A weekend in England

I needed to make a trip to Dublin for work...it came up about a month ago. Toni, being the maven of frequent flyer tickets, managed to snag a ticket for herself so she could come too.


We left last Friday evening and had a weekend to spend in Lewes (in Sussex, south of London) visiting Toni's cousins before taking Ryanair over to Ireland. I had not seen them for 8 yrs and the small babies they had then are now in school.

One of the cousins, Rachel, hosted a party for us the evening. We arrived at her wonderful house custom-remodeled by her husband Russell.  (He also builds treehouses!)

Russ and Rachel

A great time seeing all the families together ensued. Rachel had earlier suggested that and her sister Charlotte and I should go for a 10k run the next morning at 7am so I called her on this as we were drinking our Nth glass of wine and they were both game. 

My schedule called for a 10 mile run that morning, and I'd missed my Saturday run  (stuck on a plane of course), so I decided to try to go out an hour earlier to log some miles.  When the alarm went off at 6am it took all my resolve to get up and out. My body was pretty confused about what time it was but I knew that a run was just the thing to inform it that it was now daytime.


I did a 3X1.5 mile loop course around Lewes itself...no traffic on Sunday at that hour so it was quiet and easy. It was cloudy, cool and very humid...I was feeling the effects of the jetlag and party so I trotted along at a dirt-slow 12:00 mile pace.

high point is "black cap"
our destination

Lewes is a very well kept historical town..the buildings seemed all to have had some care in keeping the stonework and paint in decent shape.


Eventually time to pop over to Rachel's house and on the final approach Charlotte tooted her horn as passed by in her car....she had clearly made it out of bed and headed over from her house in Uckfield nearby. (A funny name for a town..they say the "F" is silent ;)

Rachel was ready to go and we headed out with the goal of running 5k to the top of Black Cap, one of the hills on the downs surrounding Lewes. We went up and up, not a huge slope but a continuous climb. Eventually the houses dyed out and we were going "up the downs".

The misty downs (Rachel and Charlotte barely visible
due to super wide-angle cellphone lens)

At the top!
(after about 550' of climbing)

There were lots of sheep and cows on the downs...misty and foggy at the top. Almost exactly 5k on the garmin. We headed back a slightly different way and made it back a minute per mile faster.. It was a great to share a run with Toni's cousins in such a special and exotic (for me) place.


Later we had a pub lunch (yum!) and all went for a walk...seeing stuff like this.

The berries were ripe all over the place..

And everybody chowed down..

I thought this sign was funny...

He approves.

Lewes has a castle that we always like to visit.

We had a great dinner with Charlotte and Phil and Louis at there new house...

starters!

Too soon we had to leave....


on Monday morning it was off to Cork, Ireland for a bit of sightseeing before getting down to work on Wed-Thu-Fri in Dublin.


What with all the travel I did not get as much running as I'd hoped but I did get two treadmill runs in. We flew back on Saturday and I slept a solid 12 hours from 7pm to 7am Sunday.


Sunday I felt great and went out for a 15.3 @ 9:58 on my wonderful baylands. The weather was perfect: cloudy and cool and the tide was out so lots of birds feeding on the mud flats. I have missed my long runs! The HRs were indicative of being well rested, very little drift..so I'm in the same shape as I've been for the last year... I think I could have done a 10:00 marathon then and there, no problem. 


Running summary:


Last Sunday: 10.65 miles @ 10:00 to 12:00 m/m , 600' hill
Wednesday: 7miles...75 min on treadmill @10:00 m/m with 40min @ 9:00 m/m
Friday: 3 miles...30min treadmill @ 10:00 m/m
Sunday: 15.3 miles total at 10:00 m/m average,  w/3 @ 9:30 m/m


(treadmill runs done at +1% grade)


Sunday to Sunday about 36 miles.

Let me apologize for not keeping up with blogs on the road and making comments. I will catch up eventually!