Running and painting

I took part in the Edinburgh to North Berwick road race on Saturday. It turned out to be a good day for running... mostly sunshine and cold and breezy. This was a good omen for the race, particularly in view of the weather when I was in North Berwick the day before. It was very cold, with a strong north easterly wind blowing. The race went well - I kept a steady pace of under eight minute mile pace for the first nine miles and within a minute of my fastest mile after that. There were two exceptions to this, and they were the hill at Luftness and Dirlton. I had been dreading the hill at Dirlton from the off because the other time I did this race - two years ago, I died a nasty death on that  hill. This time was different. I certainly slowed, but kept running up it and came out of it in reasonably good shape. I grabbed some jelly babies from a helpful spectator on the road into North Berwick and with two miles to go I realised I was going to smash my time of two years ago. Then I had just managed to creep in under the three hour mark. This time I did it in 2.45.25, so I was completely chuffed with that. The legs were a bit sore at the end of the race so I went for a paddle in the cold sea... yes it does help. Well done Sandy Wallace who got the over 60's prize in 2.34 and to Stuart Hay who got the over 40's prize in 2.04

Here is a water colour painting of the houses and green at Gifford  I took from a photo  and painted at the North Berwick Art Group