Jenni's Run

Jenni Owens from club organised this run a while back to celebrate her last long run before the London Marathon. It was to be a 20 miler from Portobello to North Berwick (the new Edinburgh to North Berwick race route) and to end up in a cafe.

There seemed to be a lot of reasons NOT to do this run. It would be

1. on road
2. too short
3. far too early (the clocks went forwards)
4. everyone's running too damn well and I'm not
5. and blah - other reasons - I've forgotten

But I wanted to do it too and decided to do my long run in the middle of the week so that if I'd recovered enough there was still a chance I could do it.

Yesterday I was still swithering but then Amanda said she would join in at Musselburgh and I was realising I probably had to try and do some bigger mileage again anyway so why not run with friends?

It still felt awfully early when we rolled out of bed, and I felt too full when I left the house and breakfast was threatening to breach the harbour walls.

To cut a long story short we set off too fast. TOO FAST I thought but I'd expected that and I really didn't want to drop back in a defeatist way so soon so I hung in there. Anyway, having lots of people around was carrying me along and I didn't feel nearly as bad as I expected too. It was great to catch up with Michael Geoghegan and hear his proliferating plans for the Scottish hill racing season to come. It was good to hear that Richard's form is improving rapidly too after a long stretch of much work and low mileage. I was just realising I'd commited the classic schoolboy error of forgetting to eat or drink on a long run when up popped Bert (and Jenni's mum?) with a big bowl of jelly babies and jelly beans and some cups of water. This saved me. Also getting off-road at Longniddry and so letting go of the pace of the road runners also probably saved my skin.

There were just a handful of us going round the beaches from Aberlady so I was pretty soon on my own again with the sea and the sand but I felt pleased every step of the way that it was all going so well. The first 20 miles really just swooshed by. I had to slow down considerable for rocky bits and getting on and off the golf course but made it in just after 1pm so I hadn't even missed out on lunch.

Lunch was a brilliant affair at the Buttercup Cafe - spag. bog. followed by banana bread with the thickest sugary icing. Highly recommended. That was by far the quickest long run I've done in a while. After we got dropped off by Richard we ran a further mile down the road making it just under 27 miles for the day.