Somehow I seem to have torn up the first week of the training schedule, which required two three-mile runs and two four-mile runs, and substituted one seven mile and one eight mile run. Still, the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.

I was lucky enough to be invited by Connemara ultra-running legend Ash, aka Sweder, to join him and other runners who go under the soubriquets of MSilv, Moylebird, Gillybean, Fiona and Janet for an event last run two years ago over the Seven Sisters from east to west, and then back through Friston Forest. We assembled at 9 in Birling Gap car park, setting off up the first Sister.

These are not Sisters of Mercy. The start is an ascent, and for the first two miles we went up and down the cliffs, the litany of names well-known to every contestant in the Beachy Head marathon. In the order we took them today, they are Went Hill Brow, Michel Dean, Baily's Hill, Flathill Bottom, Flat Hill, Flagstaff Bottom, Flagstaff Brow, Flagstaff Point, Gap Bottom, Brass Point, Rough Bottom, Rough Brow, Limekiln Bottom, Short Brow, Short Bottom, Haven Brow. It became clear that I was out of my depth. While Ash scampered merrily up and down, taking photographs and tweeting like mad, and the ladies ran as if they did this sort of thing everyday, I was struggling. My legs hurt and my lungs, never at their best in the morning, seemed to have gone on strike.

After the Sisters we descended to the Cuckmere valley, running along to the road where we crossed and headed into Friston Forest. After climbing some steps we found ourselves on a long wooded section and the ladies, sure-footed as gazelles, set a challenging pace along a path littered with tree-trunks. Ash took a fall, while I had a near-miss. Then we emerged at Friston church, a pretty Sussex 11th century church where Frank Bridge is buried, and ran down a field of sheep and goats to return to Birling Gap by the road.

Then we dipped our hot and tired feet in the sea, while Ash, no man for half-measures, swam. We refreshed ourselves with coffee in the National Trust café, though the sausage in a roll one of us ordered, though advertised as local, took so long to arrive that it must have come from the next county.

Mere words; for a more graphic idea of the days, see Ash's pictures and the twitterstream tagged #mini7sisters

Time: 1:36:58
Distance: 8.22
Pace: 11.18 (best 6.58)
Elevation gain: 256m

Total miles this week: 15.09

Nine weeks till the Firle Half Marathon

Training for the Firle Half Marathon began in earnest, with a Wednesday evening session with the Seaford Striders. As it had been several months since my last club run, I asked to join a slower group, and together with a newcomer called Harry, was allocated to a group led by Richard. This serendipitous Tom, Dick and Harry trio were joined by a number of newer members and we set off for a run to High and Over, then down to the Cuckmere valley and back on the A259. Nature notes: egrets and a heron. The new girls, for so they mostly were, were no slowcoaches and while I led the pack down the hill at High and Over, when I tried to catch some of them near the end I failed.

The programme told me to do a three mile and a four mile session during the week. By doing nearly seven miles (6.87 actually), I think I can justly claim to have fulfilled my quota, and now I have an assignation with the redoubtable Sweder and friends on Sunday morning for a scamper up and down the Seven Sisters.

Full data on Garmin Connect

I was in Brighton today so I seized the chance to see the Run and Become: Motivation and Transformation in the Brighton Marathon exhibition at the Jubilee library.

In a tent, made out of rectangles bearing the footprints of runners collected at the start in Preston Park, there's two video presentations, showing video diaries by two anthropology students who entered the race.

There's also a book, chained to a desk, and not for sale, according to the Library bookshop staff, at least not with them.

The back wall of the tent is decorated with extracts from Sillitoe's Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Haruki Murasaki's What I talk about when I talk about running, together with academic articles entitled In dialogue with the selves: personhood through the dialogues of marathon runners and Escape and empowerment: marathon running and the agentive body.

I find it a little unsatisfactory. I'd like to see the videos at leisure on YouTube, and be directed to links to the full-text of the academic articles online. I'm not sure what the excerpts from Sillitoe and Murasaki are supposed to convey.

More photos on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomroper/tags/runandbecome/

Some motivation and transformation would be a good thing, at least in my case. I was intrigued by this announcement from the University of Sussex, which I've spiced up with some links. I hope they don't get sued by the running shop, Run and Become (I'm sure they won't, Run and Become are very nice people):

Run and Become is a Creative Campus Intiative Project run by Dr Jon Mitchell from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sussex. It aims to improve our understanding of the human factors involved in training for and completing a marathon run, focusing on two key themes of motivation and transformation.

Two Sussex students, Helen Kearney and Adam Brickley, trained for the inaugural Brighton marathon which took place on 18th April 2010. They completed a weekly video diary in which they reflected on the process.

Two more Sussex students, Sam Pepper and Jenni Rose Human, from the Anthropology Department, interviewed Helen and Adam and a further thirty marathon runners. They used this material to write their final year dissertations.

The data gathered by the project has now fed into a book, film and exhibition, directed by Brighton artist Matt Pagett. Book and film come to embody the route and the runners, taking readers and viewers through the various physical, mental and spiritual spaces occupied and adding depth to the consideration of what it means to run.

Exhibition Times:

19-31 July 2010: Jubilee Library, Jubilee Street, Brighton. For opening times see citylibraries.info

13-31 July 2010 (with other Creative Campus projects): Grand Parade Gallery, Brighton University. Monday-Saturday 1000-1700.

[From Run and Become: Motivation and Transformation in the Brighton Marathon - Exhibition]

I have left some runs unreported: nothing remarkable, two runs over Seaford Head and one trip along the front. However, this week I start training for the Firle Half Marathon, a ten week programme leading to a respectable time on 26 September. I judge that, with a possible change in employment, training will be much more of a practical proposition than before.

I am joined in this great enterprise by Claire and Lelia of the BSMS Running Club. We plan to run part of the route in training, to slay the demon of the hill that takes runners up from the Old Coach Road to the top of the escarpment.

Remember e-mail lists? An interesting spat has broken out on the classicists e-mail list (though the web archive seems to be broken at the moment). The battle of Marathon, after which our great race is named, took place in 490 BC. Forgetting that we went straight from 1 BC to 1 AD, with no year 0, some have proclaimed 2010 as the 2,500th anniversary, but it is of course the 2,499th. The argument becomes more complicated because schools and universities, who live by academic years, will be marking the event. The casus belli was an announcement of a Marathon anniversary event run for schools by Oxford which takes place in the academic year 2010-11, though in the calendar year 2010.

I shall run my next marathon, the Brighton marathon, in the correct anniversary year.

While fitter hardier runners betook themselves to Bewl Water for the Bewl 15, I stayed at home, and, after a wild Saturday night, contented myself with a short trip. To make it a little more challenging. I did attack Seaford Head from a different direction, going straight up the difficult west face. It was windy and sunny, and the views were quite splendid. Later, defying the lifeguards' red flags, I swam in a rough sea, an exhilarating experience.

In the belief that I may soon be able to train properly and inspired by the BSMS runners who have entered en masse, I too have entered the Firle half marathon. This will change everything.

I was very pleased to see that Juneathon was won by Fit Artist, a richly deserved and popular victory.

...I managed an early morning run, a truncated version of the Seaford Head route, though the climb on the short version is more intense. It was cloudy.
So I can boast of the following:

1st June, Rome: 3.13
3rd June, Rome: 3.59
6th June, Seaford Half Marathon: 13.09
12th June, Seaford Head: 2.98
13th June, Seaford front and Tidemills: 5.61
19th June: Seaford Head: 2.98
20th June: High and Over: 6.76
22nd June: Exeter: 2.77
23rd June: Exeter: 3.82
27th June: Seaford front: 4.77
30th June: Seaford Head: 2.44

Juneathon total: 54.92 miles, 11 days out of a possible, nay, required, 30. So I do not expect to win any of the covetable objects Jogblog is going to distribute to the winners.

Please also take into consideration three sea swims of a total of around 30 minutes