Second Year in Britain: Run Across Britain Progress

The morning marking our 2nd full year in Britain, 19 January 2011, I awoke in Oxford’s Radcliffe Hospital with a 1/2″ drain hose poking out of my upper left chest, one end of it in my chest cavity and the other end in the salty water of what could most accurately be described as a bong (albeit one design for this particular purpose).  My lung had collapsed a week after the car wreck described here and subsequent medical imaging turned up several previously missed fractures (ribs and vertebrae) and another really bad sprain where my right clavicle separated from the scapula. I felt like shit.

Running is out of the question for a few weeks but it is that time of year again when I review the progress in the Run Across Britain or, more accurately, the Run Over As Much Of Britain As Practical.  I added 960 new miles of British paths and trails as well as logging just over 2000 miles total.  Not a mind-blowing amount, but better than I actually planned at the beginning of the year.

NOTE: The following maps are linked to somewhat higher resolution copies of roughly 2-5 megabytes, each.  If you really want the detail, make sure you have the bandwidth.

Cambridge area map up to the Wash

I had a few weeks left in Cambridgeshire at last year’s synopsis and managed to put in a few more bits and bobs.  In the above map (these are large files, but provide enough detail to zoom in and get place names and trails), we see the biggest part of the East Anglia trails as they are today with a final trip out to Bedford, some other runs into Hertfordshire and (below) a trail that went as far as Harlow.

Saffron Walden to Harlow

The move to Bicester happened in February at which time my total trails in the Oxfordshire area were only these:

Oxfordshire runs as of 19 Jan 2010

but have now grown to this:

Oxfordshire area runs as of 19 Jan 2011

There are some details that were helpful to the overall effort, especially runs from Bedford to Milton Keynes:

Bedford to Milton Keynes connected east and west runs

that helped connect my eastern runs to the ones centered on Bicester (via Buckingham):

Bicester, Banbury, Buckingham, Brackley

and on the main lot of others (leaving out Carterton, Maids Moreton and Chipping Norton) centered on Oxford:

Oxford, Thame, Didcot, Woodstock, Witney, etc

The London trails expanded with my London Underround effort on my birthday and with a 10K I really didn’t enjoy at all:

Still not as much of London as I would like

And, we took an anniversary trip to Penzance that lent itself to some west coast trails:

Penzance, Mousehole, and Lands End

Overall it was a good year for running despite the snow and some racing disappointments.  I went to a dozen or more hashes with some of the best trails on these maps attributable to either Oxford HHH or Bicester HHH efforts.  Our trip to America was at a nice time of year and the Florence Marathon gave plenty of excuses for trails out in Fiesole and around town.  With our likely move to Swindon next month, expect more of the same.

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