Urban Adventure Running

I invented a new type of running tonight called Urban Adventure Running. What you do is, drive to a city that you don't know at all, then set off running without a map into a dodgy area. In fact, the dodgier the better; it all adds to the adventure. Then you run around until you're a bit lost trying to navigate using the stars, big buildings, bus stops and passing tramps. If you choose a port, I imagine you could also use the smell of fish to navigate by, or if you were in Newcastle, you could use the smell of barcardi Breezers so you would always know where the city centre was.

Well, OK, the parkour/free running lot have probably already got urban adventure covered and I did take my phone with me so was equipped with Google maps had it all gone wrong, but still....

Anyways, to explain a little further, I arrived in Birmingham today for work. Determined not to let the training slip I resolved to have a run from the hotel in the evening. But what do you do when you don't know a place at all? It probably doesn't help that my hotel seems to be in little Helmand. Google maps doesn't appear to have a "Places I am least likely to be stabbed/mugged" feature just yet (Come on Google, get on it!) However, I pride myself on not being faint-hearted and Edgbaston cricket ground seemed to be only 2 miles from my hotel. A pilgrimage to a ground I had seen many times on TV seemed like as good an idea as any. I had walked down some of the streets I would need to take to get there during the day as part of my job so committing the map to my photographic memory *cough* I waited for a lull in between the scuds and set off.

I hit my first problem before I had even raised a toe in anger. Usually I put my GPS watch outside whilst I am getting ready so it has found the satellites by the time I get outside, but of course, from a hotel that isn't possible. Waiting outside for the technology to latch on, I must have looked an odd sight bouncing around what is essentially an industrial estate, in a pair of tights.

Then my watch decided to screw with me. A classic computer "loading" bar appears on the phone and creeps onwards towards the supposed end when it's found the satellites.  So of course, you stand watching it like a kettle, cursing as the wind starts to bite, whilst slowly, slowly, slowly, it millimetres towards the end. Imaginary pages fly off a calendar, leaves turn brown, fall, and are regrown and suns and moons swap places in the sky many times over. And then. Just as it the little bar is complete.......It jumps backwards. Damn you technology! Ah well, sod it, I'll set off. Half a kilometre later, it's still fannying about and I can't stand it. So I reset it and stop running whilst it searches, looking like the dodgiest bloke ever as there really isn't a good reason to be standing around next to parked cars in an industrial estate at night. I mean, seriously, are there no satellites over bloody Birmingham?

Finally I can set off again. It's not long before I am in totally uncharted area to me and am now running on hope, faith and no charity. But, it's a big cricket ground, there have to be brown signs to it from quite a way away, right?
Yeah. Right
But amazingly, I actually managed to make it there. Here's the, blurry, fuzzy proof.

I have to admit, seeing the boys and girls in the training academy doing their thing, hoping to be the next big stars of the game gave me a bit of a thrill.

At that point I needed to make a decision- did I just turn around and retrace my steps, or did I circle around the ground and wing it? Without a thought for my own safety *cough* I set off in to deeper and darker Brum, risking life, limb, smart phone and Nike trainers.

I needed to use my sense of direction (never all that reliable) to try to work out a way back to my hotel. I decided it would be a good idea to stick to main roads as they were least likely to be dead ends. Could I trust the magnets in my head, though? At one point I ran in to a fenced in area and sheepishly had to turn around. One road I ran down that seemed to be a main road, suddenly turned in to a small housing estate. I expected the dead end to come at any point, but luckily it spat me back out on to a main road. I could see the larger buildings of the city centre and could use them to gauge direction. The streets began to look a little familiar and then I was on one that I knew. Home and dry. Amazingly, when I got back to my room and uploaded, the route I took was pretty direct.

It could have all gone wrong I suppose, but I guess we let our paranoia and the media scare us in to thinking that there are bad guys on every corner when of course, the bad stuff is very rare. What I did was safe enough and I am, of course, exaggerating for comic effect.

Or maybe the fact I was wearing last year's Leeds Abbey Dash t-shirt scared them off? No Midlander would be stupid enough to take on a Yorkshireman, surely?