72.21

The last few months I've been getting ready for a half marathon. As with most events this year, it was a behind closed doors, invite only sort of thing. It so happened that the guy organising it was the old coach at the school that hosts the sandshark cross race, where I ran every year with SCAD, and he knows my cureent coach and so it all came together that I was offered a spot to race (hurray!) I was a bit worried about the weather; in December and right beside the Atlantic- if it was the UK you just know it would have been peaceful until race day and then blown up a hurricane, but in South Carolina the weather was kind to us. It was pretty chilly but calm and sunny and maybe just a degree or two short of absolutely perfect. It was a looped course with as little elevation change as feasibly possible, which suited me too. I was hoping for some competition, but on the day I ended up running alone after about the 3 mile point, but I had the lead car and a guy on a bike for company so it wasn't too lonely. I ran pretty fast. I'd been hoping for and talking about a 72 minute time but I wasn't convinced it was actually possible, so I was pretty happy with the result!

My boyfriend, Alex also somehow found himself in the race, and having never raced anything further than 8k before he did a really good job - 68.28! One day I'll be that fast... The poor guy has had to drive me all over the place recently, run crazy far at a crazy early time in the morning (8am start?!) and somehow still had the energy to stop me falling over at the finish.

I also got to be reuinted with Anna, who some of you might have seen from the IRun facebook interview, but if not, she's a fairly incredible runner. She's a mid-distance specialist, but also runs a killer 5k, and an awesome half. We ran against each other a few times a couple of years back before she graduated, and she kicked my butt. The last time we ran alongside each other was XC Nationals in 2018, but we were next to each other for about three miles on Sunday so that was a really nice experience.

We've been back in Atlanta for about the past two weeks, and I think this past term block has been the longest span of time in the last four years I've been away, so it was weird but nice to go wander around some of my old haunts again. I especially enjoyed being at liberty to walk, rather than run aroun Piedmont Park. I guess absence makes the heart grow fonder, I'm really not a big city person, but it was nice to be back.

If you follow the American calendar, it was also Thanksgiving recently, and I did some cooking! That was an interesting experience, but I made this pie, which I was pretty proud of. It turned out unexpectedly well, so you should all admire it. I doubt I'll make one that nice again!

Running, running and more running

Not to do with running at all, but I write this on election morning. It's about 11am and the result is still way too close to call. Last night I thought there was no way Biden could make up the ground needed to the necessary 270 electoral college votes, but it seems there's a slim possibility he might. The mail-in ballots and other non-traditional votes are new innovations in most states this election, which seems to have complicated the counting process, and it's possible we may not have final results today even.

This was the sunset last night. I'm pretty bad at remembering to take photos, except of the sun over the hills, so I'm sorry, there will probably be a lot of those. We had our time change this weekend so now it's very bright very early and very dark similarly early. Not every state uses the system, and a lot of people seem to think it's a nonsense.

It was Halloween a few days ago. We were banned from doing much of anything by Coach, who is fighting as hard as he can to keep our team covid free for the sake of our season. I did take a few photos of different decorations though, and these were my favourite. Painting, rather than carving pumpkins seems to be the fashion around here, and how cute are these guys. Alarmingly, one of the houses near here has what look like nooses hanging from a tree. I'm sure there's a sensible explanation but they're pretty creepy looking.

Covid continues to make a nuisance of itself. Last week the team's race got cancelled short notice for covid reasons, which was deeply frustrating. We did an intrasquad dual meet instead; Orange and Black teams for the men and the ladies with a combined point score. It was arranged so the teams should be as equal as possible, and in the end my Black lot just about edged it. We had some fantastic times. I ran 16.06 for the 5k, Avery ran 17.10 (a significant lifetime best) and we had seven women run under 19 minutes, which was pretty amazing given that it was just us legging it down a local path.

There's me closing in on the finish. We run on this path a lot, and it's almost identical to the Wirral Way. The Americans call them 'rails to trails'; old train lines turned into crushed gravel paths. This one goes for about 10 miles, and then connects with some other parks and paths. One day I'll explore the whole thing.

So yesterday I did something pretty awesome. This beautiful track belongs to the local high school (how?!) so that was cool enough but it gets better. My coach here also has a professional running group, including Hannah Segrave, who does 2.00 for the 800 and Abbey Cooper, who's run 15.03 for the 5000 and represented the US at the Rio Olympics. Pretty serious company for me to try and keep up with for about a million 400s. It's probably fair to say it was the hardest thing I've ever done, but I think that's what I need to get to the next level.

Johnson City, Tennessee

Well it's been a little while, but this summer just passed I graduated from SCAD with a BFA and have now moved myself to Milligan, of all places. Having spent the last four years treating this school as my deadly rivals in all things running I guess I've lived long enough to see myself become the enemy. Every now and again I catch myself wearing a buffalo logo and have an awful case of imposter syndrome, but it's been more or less a smooth transition in reality. For those of you back on the Wirral, the move from SCAD to Milligan is something like if I were to jump from Wirral to Harriers, with the slight mitigation that graduation meant I couldn't stay at SCAD even if I'd wanted to.

So now I am in very northeast Tennessee, on the border with North Carolina and Virginia. America is so big that on a map the distance between Atlanta and here looks very small, but it's still about a four hour drive! I'm up in the mountains, in the junction between the Blue Ridge and the Smokey Mountains, both branches of the larger Appalachian range, and happily the hills are both blue and smokey. Nobody knows why they smoke, or why they look blue when you know they're covered in green and brown trees, but it's just one of the mysteries of this place. It is spectacularly beautiful.

As a concept it works for me too, I very much like the idea of hiding away in the mountains and then coming out and doing something impressive when the moment is right. I'm here to run, obviously. Over the last few years it's developed from something I do to more or less my whole way of life. It's not for everyone, but we are pretty isolated here (especially if you don't have a car) and in all honesty I love it. My days are just reading, writing and running, and the occasional hike.

Milligan is very different to SCAD. Similarly to Arran's college, it's a small, private, Christian school. I am pursuing a Masters of Arts in Humanities, a pretty broad-based programme that brings together parts of literature, history, and the arts. A lot of my classes deal in some way with the culture of Appalachia, this mountain region of parts of the southeastern states, which is really interesting for me, having lived in the area for four years, but having been in the city where I was largely shielded from the regional traditional culture. Out here, the old farming way of life is still alive and kicking. Probably the most typical Appalachian view would be rolling fields with a run down barn slowly reverting to vegetation with some blue mountains in the background. There is a general feeling that the hills have never been entirely conquered by man, that nature is always creeping back in overnight. Sometimes we have bears on campus.

I am running quite a lot. Sadly I have no cross-country eligiblity remaining, but the sole silver lining to this whole covid situation has been that the cancellation of track last summer meant I could eke out one more year of college running, so come March most likely with luck I shall be burning track once more. Covid has put a fire blanket on most of my racing plans in almost a year now. I seem to be plagued at the moment with long courses whenever I do get to run. I am very grateful to the organisers managing to host events at all at the moment, but I ran a local '5k' here lasy week and was massively frustrated to find it about 300m long. From my GPS data in all likelihood I ran a 5k pb, possibly even a sub 16, but the course meant I then ran almost another minute and so finished with a very disappointing time. Oh well, at least I'm making some sort of progress.