I suppose all writing about running tries to understand why the writer, or others, do run. I never come close to an answer, but successive metaphors pass through my mind. I compared my Brighton marathon to a symphony; now I think of recent runs as like practising a musical instrument. Speed sessions might be those hours and hours of scales and arpeggios; some runs are like the very first exercises I was given on the clarinet, the long sustained notes to build up the breath and embouchure, and develop a sweeter tone; some longer runs are like playing the part from an orchestral piece on one's own, some like an sectional rehearsal with the other winds, some like a full orchestral run-through.
I ran on a hot Tuesday evening over Seaford Head, ground I will cover again in the Seaford half marathon in eleven days time. At the top there's a pink patch of thrift, the plant that adorned the reverse of the threepenny piece in my childhood. Such a pity we no longer have dodecagonal coins.
I ran above the kittiwakes' nests. Alexandra Loske, editor of the Frogmore Press's Languages of Colour anthology due out at the end of the month, quoted from Werner's Nomenclature of Colours, 1814 edition: "Pearl grey resembles the backs of black headed gulls and kittiwakes".
