Yesterday was a great day what with the sunshine, some great food and my good friends Phillipa and Chris getting married. All afternoon, into the evening and eventually through to the morning we partied at the
Van Dyk Hotel before I eventually crawled into bed. It would have been nice to go on but I'd realised this week that I could run down to Sunday lunch from where we were staying - with almost all of it being on the forest trails of the
National Cycle Network. So early this morning after a solid breakfast at the local Little Chef (oh how the other half live!) we sauntered down to
Clumber Park; the last time we were here was for a triathlon but this time all I wanted was to find the bridge and thus my starting point:
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| Clumber Park |
Almost from the off I was alone on soft-needled tracks through the woods with just the echo of birdsong for company. Truly I felt a world away from London and the South-East; just me and my thoughts and at times like this my mind certainly does wander! As I padded along I reflected on the wedding and how much fun it is to catch up with old friends, whether my muscles were going to loosen up if I kept moving and how easy it was going to be to keep to my chosen route. It's fair to say that there weren't many people around to ask for directions:
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| Somewhere in Duncan Woods |
So I kept heading south, picking up signs for
Sherwood Forest and musing that it would be easy enough to hide a pack of thieves in the dense woodland. We may live on a small island but there are still plenty of quiet, out of the way places and for sure Nottinghamshire is hardly the back of beyond! Eventually signs of civilisation emerged as I passed by Clipstone and into its Country Park - popular with anglers by the look of it, tucked away in the crook of a railway line and featuring a giant golden hand (which is somehow meant to represent the area's mining heritage). I was just glad to pause for a moment as this run was taking rather longer than I'd imagined:
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| Clipstone Country Park |
Guessing from the maps that I'd printed off I reckoned that it'd be maybe 15 miles door-to-door but that was looking like a gross underestimate with almost 12 miles on the clock already! So it was with a sense of wondering what I'd got myself into that I jogged over to
Sherwood Pines Forest Park for a, hopefully, quick diversion around Mansfield. There were lots of families around on mountain bikes and a moment's inattention saw me heading at a ninety-degree angle to my desired route and with every step further away from lunch!
Sadly it took about a mile to realise my mistake and then, well, I had to fashion a cross-country trek across the forest to recover and with no end in sight (and a rapidly fading phone battery) circumstances were starting to look bleak. That said no one knew where I was anyway and so my only way out was on
Shank's Pony and believe me these dogs were barking; understandable after 2 hours and more than 15 miles! So I forged on although that makes me sound quite indomitable: in reality my right-knee had been aching for a good hour as a consequence of being tracked out-of-line by my ever-tightening ITB. Actually that's the strange part; in my head I'd imagined that I could run long whenever I wanted just by dropping my pace, to conserve energy, but as it turns out the limiting factor is bits of me falling apart due to over-use!
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| The end |
So this is it - the exact point where I stopped and thought "What the hell am I doing?" After 18 miles I was nowhere near where I wanted to be; that was at least 6 miles further, minimum, and I had neither the inclination nor the physical condition to pursue nearly a full marathon today. So I gave it up and considered my options. There weren't many. With a nearly dead phone I couldn't afford to spend long guiding Lenore to my location, I didn't know where to find a taxi and I wasn't going to run any further. For more than a few beats I contemplated hitch-hiking along the A617 (why not?) but in the end I phoned Chris (luckily not on honeymoon) and sat on a wall in the sun. Being the great mate that he is he drove out to rescue me, restored me with a bottle of cool water and then took me to lunch.
Thanks Chris!
Distance: 18.2 miles
Time: 2h 27m 46s
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