Last week I honoured Terpsichore, muse of dance, in the title of my account of my Sunday run. for the dance was the cause of my visit to Eastbourne.This week it is the turn of Clio, muse of history.
Once more in Eastbourne, I decided to run over Beachy Head, repeating the final stages of the Beachy Head Marathon. Beachy Head was my first marathon and I have run it five times, hence my homage to Clio. Parking the car near the start at St Bede's school, I ascended the brutal hill on a fine but cold morning. The summit is not far at all, around a mile. Then I began the descent on the western side, going as far as the foot of Belle Tout, where I turned and started the long climb back. This is one of those dispiriting climbs, for twice the path dips, sending the runner down. Nevertheless I soldiered on; I was still fresh, unlike during the marathon, when these last hills come after twenty-three miles of running, and the murderous ups and downs of the Seven Sisters.
In fact I was so fresh I added a couple of miles along Eastbourne front, as far as the lifeboat museum. Eastbourne is everything that Seaford is not. It has all those appurtenances of a seaside town that we seem to have missed out on, a pier, a bandstand, statues of dead monarchs erected by public subscription, seedy hotels where at breakfast-time sullen waitresses point guests at lukewarm eggs, sausage and bacon festering above a bain-marie. If running along the front, one has to dodge not only pensioners and dogs, but dirty-weekender couples who either, if still besotted, fondle each other lasciviously in the middle of the path or, if the weekend has gone badly, sulk and refuse to stand aside.
That's eight miles in the bag and, with a dental appointment to keep me in Seaford one weekday, I also had an unusual weekday morning run.
Seven weeks till the Hastings Half marathon. At Saturday evening's Seaford Striders awards evening, Eric Hardwick, the Hastings race director, presented the prizes.
