trail running – Running Ink

We’re standing at the foot of the South Downs in Eastbourne, where a post marks the start of the 100-mile South Downs Way, which rollercoasters all the way to Winchester.

This hill will be familiar to anyone who’s taken part in or watched the infamous Beachy Head Marathon as it’s the first – and last – thing the runners encounter. Up it goes, at a merciless angle, sending your heart rate into the red before your Garmin’s barely locked on to satellites – and keeping it there for much of the punishingly precipitous race.

But on this particular crisp winter morning, we have something a lot more leisurely planned. A 20-mile loop taking in the villages of Jevington and Alfriston before swooping round to climb the Seven Sisters, pausing for tea and cake at Birling Gap, then scaling Beachy Head and careening back down the hill for home before dusk.

We set off at a jog-walk (aware of the need not to peak too soon) and when we reach the top, look back on Eastbourne laid out in miniature beside a sheet of grey-blue sea. The gorse-clad downs feel springy underfoot and it’s a minefield of shallow rabbit scrapes.

We follow the path inland taking the same northwesterly direction as the race route. With Jeff being a former winner of Beachy Head marathon, I’d assumed I couldn’t be in better company for today’s adventure, but it is soon apparent that my husband is suffering from route amnesia – ‘this next bit’s all flat,’ he says, just as the path takes yet another upward curve before finally descending to Jevington, home to the 300-year old Eight Bells pub and St Andrew’s Church, where the Saxon tower, built of flint and local sandstone, is over 1000 years old.

It’s a bit early for a drink so we press on, winding through Friston Forest to reach a well-groomed path on the roof of the downs, with 360-degree views. Below, the 235ft Long Man of Wilmington is etched on the hillside.

Three or so miles and one tricky descent later, we hit the road and cross the Cuckmere River, following it into the picture-postcard village of Alfriston. It’s definitely time for some sustenance now and we’re spoilt for choice – but the window display of freshly-baked scones in The Singing Kettle wins out. Rested and revived, we retrace our steps back across the bridge, this time heading south towards Litlington before the inevitable climb, which rewards us with views of Cuckmere Haven and the sea.

It’s when the Seven Sisters first appear that the wowing starts. The whiteness of the vertical cliffs, the jaggedy ins-and-outs of the headlands, as if great bites have been taken out of them… It’s breathtaking, literally and figuratively. You puff up each of the seven peaks, thinking bad thoughts about running and scolding yourself for not finding a more relaxing way of spending a day off – until you reach the top, gasp at the view and gallop gleefully down the other side.

When the cottages, car park and decommissioned Belle Tout lighthouse at Birling Gap come into sight, we’re ready for more refuelling – and who can resist a National Trust café? The Gap is one of the few places along this part of the coast that you can actually get down to the beach – via a steep metal staircase. It’s not a day for a dip, but it’s worth the descent to see the chalky cliffs close up.

Now it’s ‘just’ Beachy Head to conquer before we fasten our seatbelts for the descent into Eastbourne. This is some climb, but the surface is good – the grass so short, it’s as if it has been trimmed with nail scissors. Below the vivid green downs, the sea swirls around the jaunty red and white striped Beachy Head lighthouse. It’s a wonder the cliff edge isn’t fenced off – at 531 feet, this is the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain – but the views are all the more wondrous for this openness.

By now I’m weary, and as we reach the top of the hill we climbed out of Eastbourne this morning, I marvel at the breakneck speed Jeff – and other Beachy Head marathoners – manage once they get a whiff of the finish line at its foot. I’m quite seriously considering sliding down it on my bottom.

By the time we reach the trail post, we’ve clocked up a tad over 20 miles and the daylight is just beginning to fade. It’s definitely time for that drink now…

Want to come on our Beachy Head Trail Adventure? Our next trip is on Sunday, June 16th 2019, just a few places left.

Details at https://www.facebook.com/wearerunningforever under ‘Events’.

Are you a road runner or a trail runner? It’s not a question that I could answer definitively – I run where the day’s route takes me, be it through a leaf-carpeted woodland (this morning), along a city street (last week) or across a muddy field (yesterday). Each has its own pleasures and challenges.

But some runners can be very snobby about surface. A trail aficionado recently commented on Twitter that ‘people who do road marathons hate themselves.’ You’ll find similar disparaging remarks about tarmac enthusiasts if you look at trail running forums and specialist publications. The gist of it is that road running is deathly dull/bad for you/a poor substitute and that running off-road is in all ways more fun, healthier and generally superior. I think it’s an unfounded and unwelcome division – like vegans dissing vegetarians – we’re all runners, aren’t we?

The tweet came to mind at the weekend, when I was toiling along a public footpath bordering a field that the farmer had decided to plough to the very edge of the barbed-wire fence. Each time my foot landed, the clump of earth underneath it would either crumble or roll, creating angles at my ankle and knee joints that would have a biomechanist brandishing their goniometer with alarm. Any views to be appreciated went unnoticed, since I had to keep my eyes firmly on the treacherous trail.

There was little relief to be had when I reached the stile, which was so overgrown with nettles that getting over it could have passed as a ‘I’m a celebrity…get me out of here’-style challenge. ‘Fun, this is not,’ I thought to myself. Fifteen minutes later, the nettle stings fading (the secret is to avoid touching them) I was floating along a blissfully smooth tarmac lane. The ironed-flat surface rendered me surefooted enough to appreciate my surroundings – ripe blackberries in the hedgerow, leaves just turning in the autumn sunshine. My good mood was restored.

Now, I’m not claiming that road running is more enjoyable than trail; nor ‘better’ in any way. I love the ever-changing demands of an off-road run – one minute, mud is sucking at your trainers, the next you’re bounding through knee-high grass, leaping over tangled tree roots or skipping from rock to rock. But it’s hard to find any kind of rhythm – which is why I also relish the clean, rhythmic clip of feet on tarmac and the space that that metronomic movement seems to create in my head.

One of the reasons the anti-road brigade say that trail running is ‘better’, is that it puts less stress on the body. Intuitively, it makes sense (softer surface equals a softer landing, right?) but there has been surprisingly little research to back up the claim. In fact, studies seems to suggest that there’s a complex and entirely subconscious interplay between our limbs and the surfaces we run on: the ‘stiffer’ the surface, the ‘softer’ we make the limbs, and vice versa. It’s known as ‘muscle tuning’. This continual adjustment of limb stiffness to match the surface the brain expects us to land on means that the resultant force is pretty much unchanged regardless of surface.

More recently, researchers have posited the theory that trail running may be healthier (though there is not data to prove that trail runners sustain fewer injuries as yet) because of the variety offered by the mixed terrain and undulations. Each footstep is slightly different from the last one and the next one, so the forces exerted on the body are applied in slightly different ways, reducing the risk of overuse. This makes perfect sense and is probably also why varying your running shoes, rather than wearing the same pair all the time, has been linked to a lower incidence of injury.

Variety is almost always better than doing the same thing all the time – but when it comes to running surfaces there’s no reason why a brightly-lit town pavement or a country B-road should not form part of that variety.

Tag: trail running

A Beachy Head Trail Adventure

Surface tension

This article previously appeared in my Murphy’s Lore column in Runner’s World magazine