class of its own, there's the Jog Shop Jog, a little over twenty miles. Over shorter distances, I could enter the Lewes Downland 10 which I have never run before, the Firle 20k, the Brighton 10k and the Mince Pie Ten Mile.
