Images: Will Harper-Penrose
Runner’s World | October 2025
Running for love
The inside story of Elsey Davis’s record-setting circumnavigation of her native Cornwall – and the cruel diagnosis that inspired it
It’s a couple of hours before dawn when the little motorcade of campervans descends on the coastal town of Fowey. Doors slide open; occupants spring out, the beams of their pocket head torches glinting on their foreheads like tiny precious coins. The mood is purposeful, methodical. The clock is ticking.
The focal point is a blue-grey Auto-Trail V-Line. The group gathers around its LED-lit side door for a quick briefing. All eyes are on the bunk at the back of the van from which a petite woman duly emerges. Her eyes are puffy, and her short blonde hair is tugged into a crude knot on the top of her head. She’s wearing running shorts, a T-shirt and a look of abject weariness.
This is elite trail runner Elsey Davis and she’ll shortly be starting the fifth consecutive day of her attempt to become the first person to run the circumference of a county in which she lives and grew up, and with which she identifies on an almost visceral level: Cornwall.
Yesterday, she ran 100km of punishing coastal path. That followed a mentally testing third day of 107km of inland trail along the Devon border, and an opening two-day burst along the north Cornish coast that saw her gobble up 215km and nearly 7km of vert.
The giddy excitement of that initial stretch, when the southwesterlies blew her onwards, friends and family joined her and she passed within a few kilometres of her home in Camelford, is long gone. Elsey is deep into the deep end of the challenge. The point where you feel like you’re battling just to function, let alone progress.
Her gaze wanders slowly around the inside of the van. “Which shoes shall I wear?” she asks listlessly.
There are at least six or seven pairs within view, scattered amidst a jumble of electrolyte tablets, hydration vests, strapping, trekking poles and lightweight running jackets. It’s like an explosion in a North Face outlet store.
“Probably not the stilettos,” suggests one of the men.
This is 33-year-old Chris Taylor – “Taylor” to the team. The Sheffield-based running coach is heading up logistics for the challenge, a role to which he brings almost unparalleled experience: ten world records and FKTs (fastest known times) to date, including entrepreneur and TV personality Spencer Matthews’ 30 desert marathons in 30 days in Jordan, Leon Bustin’s 2023 John O’ Groats to Land’s End FKT, and Imo Boddy’s record-setting Three Peaks odyssey in 2024.
In such undertakings, Taylor knows full well, the only thing more important than a drum-taut schedule is keeping morale high.
Elsey indulges him with a semi smirk and selects a pair of the lightweight North Face Summit Series Vectiv Pro 3s trail-running shoes. They’re white with pops of lime. For now. If the forecast for the next couple of days is to be believed, conditions and terrain are about to get very tasty indeed.
Three other men are present, the tight-knit nucleus of the team: Johnny Heath, 28, a mountain leader and expedition physio. Matt Stone, a 24-year-old videographer, whose camera emits a small tractor beam of light that makes Elsey blink. And Will Harper-Penrose, 38 – a specialist trail-running photographer and old friend of Elsey with a studious demeanour and a rich collection of lower leg tattoos.
There’s an expedition vibe. Banter flying around; everyone happily wearing at least a couple of hats. Will, based in nearby Truro, has the Cornish equivalent of the Knowledge, helping the team negotiate the county’s satnav-confounding lanes and vehicle-swallowing backroads. Johnny and Taylor have been divvying up segments as support runners (the latter will run 276k before the week is out).
Elsey exits the campervan and grimaces her way down a one-in-three lane that she’ll be running back up in a couple of minutes. The coastal path of Cornwall is dissected by numerous estuaries, across which ferries operate. Just not at silly o’clock. Which is why the team have driven Elsey around from the fishing village of Polruan, just across the water, where she downed tools the previous evening.
The circuitous pre-dawn drive has afforded Elsey a precious extra few minutes in bed to finish her saucepan of Coco Pops, rehydrate and ready herself for what everyone tacitly acknowledges is going to be a make or break day.
“Fowey rhymes with joy,” reads a sign at the top of town. This morning it’s in short supply. As she walks gingerly down towards the water, Elsey is asked by Matt, trailing her and squinting into his camera, how the body is bearing up.
“My achilles are huge, my feet are swollen, my knees are sore…” she responds, matter of factly. Her right knee is swathed in crimson strapping. She’d made the mistake of looking at her feet the night before in the shower, she’ll later tell me. “Wasn’t pretty.”
She disappears down a spiral of steps to reach the water’s edge – FKTs, rightly, are a stickler for such things. A few moments later she re-emerges, striding up the hill, then swinging left along the darkened lane to reconvene with the South West Coast Path, Taylor jogging alongside.
Matt – camera at almost knee-height pointing upwards – sticks with her as long as he’s able – then walks back to the van.
The four of us watch the 36-year-old disappear up the street. Her slender frame exudes tiredness, soreness and an almost unbreakable will. We stand in the dark, watching her go. I’m not sure who says it, but they’re definitely speaking for all.
“What a f***ing legend.”
