When my first attempt at mountain running started to go wrong this Summer, the condition of my shoes weren’t high on my list of concerns. Naturally avoiding serious injury and retrieving my glasses were at the forefront of my mind, but once I’d gotten back to my car and patched myself up, I noticed big rips in the upper of my trail shoes. I haven’t thrown them out as with a bit of tape they should be okay for some runs on dry, firm but bumpy surfaces, but that dry and firm are not words you would use when describing off-road running in the British Winter.
The fact that I’ve kept my trail shoes did influence the type of shoes I went for. I chose the Inov-8 Mudclaw because they are designed to cope well with the wet, muddy conditions my old trail shoes can no longer deal with. The lugs on the bottom of the shoe are pretty substantial, meaning that hopefully I should be able to get a decent amount of grip in all but the muddiest, slippiest conditions.
Today was my first run in the shoes, and I had a route planned which I thought would suit the shoes well. I wanted to continue exploring the A Coventry Way, starting in Brinklow and going in the anti-clockwise direction. With almost no roads and the majority of the paths being a mixture of grass and mud, it wasn’t a technical challenge, but would be a route which would be completely spoilt by the wrong shoes.
Fit is the big unknown whenever you buy a new pair of running shoes, particularly from a brand you haven’t tried before. These felt good in the shop, with the length and width both feeling ideal, but there is only so much you can tell in that environment. Within the first few minutes I noticed that the shoes seemed to be slipping a little around my heel. I had a similar sensation the first time I wore Brooks running shoes, and quickly learnt that adjusting the lacing can often resolve this issue. So that’s exactly what I did, and for the next hour or so, I barely thought about the shoes at all. This is very much a good thing. Regardless of the type of run you are doing, you want confidence that your shoes will be up to the task, and if you aren’t thinking about them, that’s a good sign that you’ve picked the right tool for the job.
Instead, I could spend time thinking about the A Coventry Way. I’ve now covered slightly more than half of it, and it is a strange route. It passes through lots of quite nice towns and villages, yet the route itself is often not visually inspiring. I wouldn’t mind that if the route was fun to run on, and there certainly are sections which are, but there were a few sections which weren’t. Today I had to deal with a particularly narrow stretch of towpath along the Oxford Canal, and then a stretch in Ansty which was incredibly overgrown. Ironically at this point I had crossed over to the other side of the canal, and could see that had I been able to stay on the towpath, it was now much wider. But we’ll come back to that.
For a named route, the A Coventry Way is also poorly signed in places. Generally going anti-clockwise is better, but there were a couple of places where I reached a force in the path without an arrow to show me which way to go. In one instance, the main path went to the right, though the previous arrow seemed to be more in the direction of a narrow, barely distinguishable path to the left. I went right, though within a couple of minutes realised that was wrong and had to retrace my steps.
It was coming back when things got trickier. I’d planned to do an hour out and then come back along the same route. However, somewhere close to Barnacle, it became apparent that I had taken another wrong turn. I was in a section of some very similar looking fields, and by the time I realised I was definitely no longer on the right route, I’d veered so far off the route that refinding it would be no easy task. The one thing in my favour was that I could see Coventry city centre in the distance, so knew that if all else failed, I could just head in that direction. I might have a very long run, but I knew how to get from the city centre to Brinklow, so would eventually get back to my car.
I was very much hoping I would arrive somewhere else I knew before that though, and about 2km later I did…kind of. I arrived at Hawkesbury Village Green, which isn’t somewhere I have ever been, and somewhere I only have a vague sense of where it is on a map. But what I did know was that Hawkesbury Junction is where the Oxford Canal meets the Coventry Canal, so if I could find my way there, I’d then be able to follow the Oxford Canal back.
Thankfully that proved to be a relatively simple task, and I checked that I was on the correct branch of the canal as a further wrong turn wasn’t really something I could afford at this stage. The man stated that it would be “A very long time” to get back to Brinklow, but I have learnt to always carry more gels than you think you will need, precisely to cover this eventuality. The diversion added an extra hour onto my run, which changed what should have been a pretty comfortable run into something a little more challenging.
That challenge came in the form of fatigue, which actually made me think about my shoes again. Keeping your footing when you are fresh and alert is one thing, doing so when you are tired is another, and that is where you might find yourself relying on your shoes. There were a couple of times when I almost stumbled on some tree roots disrupting the towpath, and also one moment when I got rather close to the canal and was reminded of the time when I actually ended up with my right leg in the Oxford Canal. Thankfully today I avoided the left leg repeating that feat.
I’m in two minds about whether to attempt the A Coventry Way in a single run. I still have more to explore, but there are several sections so far which haven’t been the most fun to run. Yet the challenge of doing the whole route in one run does excite me. Given it passes so close to my flat (the nearest point is less than a mile away) and is right on the limit in terms of distance I feel like I might be able to do, it’s almost like it is calling me to take on the challenge. I’ll make a decision of whether to pencil in an attempt after I’ve done the entirety of the route, but I am at least reassured that if I do attempt it in the Winter or Spring, I’ve got the right shoes for the job.
Scorpo Stories 