Cornwall races

This is coast path running, and the coast path is harder than it looks on paper. The South West Coast Path climbs and drops into every cove it meets, so a fifty-kilometre race here can carry more ascent than a mountain route of the same length, delivered in short steep doses that never let you settle into a rhythm.

Underfoot is mostly good: packed path, granite steps, some sand. The complications are wind off the Atlantic with nothing between you and it, and clifftop sections where the path runs close to a long drop and the sensible speed is slower than the one your legs want.

Races run from twenty kilometres to a hundred miles, from Land’s End round the north coast. Several run in midwinter, when the daylight is short enough that a head torch is not optional and the weather coming in off the sea decides how the day goes. Navigation is rarely the problem — the sea is on one side — but pacing and eating are, because the climbing is relentless rather than dramatic.