A Haweswater Blast

The Lead Runners at the Haweswater Half Marathon

One of the peculiar querks of my career to date has been the experience of organising a p***-up in a brewery. In fact, I did it twice to prove that it wasn’t just a fluke. However, playing a bit-part in organizing the Haweswater Half Marathon over the last few months has taught me that there's a lot more to such things than finding a lot of beer, and people who might be willing to drink it...

The level of detail, meticulous planning and time that this has taken has been a bit of a surprise. But the really strange thing is, on the day, it just seemed to happen of its own accord… It was as if each volunteer was acting on the call of a dog whistle inaudible to the human ear, because it just seemed to happen without hint of a fuss.

But of course, the effortlessness was an illusory artifact of the long hours spent poring over digestives and green tea, discussing the feng shui of the portaloos, polishing of trophies and the vagaries of parking a lot of cars in a muddy field. I could go on. The landslide on the course, tractors to pull cars out of mud, bags of grit in case the entire 13.2 miles were frozen to sheet ice. You name it, we thought about it.

There have been honourable mentions elsewhere, but the race felt like a real success. Ian Crampton (Durham City Harriers) seen in the photo above won the race in 1:13;17, and first lady was ultra-running megastar Lizzy Hawker in 1:20:52.

Wind Over Water

In the calm before the storm of the race, we took off to the dramatic scooped skyline at the back of Haweswater. Watching the squalls move over the water was a strangely captivating sight.



Another striking aspect of this area is the presence of wild, torrential streams that tumble into glacial lakes and on into the flooded valley now occupied by Haweswater. These relentless watercourses are fascinating, and abstracts like these, looking like frozen sinusoidal waves, were everywhere.