HAWORTH HOBBLE

Saturday 13th March 2010.

On Saturday morning three Horwich Harriers set off before dawn for Haworth to compete in this year’s Haworth Hobble, also known as the Wuthering Hike. The three had varying experience of the 32 (or 33?) mile event : Ian Charters had run it numerous times, my debut was back in 1986 and guess at about 15 completions whilst this was Pauline Charters’ debut.

The bright sunshine encountered whilst driving over was replaced with a chilly mist on Haworth Moor soon after the 8am start. To overcome the numerous navigation teasers that the route poses, Pauline was running as a team pair with John Swift of Chorley AC and my plan was to accompany them until checkpoint three at Long Causeway, some 13 miles into the route, so that I didn’t blow up and suffer for the rest of the race which I did the last time I competed, two years ago. This I did before starting to work through the field, eventually finishing in 6:47:00 and very satisfied that I only took 2:42 for the 14 miles from the psychological half-way point at Mankinholes Youth Hostel, overtaking about 60 runners. Meanwhile Ian was well on his way to finishing in his usual excellent time (5:43:18). We then cheered Pauline and John in (7:39:19) – from the results I could see that they had also passed a few in the second half of the event.

A very well organised event and a glorious day out running in the Pennines, especially if you pace it right and can cope with the distance and climbs, reputed to be more like 5300ft rather than the advertised 4500ft.

I’ve written a slightly longer more personalised report on my Pyrenees training blog at http://gordonsgr10.blogspot.com/ for those who may be interested (also photos that Pauline took should hopefully appear soon)

Gordon Stone.