She did It!

Alan dropped me off in Rottingdean at 9.30am this morning on his way to his shooting club, and I met up with Lorraine and her friend Rebecca who had driven down from Northamptonshire.  Lorraine's sister-in-law and some of Rebecca's friends were all taking part in the Brighton marathon so they'd come to watch.

We went down to the undercliff walk and Lorraine & Rebecca went to Molly's to get a coffee and a hot chocolate to take away, and then we walked along the undercliff to Ovingdean where we had arranged to watch from miles 8 and 9.  Luckily it wasn't too busy, so we got a spot where we could see the runners coming down the hill and past us, and then half a mile up the road the course turned back on itself, so we saw them coming past on our side of the road too.

Rebecca runs a lot of marathons herself and is in fact taking part in the London marathon next weekend, and she showed me an App that she has on her phone where you can select runners and follow their progress.  So I downloaded the App, found Gillian and was able to see when she was nearly at our bit of the course.  This shot was taken as she was running towards us and Lorraine held our her water for her - obviously there was no time to stop and chat!

One of Rebecca's friends was about a minute behind Gillian, both of them being Elite runners, but we had to wait a while longer before the others reached us.  They all did very well though, and the guy that was in the lead held his place until almost the end of the race, when someone just overtook him - he still came second though!  I was amazed at Gillian's time of 3 hours 8 minutes and 39 seconds, she did so well.

Once we'd seen everyone, we walked back to Rottingdean as Lorraine & Rebecca wanted to go and have some lunch before their drive home.  I just had a drink with them as I had some lamb shanks cooking in the slow cooker, and Alan came to pick me up when he got back.

The hot tub heated up nicely and when it had got to 37.5 degrees, I got in it.   It was lovely and big enough for me to stretch right out and whilst the terrace is raised, no-one can actually see me in it because the tub is actually lower that the wall.

Anyway, that's another weekend almost over, and apparently we're going to have a heat wave later in the week!

I've added an extra of a Storm Trooper running in the marathon, goodness knows how he managed in his plastic suit!