Now Janathon is over, I am absolved from the responsibility to blog about my running every day, and to omit no detail, no matter how trifling. So I conflate four runs into one post.
Wednesday: five miles, early in the morning. It has turned cold
Thursday: another five miles, cold again, but these were run in daylight, so I profited by this by running off road, over to the Cuckmere and back over Seaford Head.
Friday: rest day
Saturday: swimming coaching in the morning, and the coach worked us hard–there was a new student in the group, so he set us some drills and left us to it, and three miles at twilight in the evening.
Then the snow came, and I was supposed to run twelve miles. I managed nine and a third and, though this may sound like self-justification, I believe that nine and a third over snow, some of it deep, is as good as twelve miles on easier surfaces. And the beauty of it! When I was a school-boy, if we rushed to a window to look at a snow-fall during a class, the teacher would beat us back to our desks, and the study of the gerundive, with coarse oaths, exclaiming, 'haven't you boys ever seen snow before?" Of course we had, but we had never seen this snow, on this day, and, fifty years later, those of us still alive rejoice that we saw that snow. The open fields were tracts of white, and the paths which I, six feet tall, can run down easily, were difficult to negotiate, the hedges being bent under the weight of snow. Yesterday's swimming, and the exertion of running through deep snow, drained my strength and I called it a day. Nevertheless, this week I have run further than any week since training started.
Total this week: 29.46
Four weeks to the Eastbourne half marathon
Ten weeks to the Brighton marathon
