Journal

Berlin: the flattest fast one

The course that world records are set on makes a surprisingly plain drawing. That turns out to be the point.

The route you walked together

The most-given map print is somebody's marathon. The most-kept one is usually a walk that took an afternoon and had no result at all.

Twenty-one hairpins

The most recognisable climb in cycling, and one of the few routes that is a better drawing than it is a photograph.

Your file has no GPS points. Here is why

Treadmills, turbo sessions and pool swims all record a great deal — and none of it is position. What that means for a print,...

The gentlest kind of route print

A long walk has none of the urgency of a race and all of the shape. It is also the one people most often...

Open water is the hardest thing to draw

No roads, no junctions, no landmarks in the line itself. What is left is the one thing a swim print has going for it.

What an indoor session leaves behind

No route, no map, no line. Turbo sessions and gym blocks are the one effort with nothing to draw — and there is still...

One season of skiing, on one sheet

A single descent is a squiggle. Forty of them on top of each other is a portrait of a mountain — and of how...

A crossing is already a chart

Sailing is the one sport whose tracks have been drawn and hung on walls for four hundred years. That sets a standard worth meeting.

Trail running draws better than road running

The same distance, the same effort, and one of them makes a far more interesting line. It comes down to how a trail is...