MANHANDLED IN THE WIND
Kieran Alger is almost literally blown away by the Harewood House Half Marathon
SET ON A STUNNING DOWNTON ABBEY-ESQUE,
120-acre estate between Leeds and York, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Harewood Half is billed as ‘13.1 miles of muddy off-road tracks and steep forest inclines’. If this weren’t enough of a clue as to the kind of challenge in store, the course profile went up and down like a sugar-junkie child going bananas on his first trampoline. Furthermore, Storm Doris was still making its presence felt – the race director announced over the PA system that the bag drop and start line marquees had blown away.
With conditions this bleak you’d expect a lower turnout. But this is Yorkshire and they’re bred differently here – well over a thousand hardy souls huddled on the start line, ignoring the belligerent weather and chatting about which spring marathon they were training for. For the first time, the event also included a 10K, so there was a good mix of runners, all with different experience, aims and abilities. That included plenty of serious-looking half marathoners, some of them sporting only split shorts and a vest as protection from the elements. I couldn’t help but feel I’d landed
my soft, southern, seven-layered, tights-clad arse in a real crosscountry race. This lot looked like they’d eaten three Shredded Wheat for breakfast and now fancied some hills as an encore.
The early section, with its pleasingly soft-going grass and mud, gave us an instant taste of what was to come. It’s not until you’re trudging across a spongy field that you realise how much help you get when there’s firm, friendly asphalt under your feet. Despite the 10K runners setting off 30 minutes after the half marathon, there was still some congestion in the early miles at points where the course narrowed. Thankfully, this soon settled down, as soggy and boggy gave way to firmer and faster ground – at least temporarily – and people found their pace.
If it’s variety of terrain you’re after, this race will certainly meet your needs. In the first six miles alone we rolled from asphalt and compacted trails to sticky mud and back to soft-going grass, over cobbles, along forest paths and through boggy, wet fields. The recent atrocious weather meant at times we even mud-skated through what appeared to be sloppy mousse.
Around mile two I got my first chance to let gravity do some work, thanks to a sweeping downhill that swung past the large lake in the middle of the grounds – and this was also one of the course’s many blockbuster views. There was just enough time to drink it in when I hit the first of the race’s many climbs, a two-mile stretch of ups and small downs (but mainly ups). By the time I hit the mile four marker my legs, lungs and brain were already asking questions usually reserved for mile 11 onwards.
Over the next nine miles the questions kept coming as the route continued to roller-coaster its way around the grounds. But this is a ‘treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen’ kind of race and each time, just as I was starting to feel the full lactic burn in my quads, the inclines topped out into a friendly section of flat or a stretch of loopy rag-doll downhill where I could let loose once more. I kept telling myself: this is perfect marathon training.
It was a huge relief when we finally tracked back into the shelter of the woods and my tired legs could clock up some runnable flat before the course took one last bite, a final mile of climb crowned by the magnificent view of the manor house that marked the finish. I stumbled across the chip-timed mats knowing I’d been in a proper fight – and so I headed straight for the cake stand.
With support on the course limited to the odd pocket of half a dozen people and a sprinkling of marshals, this isn’t a race to do if you need a rocking atmosphere to get you round. But to my mind there aren’t many races that offer up such a panoply of majestic landscapes; the stunning woodlands we encountered, as well as traditional Yorkshire farm houses with fields of free-roaming sheep, were picturebook stuff – and a brilliant change of pace to those drab early season road races that pepper the calendar at this time of year. The 2018 race is on February 25. Visit bhf.org.uk/getinvolved