I ran on Sunday afternoon, after a day of rain, choosing to run the length of Seaford Bay, from home to Splash Point, to Newhaven east pier and back, with a loop thrown in to take me through Tidemills, to add some extra distance to make the whole up to eight miles. There are some possible variations on this theme: I could take in the top of Seaford Head, and make the turning point at the west end the cliffs by Newhaven Fort, or the west pier.
The eight miles were easier than I thought they might be, and good preparation for next Sunday's Brighton 10K. The dark clouds out to sea reminded of the lines, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths, Of night and light and the half light, in Yeats's Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, heard most recently at Alexandra and Jeremy's wedding the previous weekend.
Last week was also the sixth anniversary of the onset of this bout of running madness. At lunchtime on Friday 7 November 2003, I put on some shoes, a t-shirt and some old rugby shorts, and ran for three muddy miles on the downs at the back of the University of Brighton's Falmer campus.
Aedh wishes for the cloths of heaven
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
W.B. Yeats
