Sheffield half marathon spectators have done the UK proud

Tutting, polite queuing, bursts of anti-authoritarian rebellion and community spirit – the Sheffield half marathon this weekend turned out to be South Yorkshire, and by extension England, in microcosm.

As was reported yesterday, the event was officially cancelled before it began, after the water stations around the course had failed to receive their supplies. Ignoring the various Guardian commenters who claimed that only pathetic weaklings would need water on an occasionally humid 13-mile run, it was actually a fair decision on health and safety grounds – but one that was thankfully obviated by the ranks of ordinary people who brought out water to hand to passing runners.

For those of us among the Musketeers and Scooby-Doos further back the field, you couldn’t really tell that anything was amiss apart from a heavily delayed start and some worryingly empty water stations early on. But the efforts of spectators were quickly felt. On the section past Ponds Forge sports centre, people were already handing out bottles; on London Road, we ran past a shopkeeper dragging a crate of Volvic on to the pavement. By the halfway point at Hunters Bar roundabout, the route was comprehensively flanked with potential isotonic rehydration, with Jelly Babies also proffered by laughing children. It was the stuff of sports brand advertising and urban regeneration literature, without any of the profit motive and maddening deception.

It was only once we passed the finish line that we found out what had happened: after hearing the race was cancelled, those at the front decided to set off anyway, ignoring the attempts of police to shorten the route. This triggers the best mental image of the day: (with all due respect) South Yorkshire’s force attempting to corral some lean, glucose-jacked elites was never going to go as planned.

The organisers took it pretty badly, with the bloke manning the PA system not so much papering over the errors as gaffer-taping a duffel bag over them and chucking them in the River Don – as everyone ran in, he repeatedly told us that negative messages on social media were “against the spirit of the day”, and that we should focus on the money raised for charity as well as telling everyone on Twitter what a good time we’d had. Well, a good day was had, but that is thanks to the good people of Sheffield, not the race organisers.

This is a city that feels like a town that couldn’t help but invite more people round, spreading them out down the valleys of its five rivers; its centre can be run across in 10 minutes, unlike Manchester, Leeds or Liverpool with their increased levels of building density and glitz. Where those places could set a course around their recent civic triumphs, there’s no option for hilly Sheffield but to send people along the valleys, which means that as well as the mighty Forgemasters engineering plant and the beautiful Winter Garden, you end up running past the stalled Park Hill redevelopment, tracts of post-industrial decay and then Bronx – perhaps the least glamorous gay sauna in the country. After all of that, you end up next to Don Valley stadium, which is currently being dismantled.

The route is full of the feeling of a city that has constantly been left behind, and the botched race organisation hasn’t helped civic pride. But the fact that the efforts of Sheffield’s spectators struck such a note of surprise and delight is perhaps testament to how jaded other communities have become – and how its people will keep running despite the delays and roadblocks put in their path.

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