The Ups and Downs

So what would you like first? The ups or the downs?

Ups:

On the up side I'm on holiday with Fliss staying in Wales at Nickie's and Jason's bnb

It's a relaxed ramshackle village in West Wales called Ferryside on the estuary of the river Towy. Last night we chilled out on the upper deck and looked across the river to Llansteffan, the picture postcard village with a castle and supurb tearoom, I realise that we've the best view, and the sunset :-)

Yesterday was a beautiful day, and please feel free to say 'beautiful' once again in a Welsh accent because it's well... beautiful.

First thing, I went for a run, just five miles but Welsh miles seem longer than English miles. That may be due to the home made beer battered fish and chips the night before, but I suspect it's mainly because, and there's a clue in this post's title, it's the ups! Now I'm used to a few steep hills in London; Highgate, Hampstead Heath and Ally Pally, but these are like going up stairs over and over like Ground Hog Day meets a Stannar Stairlift commercial, or Dante's vision of Hell minus the stone ball!

All the time I'm thinking bullocks! Mainly because I'm under the unsympathetic gaze of a field bullocks. I imagine them saying 'Well we do it every day so what's your problem? You need some of this lush grass. ' Bloody vegans! It's amazing how easily I can tap into my inner reserves of anger to get me up a hill. The problem is that as soon as you're at the top, there's another hill and it's even bigger. This takes all the pleasure out of the down bits.

I didn't see more than two people on the whole run, which was probably good because I've become one of those middle aged men, with all the kit, all the knowledge, all the motivation, but not enough energy to make it happen in any significant way. Signifiant being the way we would have done it back in the day bit didn't because we didn't have all the kit, all the knowledge and all the motivation. Besides all that youthful energy was busy chasing girls, dreams, and as many ways to get off my head as I could find. I may have an Aesics runner's back pack in day-glow yellow complete with 1.5l bladder (that's a bag of water with a tube) but I was delighted when I found a pocket on it the perfect size for my reading glasses and I strongly suspect that at my age, the bladder get ups in the middle of the night!

Downs :(

It looks like the Brighton Marathon will be delayed again. I received this slightly ambiguous email from the marathon office:

"Despite our best efforts to find a viable way forwards, we have together concluded that sadly, it is not feasible to stage our event as we had hoped and planned on September 18th-20th 2020.
Yet we are delighted to confirm that we are planning to stage the Brighton Marathon Weekend in a unique and revised format this autumn, on the roads in Brighton & Hove.
While we are unable to shut down parts of our city to make way for our 26.2-mile course under current guidelines, we are working towards creating a socially distanced, COVID-19 compliant event, which you will be invited to be a part of."

Basically in two weeks I'll find out what they have in mind. Given my usual pace, social distancing is not a problem as everyone will have already finished by the time I get three quarters of the way around.

I don't know Brighton that well but my impression is that apart from the seafront the rest is all ups and downs, the downs being those of the South Downs variety.  So if the route's changed it'll be a hill run so inadvertently I've been doing the perfect training! Plus there's enough trendy juice bars in Brighton to stop off and have a nice refreshing glass of liquidised grass!

I'm OK with the new post covid world but a marathon's a marathon and if it's less than 26.2 miles I'll defer until 2021. Anything less would be bullocks!