Running on the edge

It’s been a long month since I last wrote. In the intervening period I have run 210.2 miles and spent numerous hours in the gym. The weekend before Christmas saw me in Cornwall in England staying at my brother’s place. That weekend I ran 30 miles, I also had the ‘great idea’ of running a twenty miler along the rugged coastal path, actually the idea was my brother’s but I decided to do it so can’t blame him. Although being beautiful this was by far the most painful run I have made in two decades. If you are looking to blast your quads then this is the run for you. Thankfully the scenery is breathtaking but the path is covered in rocks, in some places it falls into the sea from the high cliffs above along which it runs. If you come off the very narrow path there is a real possibility of falling down a disused mine shaft. Most of them are covered and marked but not all of them, which made for an interesting discovery when I almost ran across what I thought was a small round depression in the grass only just managing to avoid plunging down a disused mine shaft.

It had never really struck me before just how hilly Cornwall is; it was a very tough workout as the hills seem to be at most every 500 meters apart. I expended a lot of energy running hundreds of feet up the side of a cliff to find I then had to cover a mile of rock covered ground only to loose the altitude again by running down to sea level to cross a beach before re climbing the cliff side path back up to the top of the cliffs to carry on.

After several hours of this I was in a fair bit of pain and the soles of my feet were bruised it felt as though they had been beaten with a rubber hose and I was running on white hot coals.

On the miles went and my legs felt hard as though they were about to burst from the constant running up and down the cliffs. The edge of the cliffs were shear and for the most part made of rock but in a couple of places they were earth and it had eroded, occasionally the path simply ceased to exist and had fallen hundreds of feet into the freezing sea crashing below. As I ran the wind would occasionally gust and knock me off balance; it was tough going. After about four hours of running I came across two men setting up their paragliders and I looked on as they ran off the cliffs to soar above me. By the time I returned from my run I had covered 20 miles of pain and beauty. I had learnt a bit about the ability (or lack of) of my running shoes to stop the rocks from bruising my feet, this was itself a valuable lesson as in Namibia there are parts of the desert that are gravel plains and covered in rocks.

As the pain increased and the miles wore on I found myself once again thinking of why I'm doing this and about the families and children I (and you who sponsor me) will help.

As I ran down one particularly high cliff across a frozen beach and to the base of the next cliff path I had to climb I found myself wondering about what I was putting myself through and then I looked up to see a sign, smiled and pushed on.