It was nice not to feel that I had to be conservative with my pace and I had a particularly tense and cliff-hanging kind of day at work yesterday so instead of settling quickly to the back and trying to minimise my effort, I made pointless challenges for leadership, bounded up hills, got into foolish sprints for no good reason. It was great fun. (For me at least.) The sandy, grassy trails are great under foot. The weather was superb. The beach was breath-taking and mysterious as the haar rolled over and disappeared again.
We got to Gullane beach far quicker than I'd thought we would ( we were in a bit of a dream last week), so we just kept going. Where last week we had to head inland as we got to the house (which Amanda tells me was where R L Stevenson stayed when he wrote Treasure Island), this time the tide was further out so we managed (just) to scrape round the top of the beach and along to Yellowcraigs.
After the remoteness of where we'd just been, Yellowcraigs was a bit busy for us - and the barbecues smelt so good it reminded us how hungry we were getting. Amanda took off like a horse bolting home - and we all followed. The next couple of miles to Gullane were at a good tempo pace that had us all sweating in the heat and ended abruptly outside Falco's in Gullane from which Amanda emerged with Cheese Tongues (new one on me) and some other pastry looking things. Peter and I went along to the deli and got millionaire's shortbread and lemony limonata and we found a seat on the steps up to the graveyard and stuffed our faces. Perfect, perfect happiness.
The last couple of miles I could feel all my earlier fooling in my legs and I settled into a more "ultra" pace. The running equivalent of shifting onto my granny ring. (That sounds a bit weird doesn't it?)
Back in Gullane we bumped into Lynsey Lawrie just finishing up her 15 miler and looking for her hubby on the road who was meant to be picking her up.
14 miles in all. Some quite tough off-roady, some quite fast on-roady. All good.
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