Coffee Table Book of: Cross Country Running (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Cross Country Running is a large format book of cross country running, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: spikes on wet grass, flags marking a course across fields and woods, the start line in mist, the kit made and cared for, old shoes and old ways, and a few runners seen far off in plain dark clothing.

The kit is laid out plain: a pair of light spikes on wet grass, a sole set with short steel spikes, loose spikes and the small key that changes them, a sleeveless vest, a blank bib with four safety pins, thin gloves and a knitted hat, racing flats for hard ground, a timing chip on a lace, cushioned shoes for daily training, warm layers folded on a stump, and on the course, flags, tape, straw bales, a log to jump and a narrow finish funnel.

The making and care follow the cut mesh pieces of a shoe upper and an upper pulled over a wooden last, a start line painted on the grass, flags bundled and stakes knocked in with a mallet, a path mown through long grass, muddy spikes rinsed beside a bucket and wet shoes stuffed with paper to dry. The past runs from old leather spikes and canvas shoes to a cotton vest on a peg, a brass hand bell, a trail of torn paper from the old chase game, a stile in a hawthorn hedge, a church steeple across the fields and an old pavilion at twilight.

Then the places, empty at every hour and in every season: a meadow in mist at first light, beech woods in rain, a muddy hill in drizzle, a frozen field at sunrise, a flooded meadow, dunes at dusk, heath, moor and chalk hills, a mown loop round a pond, a lone hill under a full moon, snow at dawn and thunder over a summer field, and a few small runners far off, crossing a misty field in a pack, splashing through a stream, climbing a long hill and waiting on the start line at dawn.

Short notes run through the book, on the course and how it is marked, the kit and how it is made and cared for, and the history of the sport: cross country spikes are light shoes with a few short metal spikes under the front of the foot, spikes screw into threaded holes in the sole and are changed with a small key, the start line is painted across the grass, long enough for a whole field of runners to set off at once, and shoes are built around a last, a solid form in the shape of a foot.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.