The Half Lap

The Lap is a 47-mile ultra trail run circumnavigating Lake Windermere in the Lake District. One lake, one continuous loop, start and finish at the same point. The route takes in lakeside tracks, field paths, short stretches of road and pretty much every viewpoint worth having along the shore.

For runners new to ultra distances it ticks a lot of boxes.

A good first ultra

The format suits runners stepping up from road marathons or trail 25Ks. The barriers that tend to put people off longer events, navigation, kit complexity, technical terrain, are largely absent. What remains is the distance, 47 miles is, in the end, a big number.

The half distance

This year, the event organisers have introduced a half-distance option. Roughly 23 miles, still following the lake, still The Lap in every meaningful sense.

The half brings the event within reach for people juggling work and training, for runners coming off injury, for anyone who has been looking at The Lap for two years and finding a reason not to enter.

Storing the water

To bring the half-distance course to the right length, the team has been working with local authorities since early winter on a managed reduction of the lake's water levels. This kind of thing is not unusual in the Lakes, where water management is an ongoing part of how the area functions, and the process has been coordinated quietly and without much disruption. Alpkit's Ambleside store has been serving as the operational base, with staff there managing logistics, volunteer coordination and communications across the project.

Households across the southern Lakes have been taking their share of the water. Running baths and keeping them topped up. The water sits there, it is looked after, and when the time comes it goes back.

Additional storage has been found in garden water butts and a village hall near Staveley has given over most of its car park to a temporary tank setup for the duration.

Stu Taylor, Alpkit athlete and head brewer at Kirkby Lonsdale Brewery, has been one of the more useful people in the whole operation. A working brewery knows how to handle large volumes of water, how to keep it clean, how to move it around without losing quality. Stu and his team have been holding a substantial allocation and have been on hand to advise other volunteers on filtration and treatment, particularly for those with larger storage arrangements who wanted to do the job properly.

The water will be returned to the lake in cleaner condition than when it was drained. With sections of the lake bed accessible for the first time in decades, volunteer groups have been working through what has accumulated, removing debris, clearing sediment, doing work that no surface-level programme could have reached. Water quality in Windermere has been a genuine concern for local communities for some time, and the drainage has opened up an opportunity to address it in a way that simply was not available before. The clean is ongoing and is on track to complete ahead of the refill.

The fish and other aquatic wildlife have been managed throughout by local anglers and freshwater conservation volunteers, with holding tanks and private ponds made available across the area. The arrangements have worked well.

The target water level for the May course is expected to be reached by mid-April, conditions permitting. A wet few weeks would help, and the team at Alpkit Ambleside are monitoring rainfall closely. They remain confident.

Sign up for the Half Lap

Both distances are open now. The half distance in particular has seen strong interest since the announcement.

Read the complete Lap kit list for mandatory gear, clothing layers and nutrition planning. More on the full event in our Lap overview, or at thelap.co.uk.

The lake will be fully refilled by November.

Facts and figures

Lake Windermere - Length: approximately 18km - Average width: approximately 1.5km - Surface area: approximately 14.7km² - Volume: approximately 300 million cubic metres - Shoreline: approximately 70 miles

The drainage - Water to be temporarily removed: approximately 262 million cubic metres - Equivalent in standard UK baths (150 litres each): approximately 1.75 billion - Spread across the volunteer storage network, that is roughly 25 baths for every person currently alive on Earth - At one bath filled per second, it would take approximately 55 years to place the whole volume - Current status: on track, subject to April rainfall

The events - Full Lap: 47 miles, May and September 2026 - Half Lap: approximately 23 miles, May and September 2026 - Cut-off: 24 hours for both distances - Lake refill: begins post-September event, completes November 2026