On Sunday 18th April 2010 I (mainly) ran the 64k (40 miles) of the 'A Coventry Way Challenge' a big circular footpath route round Coventry. I did it because it was a stupid challenge I set myself and to raise money for the reconstruction of schools in Haiti. Read about my progress below (and donate!)
A whole load more thank-yous: David, Darren, Joe, Helen, Ian, Lorna, John & Rosy, Katie, Tom, Les, Charles, Geoff, Rosemary, John, Michelle, Keith and Liz. Including Gift Aid we have raised over £1,500. It is not too late to donate; the Just Giving page stays open for a few months yet. Thanks too for all the messages of support I received including a flurry of tweets from Article 25 supporters and to all those who have enquired after my wellbeing (physical and mental) since.
I think the legs have stopped aching now, I have caught up with my sleep and my forehead has stopped peeling from the sun. I have not been out running again yet, mainly due to being so busy.
The race results are now published and huge respect must go to Matt Giles of Stourbridge who broke through the five hour barrier to set a new men’s record and Lisa Barry from Cambridgeshire who set a new women’s record at just under six and a half hours. These superhuman efforts certainly put my nine hours and seven minutes, back in 69th place into perspective. I had hoped to do a bit better but in the middle sections between Wolston and Bedworth I faded badly in the heat and must have been doing 50% walking. The additional drink stations between Brinklow and Bedworth were most welcome but only served to delay me further. By the time I reached Corley Moor I had abandoned all thoughts of achieving a good time and I even walked back 100m to the pub to see Mary and Ella who had come up to cheer me on. My Garmin ran out of memory so I lack the ability to geekily analyse my split times; probably just as well, it would be too depressing.
I met some great people along the way including fans of this blog, someone who enquired whether I had any pliers on me (to remove a thorn from another runner’s shoes) and a runner for whom this was merely a training run for a latter 100 mile effort.
The biggest thank you must go to all the Coventry Way volunteers. They had clearly worked hard to get the route into a reasonable condition and they worked tirelessly on the day to put on a great event, which by all accounts is one of the best organised long-distance run/walks in the land.
Afterwards Jan, my wife, said, “you won’t do it again will you?” I can spot an order wrapped in a question, but I think the answer is a genuine yes, although I might walk the Coventry Way Challenge another year. It was a great, if gruelling experience but I will keep the countryside for walking and do my running in cities or at the very least, down proper lanes.
9 hours; more or less my slowest predicted time. I started well, faded under the midday heat and got a second wind on the last couple of legs. But as I have never done this distance before it is a personal best. A big thank you to my wonderful support team and to Crispin, Fiona, Mary and Ella who came out to cheer me on. Oooh I hurt now! More later.
Charlie and I are back off to London now. Well done Dad, good luck for the home straight!
Sent from my iPhone
Bryn: We're sitting in the beer garden of the Red Lion in Corley. We're expecting Dad about 4.30ish, but obviously it must be really tough now as Dave's been running since 8.15.
Bryn: Dad arrived at the Bedworth Check Point at 14.35. He's slowing now but this is the furthest he's run in one go.
Sent from my iPhone
Bryn: Bedworth doesn't quite compare with the chocolate box beauty of the Warwickshire villages we've been to today, but this Magnolia tree next to the check is very pretty. Mum commented that it's probably alot more fragrant than Dad right now, but we'll let him off; we're just awaiting his arrival but he's run 48k already! Only 16k to go!
Below, Pops arriving at Brinklow at 12.40. Looked like he was beginning to get a touch weary by this point, ah bless. We've gone home to eat sandwiches and crisps and watch a bit of telly.
Boom! Wolston! We're back onto Dad's original times. He still seems to be in good spirits at the half way point. Wolston was pleasing, there was this scruffy dog lapping up water from a plastic cup which was super cute. They also put on a lovely spread at the village hall, sarnies and rice pudding and custard and hot drinks. Dad just had water though, boring.
Dad arrived at Common Lane, Kenilworth, his first check point. He was really sweaty and muddy so I didn't hug him on account of him being so gross.
I meant to say earlier, he started 15 minutes early today and is running at the faster of the two possible times he gave (minus the 15 minutes.)
Before Dad got running he would have had to sign in, very much like this young chap is doing here. The man in the green jumper oversees the whole operation. I guess you could describe him as the nucleus of the run, if you felt the need to describe him.
The BIG run started at Meridan village hall. Meridan is normal for a village, it has a hotel and I also noticed it had a dog.
For those mad enough to want to come out on Sunday and cheer me on or laugh at me (and support the 100 odd other runners and walkers on the Coventry Way Challenge) the table below gives estimates as to when I should pass each of the checkpoints on the Challenge. There are two times given for each checkpoint: an earlier time which I will pass if I am running at my fastest (6:30mins/k) and a later time for if I am running at my slowest (8:30mins/k). My actual time will be somewhere in between. All this assumes I start as planned at 8.30am.
Thank you to Daniel, Mike, Allison, Peter, Scott, Larry, Peter, Annie, Sabine, Adrian, Stephen and an especially big hug for Lesley who got me to the £1,000 target. With Gift Aid that is over £1250. So thanks to everyone who got us there. But that is no excuse not to donate if you have not already done so. Follow this link and do your bit.
This is a test to see if I can post blogs by email. By this means I hope my support team will be able to live-blog from the Coventry Way Challenge on Sunday. Come back on Sunday and follow my progress.
Sent from my iPhone
Thanks to Terry, Ralph, Kath, Paul, Anthony and Keith who donated at the Coventry Society tonight, adding £80 to the total. I have just sent a final email to many colleagues and friends in an effort to get the total over the £1,000 target. If you are reading this and have not yet donated, please do so now. Thanks.
My final long training run is not so long as I am now officially ‘tapering’. With 10 miles to do I thought I would go back to the Coventry Way and test how fast I could go. With my Garmin foot pod double-wrapped in cling film I charged through the mud and water instead of my usual pussy-footing around it. This is how I propose to approach the Challenge next Sunday.
I run the fourth quadrant of the Coventry Way, from Bed’th to Meriden in spring sunshine. The first quadrant is all about railways, the second rivers and the third canals, but I do not know how to characterise this one, there is a bit of everything; lanes, fields, horse paddocks, woods, motorway crossings, suburban estates, and of course mud and water. With the sun of the past week in some places the countryside has totally dried up and is even looking slightly parched, but in others the water still lies stubbornly on the ground, particularly at Corley Moor.
The speed is not bad. I manage to stay under six minutes per kilometre on the lanes and seven minutes per kilometre across the fields. But next Sunday I will have four times as far to run. So who knows what speed I will manage.
My legs hurt. Going up stairs requires lots of swearing (one swear word per step – just think of Father Jack and you will get the picture). Coming down is worse. I hope Jan will buy me a Stannah Stairlift for my birthday.
Today I ran further than I have ever ran. Last week I ran further than I had ever run, but only by a bit. 47.5k (29½ miles) out beyond the familiar Wall Hill Road to Corley Moor, way north of the M6, almost to Filongley. I went down Didgly Lane which appears on street maps but not on Ordnance Survey maps. No wonder; it is collapsed and inundated with water and mud. Down Newtown Lane to the back of Daw Mill Colliery, where most of the coal mined in Britain comes from. To Shustoke; down past Maxstoke Castle; visible from the road and the end of a long straight drive; almost to the River Blythe. The rivers out here flow north into the Trent and eventually the North Sea, unlike our Coventry rivers which join the Avon, then the Severn and flow into the Bristol Channel. New lanes; Arnolds Lane goes on for 2k but eventually brings me to Maxstoke with its Abbey and Church. Down Packington Lane past the Forest of Arden Hotel and Country Club to Butlers End. Someone has stolen the grills from the storm drains along this road. I am told they have been gone for a month. They are replaced by traffic cones with signs on telling everyone what has happened. I join Kinwalsey Lane at its start and find it is 4k long, snaking up to what must be one of the highest points in North Warwickshire where there are two enormous communications masts. Then back to familiar territory: Harvest Hill Lane.
That is the last big training run before the big one.
Next week I am tapering my training so will just do about 16k. On April 18th I must do a third as much again as I did today. Then my legs will really hurt.
Thanks to Catherine for her generous donation. I received an update this week about Article 25's activities in Haiti. I will email it to all my donors. You can read what they are doing here. Below I am modeling their T-shirt.
My new Coventry Way book has arrived and on the front my registration number which is ‘16’. The notes say I must announce that at each checkpoint on the Coventry Way Challenge. Superficially the book looks much the same but there is more clarity and consistency and generosity with the pages, allowing for more information. I can only detect two small changes to the route. Well done to all those involved in this labour of love.
On Saturday my route is a combination of two routes I used when I was marathon training last year plus a bit of Coventry Way. Knowing that there are no shops out this way, in the morning I drive out and hide two bottles, water and Gatorade, behind an old tree stump at around the 20k mark. It takes a while to find a suitable hiding place. Then I run out to Corley and beyond going under the M6 and back via Harvest Hill Lane. This is one of my favourite routes. Harvest Hill Lane with its scattered settlements seems like a big friendly linear village and there are often people out horse riding, cycling or dog-walking. I guess the co-operation required in frequently having to negotiate passing one another in a narrow lane engenders a certain neighbourliness.
Running down Harvest Hill Lane I must resist the temptation to turn right onto the Coventry Way but, in order to get the distance in, take a big circle via Clay Lane (picking up my bottles), and back to Corley to rejoin the Coventry Way at Windmill Lane (the beginning of Map 18). I complete map 18 and with it my second circumnavigation. I do not intend to undertake a third until the Coventry Way Challenge on April 18th. However, I do Map 1 again to get me to Back Lane. I have a fondness for Map 1 where I first turned off the tarmaced path four months ago and began this nonsense.
From Back Lane its back through Eastern Green, Allesley Park, over the footbridge to Staircase Lane, Northbrook Lane and down through Coundon to home. My pace is a lot faster than I have been doing lately but then most of this run was on roads. However, even the Coventry Way sections I complete at a reasonable pace. But the price of maintaining this pace is great weariness and achy legs in the final few kilometres.
42.3k (a marathon) completed at a pace of 6:31mins/k.
First some thank-yous: to Running Coventry for giving me a name check and reciprocating my link on his blog, and to Bev and Carol for their generous donations to the Haiti appeal.
I should also thank the Coventry Way elves who have been busy sorting out problems on the route. Last week I went through Brinklow and the waymarker stuck to a sapling that had rotated and sent me the wrong way last time, was now stuck firmly and correctly to a stout post. There seem to be more waymarkers generally than during my first circumnavigation, particularly the sort stuck to lampposts, or maybe, without the map to look at, I am getting better at spotting them.
On Saturday morning I woke and stocked up with porridge with every intention of running, but as the rain came down the forecast looked better for Sunday I went back to bed.
So more porridge on Sunday and a glorious morning as I run-walk in warm-up mode to Ansty, join the Coventry Way, plodge round through Barnacle, Bed’th and Corely and then via Harvest Hill Lane and Allesley to home. It is the first time since I started training for the Coventry Way that I have run with just one layer of clothing. There a quite a few walkers out enjoying the spring sunshine; couples, families even a group of young lads, with maps following the Coventry Way. We need more of them out to tramp down some of the paths, but not to churn up the muddy bits. There are still plenty of these, particularly where the canal seeps over its banks or where some other hidden sources of water seem to emerge from the ground independent of any rainfall. I suspect that even in the unlikely event of us getting solid sunshine between now and April 18th, some places will not dry out.
At 41k, just short of a Marathon, this was not the longest distance I have ever run but it was the longest amount of time at nearly 5 hours. But a cold bath and plenty of calories, fluids and rest sees me fully restored by the next morning.
Only four weeks to go now, two more long runs then a taper, then it’s the Coventry Way challenge.
We have been watching Eddie Izzard Marathon Man. I think everyone was surprised when they heard what he had done. Now watching how it was done we are even more amazed. Eddie breaks all the rules, and suffers for it. But I think some of us (particularly men) cannot learn from advice, we just have to learn from experience. The most positive thing about watching Eddie Izzard is how much fun he has with what he is doing, even though he is in pain a lot of the time. Sometimes as children we just ran along for the joy of it, to have that feeling of moving at speed and of our legs going crazy. As adult runners we need to find that feeling sometimes, to find our inner Izzard.
Saturday sees me running out from the centre of Coventry to Wolston, up to Ansty and back again; through Coventry’s mature suburbs, out through the nowhereland of big sheds and business parks on the periphery, to the almost contiguous villages of Binley Woods, Brandon and Wolston; up the ancient track above Bretford, which is still far too muddy in places, alongside the Avon, around Brinklow and up to a long stretch of occasionally inundated Oxford Canal towpath and across the fields to Ansty. I navigate, with difficulty across the M6, A46 junction, where they seem to be making a big mess, and no doubt are spending lots of money making some imperceptible changes to the junction to shave a few seconds off motorists journey times. There is always money for such works. Back through the nowhereland of Walsgrave Triangle, mature suburbs, the lively little shops of and terraces of Stoke and past the dismal flats that have been sardined into the former Highfield Road home of Coventry City. As a final insult this development has been branded ‘The City’.
I did not manage a mid-week run. I think it makes a difference. So there is a bit of start-stop run-walk, but eventually the legs settle into a rhythm. Some months ago I read an article in Runners World by some ultra runner or other. He said that he found it best not to think about distance completed and distance still to go, but to think that he was just running forever. I cannot say that I have totally embraced this philosophy. I am still thinking ‘oh, just done a half marathon’ or ‘5k to go’. However, my latest plan means I do not always know what the exact distance of my run will be. I am doing a calculation from a combination of Mapmyrun and the Coventry Way book plus I am relying on my Garmin which I think has become un-calibrated from having to have the battery removed each time it got soaked. So I set off without knowing what my total is going to be. This imprecision is liberating. Not knowing quite how long I have to go I just run.
Thanks to Phil and Bianca whose donations have taken my total over the £500 target. Definitely time to raise the bar. There are plenty of people who know me who have not donated yet, so between us we should have no problem raising £1,000. It’s a bit of a shame that my total has now gone from 100% to 52% but I am sure we can get it back to 100% before too long.
I now need to be covering some serious distances in training. So I have a new plan: running out from home doing a bit of Coventry Way and then running home again. So Saturday saw me running out through the city centre, up Warwick road, through a little bit of War Memorial Park, down Leamington Road and out to Stoneleigh. Stoneleigh to Stareton, Stareton to Bubbenhall (private sheep, bull field and flooded quary, Bubenhall to Ryton, Ryton to Wolston (snow drops); maps 5 to 8 completed. Then it is down Brandon Lane (Ronaldo grafito) to the A45 and up London Road and Abbey Road to Esporta where the car is waiting and Jan has just completed her palates class. There are no navigation problems on the Coventry Way. I feel that my first circumnavigation was like going to the lectures, and now going round without maps is like doing the essays. On April 18th I sit the final exam.
Dipping into War Memorial Park there are plenty of runners around. I wondered whether there was an event on, or maybe it is just peak training period for all the spring and summer races. It has been a week without rain which means the countryside is beginning to dry out and although there is still some mud around it seams nothing compared to last week’s South Devon experience or the previous weeks of Warwickshire mud.
Elsewhere there a many more people walking themselves and their dogs on the footpaths, a sure sign that spring is on its way. There are also swathes of snowdrops in the woods on the edge of Wolston. That village also seems to be the centre for women’s football. Last time I ran through there were two girls matches being played, today there is a grown-up women’s match.
I am pleased to say that, although progress across the uneven countryside is inevitably slow, once I get back on tarmac for the final stretch I can pick up the pace again. I take this as a reassuring sign that I have the stamina. Exactly how much I am not sure, but I have some.
You can see from the widget on the right that I am going to have to increase my fundraising goal as we have nearly reached the target, thanks to donations from Tara-Jane and my in-laws Pam & Harry. Indeed with Gift Aid we are well over the £600 mark.
Lisa from Article 25 tells me that a team from the charity (Director of Projects, Project Architect and a Structural Engineer) will be going to Haiti on the 8th March for a feasibility trip. They are working with Outreach International to design and build up to 20 schools that were badly damaged in the Earthquake. They have also been approached with regard to a large scale home rebuilding project in Haiti which they will be investigating while on the ground. We will know more when the team returns.
News from Chile this week reminds us how devastating earthquakes can be and my friend Tita’s Mum has had to move out of her house in Valparaiso because it is unsafe. The earthquake in Chile is another tragedy but there is a huge difference in the number of fatalities in Chile and Haiti. This is in no small part down to architecture and shows why the work of Article 25 will be so important.
Down to stay with my sister in South Devon and take part in the South Devon Coastal Trail Series Half Marathon. As we assemble on the village green at Beesands, looking out over Start Bay the cheery race organiser makes fun of those of us who are in street-running shoes. He says the trail-shoe-wearers can amuse themselves watching us sliding about.
We start off along a short stretch of beach and I am glad it is short as shingle not the most responsive surface. Then its up over the coastal path and down to Hallsands where the hotel and wooden beach shop where I worked as a teenager 36 years ago have been replaced by new housing.
Then we hit the coastal trail in earnest for about 13k starting with a 120m climb. If I ever complained about Warwickshire hills, I take it all back, if I ever complained about Warwickshire mud, I was being pathetic. Now I have experienced hills and mud. The going is very slow and it is difficult to stay upright. In fact I do not. I land flat on my back. Perhaps the race organiser was right, but I am not sure that even the best trail shoes would make much difference in this mud.
The going is so slow that my family support team have almost given up waiting for me at Prawle, about two-thirds of the way, when I finally puff and pant my way into the village.
The event is extremely well organised and while the remote location does not make for Great North Run-style crowds, it is made up for by the friendliness of fellow runners. They say that people are brought together by adversity and I have never chatted so much to other runners. It is made easier by the fact that we are walking a lot of the time.
The route finishes with two 100m hills one of which seems to consist entirely of mud. The coastal path would have been muddy anyway after a week of rain, but 2-300 runners have gone in front of me to churn it up. The final descent into Beesands is so muddy and twisty that I have to complete it in three-meter bursts, grabbing posts and tree branches for stability as I go.
The race is officially a half but my Garmin says I have run 23k and I am not going to argue with it. I feel like I have run 42: it is certainly at least as hard as the Toronto Marathon. Being able to get my legs straight into the cold sea is certainly a bonus; better than any ice bath.
A time of just under 3 hours 15 minutes. 8:26 mins/k
Looking forward to getting back to the Coventry Way.
I am working on Saturday and by Sunday fresh snow has fallen and Jan still has a cold so I do not ask her to do the drop and pick-up routine on the Coventry Way. Instead it’s a run from home up the Radford Road, Brownshill Green Road, Wall Hill Lane and back via Hawkes End and Coundon. With no mid-week run I am feeling rusty and it is not one of my best. They are a few runners around and I eventually follow their lead and run on the road rather than the path as it seems safer to brave the traffic than risk a slip up in the slush. My Garmin foot pod once again demonstrates that it does not like getting wet.
Just 13.3k this week as I am on a taper ahead of the South Devon Coastal Half Marathon next week.
First things first: thank you to Jane, Louise, Paul and Julia for your generous contributions. The total is now up to £425 with a further £120 of Gift Aid. The people of Haiti need to rebuild with confidence, so if you are reading this and have not already donated, please click the link on the right.
The Basque sailor Juan Sebastián Elcano, completed the first navigation of the globe in 1522 after his captain Magellan had been killed on route. Last week I completed my first circumnavigation of Coventry arriving at the Queen’s Head in Meriden, climbing the steps and seeing ahead of me the kissing gate where I started back on 28th November.
Map 18 involved a fair bit of FM, but also some pleasant run’s across fields where I encountered serious walkers out on what, as the sun came out, seemed like the first spring morning of the year. The final stretch was mercifully down lanes and largely down hill. I reckon that I completed the first circumnavigation in a total of 7 hours 40 minutes. If I do that on April 18th I will be quite satisfied, but of course then I will be doing all in one day.
However the 5k of Map 18 was not enough at this stage of my training schedule, neither do I think that one circumnavigation is sufficient to make me sufficiently familiar with the Coventry Way. So, almost without pause, I was off again on my second circumnavigation (can you tell how much I like that word?). This time without the benefit of maps, trying to test my memory and the trail of waymarks to keep me on course. And I am remarkably successful; it all comes flooding back to me with just the odd moment of apprehension.
So its across Back Lane, down to Carol Green (where I have to check with a local that I am on the right road), down the Kenilworth-Berkswell Railway (where some tree felling has happened but no other work on the Connect2 scheme), through the back end of Kenilworth (the only serious uphill stretch on the whole route as far as I can recall), across the Kenilworth golf course (which this time has flying golf balls to beware of), and up to the Stoneleigh junction.
This week maps 18, 1, 2, 3, 4 completed
21k at a pace of 7.05 min/k (an improvement on recent weeks)
When I decided to run for Haiti reconstruction last week I tweeted my intentions and got an immediate response from Marc in Coventry, who I do not know. So a big thank you to Marc for getting the ball rolling.
It was then quiet for a few days until I got round to sending out an email to friends, family and colleagues. Since then I have been surprised by people’s generosity.
So another big thank you to Carl, Andy, Chris, Sue, Joe & Millie, Crispin, Jan, Rob and Ryan. You have got my total up to £355: 71% of my target. Another £100 will come via Gift Aid. If this goes on I shall have to raise the target.
If you have not already donated, just click the link on the right.
I am fed up with it. And fed up with myself moaning about it. So I will not even write its name: M. F’ing M. FM.
Jan dropped me off where I left off at the Rose & Castle car park in Ansty. I crossed the road into the first kissing gate which was just a well of FM. Entering the first field which adjoins the Oxford canal and I find the canal has invaded the field. I run backwards and forwards trying to find a dryish way through and just have to content myself with splodging through the least wet bit. Turning off from the canal I try to ascend a 2m slope. It takes three attempts as there is so much FM I just keep sliding back. There is all manner of FM: the slimy sort that sends your feet sliding sideways, the deep soft sort that your feet sink right into the and sticky sort that makes your shoes double in size and treble in weight. Approaching Corley I enter a wooded area where the path has been totally lost in a mass of fallen branches and FM. That’s enough about the FM.
It is a bit warmer this morning than last week, but only just, and there is no sun. I go for two layers above and two below, but I soon regret it. With the damp air and without the regular burst of solar energy it feels a lot colder than last week. So as I finish each map I stuff them up my front as a street-dweller might layer their clothes with newspaper.
On this misty morning and as a ran through the badlands of Bedworth, turning off a short arm of the Coventry Canal and onto the track bed of the former Newdigate Colliery railway, the atmospheric conditions made it easy to see how this place may have once looked. Black faced miners guiding emaciated ponies to pull coal trucks down to the canal for loading. A landscape pock-marked with pits; colliers trudging to work across causeways through the marshy land. An old coal truck has been left as a reminder of what once went on.
Through Bed’th my navigation goes a bit awry and I have to ask a passer by whether I am on Tower Street. Stupidly I had not looked up, for there is a magnificent water tower. I assume it once had a waterworks around it but all that appears to be demolished now and housing surrounds the tower.
My work includes trying to improve the quality of new housing developments by promoting the use of the Building for Life standard, and in Bedworth I find a terrible example of what we are trying to overcome. There is a phenomenon called the ‘multiple flush syndrome’; the idea that you have to build sewers big enough to cope with everyone flushing their toilets at the same time. When this is applied to housing developments it means having roads so over-specified that if the refuse lorry was doing it rounds, a fire engine could break down, the water main could burst and there would still be room for a car to get by. This housing estate has been built on the assumption that every household would have four cars and they would all leave for work at the same time. It has roundabouts that would not disgrace a motorway. I resolve to come back and take some photos to illustrate what not to do.
Along the way there was plenty of the horsey-culture that seems to be one of the main industries on Coventry’s periphery and a couple of fisheries; the odd car or tent dotted about a landscape of small ponds, with an occasional glimpse through the mist of a solitary ghostly angler.
Progress is slow, what with all the FM, but I finally make it to the Bull & Butcher at Corley where Jan has been briefed to pick me up. I have almost completed my first circumnavigation (love that word) of A Coventry Way.
This week the remainder of map 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 & 17 completed
I do not normally run for charity. In fact I am sometimes mildly irritated by the way that charitable collection dominates certain large running events. People ask “What are you running for?” as if it is compulsory to collect money. I am usually running to stay fit, stay sane and achieve some spurious sense of accomplishment.
However… one cannot help be moved by the plight of the people of Haiti. Indeed many of us have already been moved as demonstrated by the massive sums raised by the DEC appeal. Yet we all know that once the immediate emergency has been dealt with there will be a massive job of reconstruction to be done and there will be a need for more money at a time when Haiti will no longer be in the news.
So I have decided to ask people to sponsor me to do the Coventry Way Challenge with the proceeds going to Article 25, the architecture charity who are beginning to get stuck in to supporting reconstruction in Haiti, as they did following the earthquake in Pakistan. You can sponsor me online via my JustGiving page. See the link on the right.
If you have been reading this blog you will appreciate that the Coventry Way Challenge is just that (a challenge) for me. But knowing that every kilometer I run is bringing more support to the desperately unlucky people of Haiti will spur me on. Please be as generous as you can.
Running down Northbrook Lane in the rain tonight. Dark. My iTunes excluding any sound. So near to the city and highways but so very separate from them. There was nobody around. It seemed almost illicit. Or perhaps just abnormal.
I thought I would share with you my daughter’s tweeted response to my remark that I was running out of ways to describe mud: it's like poo but less smelly. It's like Nutella but less sticky. Like soil but gone slimey- come on Vati, think outside the box.
A 7k street run in midweek, well short of what I should be doing but it still seems like an achievement to squeeze it in. After these regular cross-country runs running on streets just seems so easy.
It is time to start cranking up the distances as my training schedule says I should do 16k this weekend. So I copy no less than six maps from the little green book and squeeze them into my running belt.
It is 0°C as we leave the house but the sun is shining so it might be quite a lot warmer when I am under its glare. The question is: how many layers do I wear? In the end I opt for two below and two above the waist.
Jan drops me off on the A423 so I can pick up where I left off. So it’s through the high barbed-wire-topped fences that once protected Peugeot’s Ryton plant but now just encircle an empty wasteland. I inveigle myself into the back of Ryton; the first of five villages to be traversed today. Each seems to have a compact and often picturesque medieval core and then a splurge of suburbia surrounding it. Ryton’s old bit is tiny.
Unfortunately the route has to take us through a pedestrian subway under the A45. I hate these things, they symbolise the subservience of walking in our transport system. I always think it is a shame that the Godiva Half Marathon includes a subway (again under the A45) at Green Lane: a nice impression of the city for visiting runners. I understand why Rytonians must think the subway is the only safe option for a village dissected by the A45.
A short run down the A45 towards the new(ish) big round about (which is not in the old book) and its off over the fields again. I am soon approaching the River Avon and as I enter the next field I see there is not trace of the footpath. The field has been ploughed and planted and no walker has gone before me to tread out the path, perhaps because there is an alternative ‘fisherman’s path’ along the river, which is more attractive. So I chart a course across the field where the path should be. The next field is the same but more difficult to work out where the path should be, so in that one I too use the riverside path. Many of the fields have mud with a thin layer of ice on it. I am grateful for the ice because, if you move quickly enough you can skim across it with out sinking into the mud.
Approaching Wolston the path takes you beside two football fields both in use for girls’ matches. In the village the route does a quick detour to the village hall which on April 18th will be one of our ‘checkpoints’. I do not bother with this today.
Past Wolston its right at the Priory, under the railway line and off over the fields again. The path takes you right through a farm yard. It’s a scruffy Grundy’s type farm with bits of machinery lying about everywhere, mud, manure and straw intermingling underfoot and groups of indolent cows staring at me like feral teenagers.
There is another close encounter with the River Avon and then I am on the busy A428. Many motorists are inclined to use this minor ‘back-route’ to Rugby as driving down to the A45 and then back up again is such a pain. Consequently it is very busy. I had been tempted to run along the road, ignoring the Coventry Way route which takes you into a field and back out again 100m later, but the traffic persuades me otherwise.
Over the Avon again and through Bretford where I enter what looks like an ancient Warwickshire track. There is an old hedge with mature trees on either side of this bridleway indicating it has been here a long time. I muse that some ancient routes, perhaps by accident of history became incorporated into the road system; tarmaced, adopted, maintained; while others are left behind much have they have been for centuries. There is a long stretch of this, nearly 2k, and it is very muddy. Many horses have been down here and judging by the shoe-prints they were not lithe racing horses or diminutive ponies. In fact I believe that the young women of Bretford are in the habit of saddling up and trotting out on dinosaurs.
On the outskirts of Brinklow the route takes me into a field-side path where the mud has a different quality: a thin layer of slime on otherwise hard ground. This brings a new difficulty, the tendency of my feet to slide outwards as I run. At the top of this field a single waymarker has been attached to a sapling. I later discover that either this marker has been turned through 180° or the route has been changed. Either way I end up not quite following the map, but I am grateful, as it means I can run along Brinklow streets for a while, rather than muddy fields. Good, I am running out of different ways to describe mud.
After Brinklow I turn off the road into a field so rutted with vehicle tracks that it is impossible to run. The book says the ground may be uneven. It is not wrong. I note that I am climbing up towards a small body of water, which does not seem to make sense. Water should lie at the bottom of valleys. At the top a farm track takes you into the next field but it is a rutted quagmire. To the right of this, through a kissing gate, a small strip of land sloping towards the pond helps you avoid the worst of the mud. I later read on the website that this kissing gate has been newly installed by the latest volunteer working party and that the stile at the end of this 5m strip is also to be replaced and the slope to the pond shored up. It also tells me that this body of water is a relic of the Brinklow arm of the Oxford Canal. That is why it is not in a valley.
The Coventry Way takes a contrived route around Brinklow the purpose of which seems to be to make you run through the motte & bailey of the former Norman castle. This spot, which is both high up and sheltered has retained its frostiness and the ups and downs present new challenges to a runner who wants to keep upright.
Past Brinklow I am in open fields again and I develop the delusion that I have only one map left to do. Unfortunately when I go to take the last map out of my pocket I find there are two more to go. I phone Jan, who is meeting me in Ansty to tell her I will be a bit later than predicted. It has been tough today what with mud, ice and uneven ground and my expectations as to pace where overambitious.
A short stretch on roads and then I am on to the towpath of the Oxford Canal, although I have to double check that this is the towpath side. In places it has become so eroded that it is more canal than towpath: a victim perhaps of the cuts in British Waterways’ budget. I hope some maintenance can happen here before April 18th, but I will not hold my breath. Jan texts back to tell me she is in the Rose & Castle pub. Good for her.
There is a couple of kilometres of Oxford Canal including one of those history-of-transport points where canal, railway, and motorway coincide, and of course there is me, taking the oldest and most sustainable form of transport. I want a plane to fly directly overhead to complete the picture. The path leaves the canal and takes a more direct route towards Ansty. Once again I am crossing fields and in places there are two or three inches of water lurking beneath the grass. But I am now past caring and charge on through the fields thinking of my goal of warm car, warm shower, warm soup, warm wife. Unfortunately the water sends my Garmin foot pod doolally and it later tells me that this last half kilometre has taken over 30 minutes.
Jan emerges from her lone wait in the pub to drive me home, convinced that the other customers and staff think she was stood up.
This week the remainder of map 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and most of 12 completed
It is quite a challenge to fit a training schedule into a busy life. With the weekend taken up with sorting out my mothers old flat, and a visit from my sister, I identified Friday morning to take two or three hours time off in lieu and hit the Coventry Way. So with this my only chance of a long run this week I mustn’t let a bit of rain stop me.
I drive down to Stareton and find a place to park on a triangle of tarmac that looks as though it is not private in front of a cottage. Stareton is an attractive little hamlet but just beyond it is the large UK headquarters of AGCO, the firm that took over Massey Ferguson. It seems a strange location for such a large employer, generating loads of traffic on the fairly narrow roads. I suppose with the National Agricultural Centre nearby someone had an idea about a cluster of agriculture related businesses in this area, but I just seems like a corporate building parachuted into the rolling Warwickshire countryside.
The run involves a short stretch on roads and then it’s off over the fields again. After the ‘holiday on ice’ we are back where I started, slipping and sliding through mud. Doing 12k on roads last week for the Not the Roman IX made me forget how much more difficult cross-country running is and I make slow progress.
Soon I am crossing over a sheep field with such a profound ridge and furrow pattern in it that it’s virtually alpine. Ahead there seems to be two styles set in the middle of nowhere, but as I approach I see that they take you over two electric fences, invisible from a distance.
Crossing the road a sign on the field ahead warns me about the presence of a bull. I am nervous, but note that the exit from the field is only about 20m away. The bull is not in sight so I reckon I am safe. Out of the bull field and I run a few meters along the side of another field of mud and now the route is sending me back into the bull field. This time I have to cover another 100m looking over my shoulder and all the time working out escape routes in my head in case I hear the pounding of hooves. I could vault a barbed wire fence couldn’t I?
At Bubbenhall the route is convoluted, taking me round a deep disused quarry with a quantity of green duckweedy water in it. I go down a road and then double back through a hedge before set off across another sheep field towards the church yard. These twists and turns bit unnecessary but I guess if you cut them out it would not be 40 miles.
After Bubbenhall the landscape seems to change significantly. I am in big arable fields running along tractor tracks. There are no kissing gates and styles as there is no need to keep animals in, just big hedge gaps through which the tractors can swerve.
The last 100m or so is along a fenced muddy footpath which seems to have been undermined in several places by creatures (rabbits?) digging their homes in the middle of it. In the final field before I turn back is a single sheep. It stares at me and repeats a low bleat. I am sure it is saying a single word over and over: “berk…berk…berk”.
At the Banbury Road, before the former Peugeot factory site, it is time to turn back.
This week the remainder of map 5, all of 6 and most of 7 completed
