Bath Half Marathon returns for 40th anniversary

Atsede Gidey was the fastest female at 1:11:53

Thousands of runners have taken to the streets for the 40th anniversary of a race that was postponed four times.

The Bath Half Marathon was originally due to be held on 13 March 2021, but was pushed back for various reasons.

The 13.1m (21km) race, which took place on Sunday, had a new start and finish line to help with runner congestion.

Race director Andrew Taylor said: "The city's missed it, we've missed it and it's just great to be back on our own streets."

The 2021 event was initially postponed due to Covid, but then was rescheduled three more times, citing "pressures on the highways network", then the ongoing impact of Covid on its small team - and planned engineering works to the Cleveland bridge.

The weather held out for the race's 10,000 runners

The event used Royal Victoria Park as its new Running Village, as it needed a larger venue to accommodate all of its charity partners. It allowed the race to have three waves of runners in total.

• Bath Half Marathon postponed for 4th time

The route was also altered slightly to make it a more enjoyable journey, the organisers said.

Runner Alex Jolly, 23, said the the music and crowd "really helped" with his motivation

"For years I've had people complaining about having to slog up Queen's Square and Charles Street twice so now we've turned it round and we have them running down the street," said Mr Taylor.

"I like the new route... but that hill at the end, oh my god, that was mean," said Megan, 24.

The new set up helped reduce runner congestion

She was running for Pancreatic Cancer Research UK after her boss lost his wife to the disease about 10 years ago.

She said her fundraising team, Team Jackie, had already raised £300,000 through running the Bath Half over the past ten years.

It was a nice course, bit tough at the end," said Alex Jolly, 23, who was running for a dementia charity.

Kadar Omar leading out the race in Bath which this year saw an altered start and finish line

Kadar Omar was the overall winner of the race, coming in at 1:05:03