Running up that hill

Ran for the first time in decades from my parents’ home.

I decided that I’d not been getting much from running after work as it was too easy to duck out of doing it if the weather was too warm or if I’d had a hard day. I decided that the way to solve the dilemma was to run before work when it was cool and to hell with going all the way to Seaton, there must be a good run somewhere near my folks.

Years ago when I was just a young slip of a thing I would run up to the local village Hart of an evening, sometimes I would even pop in the local pub for a pint of orange juice before returning. Sometimes from my parents I would do a circuit of the beach and pop out into the streets to return home. These were good runs but I just didn’t fancy them and I thought that they might be a bit short too, so with this in mind I invented a new run. Heading out at the crack of dawn after getting up at 5:02am I ran up the street, across a very empty King Oswy Drive, up Ocean Road then onto the Coast Road. Once at the Crimdon entrance I headed straight down the very very steep bank into the dene and then along the dene bottom and up the road into the car park past the riding school only to join up with the Coast Road again and head back to my folks’ house.

Anyway the run amounted to a rather good 3.8 something miles, it was really tricky with lots of nasty inclines, the views of the sea and dene were great, especially a particularly spectacular seascape. There was no-one around too, not a single dog walker which was extra surprising, the only people I spotted were some workers on the Coast Road cutting back trees and shrubs, some people camping in the Dene (already up, or had they not yet gone to sleep) and apart from some drivers on the roads and some parking in the Dene carpark there was barely anyone out. I must admit I do get a bit creeped out by lonely places and the Dene bottom was a bit creepy. There was a seagull with a broken wing on my run up Ocean Road and my return too, I must say that I’m quite disappointed in myself that I did nothing to help it out, it’s not like me at all. I think it could be to do with it being my first run up there and I was just happy to carry on running and to get back in one piece too.

Quite slow but I put that down to the long layoff (working none-stop on Sandra’s website for the past two weeks and laziness) and the hilly nature of the run.