It was fun and easy to update in the beginning but soon the demands of other (volunteer) jobs began to eat away at my free time and it became a little bit of a chore and, when I had not posted for a week or more, my conscience began to nag...so I either lived with it - or began searching for items to write about, rather than report on those naturally-happening ones (and my conscience did not like that either!).
So, this, my 212th post, will probably be my last...and, by the way - I'm now the editor of the A&B News!
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Today, 9th April 2017, was the seventh Brighton Marathon, one of the UK's top 12 running events. The 26.2 mile course runs along Brighton seafront for much of the way and it was a perfect day with blue skies, a warm 20+ degrees C temperature and a cooling sea breeze. The local paper reported that there were 12,000 runners taking part.
The men's winner was, for the first time, a Briton, 39 year old Stuart Hawkes, in a time of 02:27:36, while the course record belongs to William Chebor who achieved 02:09:25 in the 2004 event. The women's winner was 37 year old Helen Davies in 02:42:40.
The event began with a parade of mini cars, several flying balloons and stuffed with child passengers, weaving from side to side as they motored down the course. They were followed by motor cyclists, all leathers and shiny chrome. I was taking photographs on Church Road in Hove and here's a few of them.
Then, after a wait of 15-20 minutes came the runners...
This is absolutely brilliant, a blind runner being accompanied and guided by a sighted runner, a cord's length apart.
By now the runners were coming thick and fast.
This lady was possibly disabled as she was walking (very very quickly), aided by two poles.
The eventual winner, Stuart Hawkes. Given the cameraman on the motor bike in front of him, I guess they knew by that stage that he was the likely winner.
For many of the runners, their faces told of the effort this was causing them.
