From Ossów to Radzymin: A Half Marathon Through the Battle of Warsaw 1920

I signed up for the Półmaraton Cudu nad Wisłą for a fairly ordinary reason. I needed a long run as part of my preparation for another event, and an organised half marathon seemed more interesting than running 20 or 21 kilometres by myself.

The race also had a format I like. It started in Ossów and finished in Radzymin rather than looping back to the same place. I like looking at the map afterwards and seeing that I’ve actually travelled somewhere.

This particular route had another reason to interest me. The race took place on 15 August, during the anniversary of the Battle of Warsaw 1920, with the start beside the museum in Ossów and the finish in Radzymin.

I could have just run the half marathon and gone home by car, but that wouldn’t really be me. It was too obvious. I needed to complicate it a bit.

My original idea was to travel there by bike and train, sleep in Radzymin after the race, and ride home the following morning along the Szlak Bitew Warszawskich.

That was the plan, anyway.

First stop – Radzymin

I rode to Warszawa Zoo railway station with my bike and took an SKM train to Radzymin, arriving at about 14:00.

The anniversary was immediately visible around town. There were crowds, music and commemorative events, while the park that would later host the half-marathon finish had activities for families. Near the church there was a Mass, music and other anniversary activity.

This clearly wasn’t an ordinary Saturday in Radzymin.

Before going to the race office, I visited the Muzeum Bitwy Warszawskiej 1920 roku.

The Radzymin museum relies heavily on information boards, photographs, documents and maps. One display in particular stayed with me: a sequence of maps showing the wider military situation, first as the Bolshevik forces advanced towards Warsaw and later as the campaign was reversed.

Although I already knew about the wider Polish-Soviet War, my mental shorthand had reduced the Battle of Warsaw to a few famous days in August 1920.

The maps expanded that picture again.

The war had begun in 1919 and wasn’t formally ended until the Treaty of Riga in March 1921. August 1920 was the decisive moment everyone remembers, but it was part of a much longer conflict.

That also put the situation of Poland itself into better perspective. The country had regained independence only in 1918 after 123 years of partitions, but the end of the First World War didn’t suddenly produce settled borders and peace. The reborn state was still fighting over its borders in several directions.

I didn’t have enough time in the museum to read all the boards properly. Instead, I photographed the ones that interested me and went through them at home on Sunday after returning from the race.

That produced another list of things I’d either not known or had only vaguely understood. Among them were Polish and Ukrainian forces becoming allies against the Bolsheviks, civilian committees and volunteers helping the war effort, and the importance of Polish radio intelligence and code-breaking.

There were other threads too, but the useful discovery was simply that the story was larger and more complicated than the abbreviated version in my head.

The cemetery across the road

Opposite the museum is the cemetery connected with soldiers killed during the fighting around Radzymin.

I only had a short look.

Preparations for the anniversary ceremony were already underway, and I still needed to collect my race number and sort out the rest of the day.

I photographed the main memorial but didn’t explore the cemetery properly. I had other things to do before the race.

A battle with a very big reputation

Growing up in Poland, I knew the familiar interpretation: the Battle of Warsaw stopped the Bolshevik advance, protected a country that had regained independence only two years earlier, and blocked the spread of revolution farther west.

At the museum I also came across the famous description of Warsaw 1920 as one of the decisive battles of world history.

British diplomat Lord Edgar Vincent D’Abernon later called it the eighteenth decisive battle of the world.

That phrase is memorable, but it also made me wonder how the battle is viewed outside Poland.

Historian Norman Davies supports the broader importance of the Polish victory. He connects the Soviet offensive with Bolshevik ambitions to carry revolution westwards, particularly towards Germany.

That isn’t quite the same as saying that the whole of Western Europe would inevitably have become communist if Poland had lost.

The distinction interests me. The Polish version of the Battle of Warsaw is very familiar to me, but I realised that I knew much less about how the same event is viewed from outside Poland.

Trying to sleep on a sports-centre floor

After the museum and cemetery I went to the race office.

There was another practical problem to solve.

Before the race I’d tried to find normal accommodation in Radzymin – a hotel, motel, hostel, Booking, Airbnb, anything useful. There was effectively nothing available in town.

Then I found information saying runners could sleep at the local sports centre.

That suited my plan perfectly. I had a mattress and sleeping bag with me and intended to ride home the following morning.

At the race office, however, it became clear that the arrangement wasn’t as straightforward as I’d expected. People tried to help, but nobody seemed entirely certain how access to the room would work later that night.

I left the problem for after the race.

At 16:45 I boarded the first shuttle bus to Ossów.

A museum before the start

We reached Ossów shortly after 17:00, almost two hours before the race.

The start was directly beside the Muzeum Bitwy Warszawskiej 1920 roku, so a large group of runners went inside.

From the outside, the Ossów museum is huge. It felt much bigger than the museum I’d visited earlier in Radzymin, and the exhibitions inside were different too.

Radzymin relied more on boards, maps, photographs and documents. Ossów had more large physical exhibits and objects, including an aircraft, an armoured vehicle and other military material, alongside multimedia displays and historical information.

One of the strongest local stories here is that of Father Ignacy Skorupka, the military chaplain killed during the fighting at Ossów on 14 August 1920. His death became one of the best-known symbols associated with the battle, and his story appears prominently in the way Ossów remembers 1920.

Outside and inside the museum I also came across material connected with the religious interpretation of the Polish victory as the “Cud nad Wisłą” – the Miracle on the Vistula.

Eventually museum time ended and race time started.

The first night edition

On the shuttle to Ossów the temperature display had shown 32°C, so even an evening start was going to be warm.

This was also the first night edition in the history of the race. Headtorches were included in the race pack, although in practice I barely needed mine.

The Półmaraton Cudu nad Wisłą has its own history by now.

The first organised edition took place in 1992 with only 12 runners. It went in the opposite direction, from Radzymin to Ossów, and was 18 kilometres rather than a half marathon. The route later grew to 20 kilometres, and in 2001 it became the standard 21.0975-kilometre half-marathon distance.

There was a particularly good connection between that first race and the 35th edition.

At the finish, Eugeniusz Dembiński and Jan Skakluk were introduced as two of the original runners. Both had completed every edition of the event.

And both completed number 35 as well.

Thirty-five editions of the same local race is a different kind of history, but it belongs to the story too.

Ossów to Radzymin on foot

The race started at about 19:10.

From that point I stopped looking for history and concentrated on running.

I was using the half marathon as a long training run, and in the heat I wanted to keep the effort controlled rather than chase a time.

What I did notice were the supporters.

There were people standing beside the road, clapping and shouting encouragement. I always enjoy giving high-fives to children along a race route. It’s fun for them and fun for me, and I try to thank people who spend their evening supporting runners they don’t know.

That’s one of the things I like about organised races.

Some of the place names in the wider area later appeared again when I went through my photographs of the museum boards.

Back in Radzymin

The finish was in the park in Radzymin, close to where I’d been several hours earlier.

After the race there was a quick shower and a bowl of hot grochówka, a thick pea soup. After bananas, water and sports food, proper hot food was very welcome.

Then I returned to the accommodation problem.

People were still trying to work out how I could get into the sports-centre room, but it was approaching 23:00 and I was tired.

So I gave up on the overnight plan and caught a bus back towards Warsaw with the bike.

By midnight I was back in Warsaw. I got off around Zacisze, rode the final section home and arrived at about 00:40.

The planned micro-expedition had turned back into a long day trip.

What I brought home

I entered the race because I needed a long run.

I came home with more questions about the Battle of Warsaw.

Not because I’d previously known nothing about the Polish-Soviet War, but because the mental shorthand in my head had concentrated the story around a few famous August days.

Radzymin and Ossów expanded that picture.

The maps showed a much larger campaign. The boards pushed the story back into 1919 and forward into 1921. The museums introduced political, diplomatic and intelligence stories that I’d never looked at properly. And the anniversary itself showed how strongly 1920 is still present in these places today.

Some of the places shown on the Radzymin boards were already familiar to me as separate points on the map. I’d passed some of them before, but I’d never connected them into one larger story.

Now I can look at those places differently – not as isolated memorials or names on a map, but as parts of the same historical landscape.