The 2008 Brooks Brighton 10K

Yesterday was the Brighton Brooks 10K race, which went very well.  I started further back than I wanted, meaning the first couple of kilometers were like Churchill Square on a Saturday.  Once past the crowd I could go faster and made up for lost time.  It was actually one of the easiest runs I've had (maybe because of the slow pace at the start) and I had lots of energy left for the finish. I was delighted to come in at 790th (by gun time – by chip time I came in 720th) at under 47 minutes – I knew I was faster than usual but not how fast.   I'm mostly recovered now but I'll take a few days off then switch down to practising 5K runs ready for the Santa Dash.

After the race (and still wearing my shorts) I visited the Art @ Taylor Made gallery where Jake Spicer was doing a live painting of Rosy.  I've often looked at paintings but not painting – it was fascinating to watch Jake picking out what information to put on canvas.  I'll post a photo of that when I get back to Brighton.

I had a long coach ride to Derby but I had lots of distractions- a history of boo.com, the West Wing and the BBC documentary on Hugh Everett (the "human interest" side was brilliant, but I wasn't sure about the physics explanations).  I wouldn't have survived without headphones to block out the people making long chatty mobile calls.  Maybe I do need an MP3 player after all?

I'm now in Derbyshire for a few days, relaxing and catching up with some friends.  I'm impressed that my sister has learned by heart the novel Each Peach Pear Plum