On Friday morning fiancé Andrew (thank you for all your incredibly kind messages!!) and I set off for Chichester, to meet Tara and Alan for the annual "recce" weekend. This is a weekend dedicated to figuring out the route of the upcoming LDWA 100, which takes place on the end May bank holiday. This year was titled "Not The Recee Weekend", as due to logistical challenges in all getting to Scotland (where the LDWA 100 is this year) at the right and same time, we had relocated to Chichester, which was less of a logistical conundrum.
I had never been to Chichester before, and it seemed a very lovely city. On arriving, we set off straight away, to run a marathon route (designed by Tara and Alan) along the Sussex Literary (literally) trail, up to the South Downs, back along the Roman Road past the Halnaker windmill, and through Boxgrove, finishing back in Chichester with a look around the cathedral. We had several luxury checkpoints, even having a celebratory Pimms at one (thanks Tara!).
Saturday we did a beautiful 9 mile run heading along the Chichester Canal with ducklings and swan nests, down to Chichester Marina where we had a coffee stop to rejuvenate. Filled with caffeine we bounced off for a section along a lovely beach, and saw Major Mike in Tintanic!!
We completed the run all along beautiful trails to finish in Chichester at the Buttery teashop, a very good place to finish indeed.
We went our separate ways, and I headed to Walton on Thames, for part 2 of the weekend.
After 2 hours sleep (thanks to getting a room in the Travelodge right across from the Wetherspoons, and enjoying most of the night listening to drunk people and bad music), my alarm went off at 04.15, and after a brief meltdown, I reminded myself that I voluntarily choose to spend my weekends doing things like this. The reason for this early start, was that today was the London Marathon, and I was heading up to see the end, and for reasons which had made sense when I entered after a nice big glass of sherry, I thought it would be a good idea to run the Phoenix Not The London Marahtin first. Luckily, I'm not the only one with such ideas, so Annabel, Gavin and Sean were also doing the same, so it was a really fun day.
I ran my marathon - 8 laps on the towpath - in the cold but sunny early morning. I was enjoying it, and seeing everyone, until half way when I fell over. I then had to take a little time out in the loos, cleaning myself up and addressing my second meltdown of the day. After reminding myself again that this was "fun", I got back out on lap 5, put the Hades Town (my new favourite musical) soundtrack on, and was soon enjoying things again.
Afterwards, we headed up on the train to London, and were at letter M in time to meet Sarah when she finished her London Marathon - and celebrations began! Thank you Annabel, Gavin and Sean for all the cocktails, cakes and Doughnut Time doughnuts!
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