Week 18 – Sweet Sixteen

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 18^th.  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.