THE RAIN, IT RAINETH EVERY DAY..

Today is/was/shall be the last long run before the Coastal Marathon and I'd arranged to go out for a run with Ian - 20 miles.
Given that we are doing a coastal marathon Ian had, quite wisely, picked out a route down by the - well, down by the coast.
What neither of us had counted on was the rain. Jesus H Christ, it wasn't just raining ...this was really RAINING.


"Rain" - on the off chance you
didn't know what it looked like.



But lucky for me my new gortex jacket does the job and keeps the rain off my arms and torso....sadly what it keeps off the torso simply runs down the jacket and into the shorts then once they are fully saturated it simply pours out of the shorts making me look like some carefree incontinence sufferer.

Ah well. It was the sort of rain that after about five minutes you were soaked through anyway and not going to get any wetter.

While the quickest part of the run, the first few miles up through Spott estate and down to the coast were in some ways the worst as the "pathways" are somewhat overgrown right now with jaggy nettles. Both legs now have a sort of reddish, blotchy, corned-beef look about them.

After that though it was pretty straightforward running from Whitesands along the coast, past Torness and along to Cockburns Path, though the running on sand is always tough on the legs. Legs already tired from a tough week. As most of the route was sand or trail (or both) and it was probably good training for the race. My choice of wearing road shoes probably didn't help and I did feel myself slipping a couple of times. Maybe wear the trail shoes for the race - though for 26 miles I think I'd be happier with a bit more cushioning.
At one point my right calf started to tighten up quite a bit - not good. I hope its just a throwback to Wednesday's race (might slather it in Tiger Balm just to be on the safe side though).
At about 13 miles we crossed back over the A1 just at the Cockburnspath roundabout and off the beach/trail combo and back on to the road. Ian was keen to extend his run a bit and headed back after a mile or so and back down towards the coast but I'm afraid I opted for the familiar and, to my mind, more pleasant roads to get me home.
Heading back through Innerwick the rain made an unwelcome "full-on" return, and the last couple of miles were a fairly joyless, head-down-and-just-get-on-with-it type of running. The sort of miles that provide no satisfaction other than adding mileage to the weekly log. Got home just as the Garmin ticked over to 21.
All in all a good run.