ON SUNDAY, the streets of Reading will be packed not with cars but runners as the annual half marathon returns to its traditional April slot.
This year is the 40th anniversary of the popular race, which attracts thousands of athletes and fun runners to the town. More than 12,000 of them are expected to line up at Green Park for the start.
The route takes them through the town, including going through the town centre, before finishing at the Select Car Leasing Stadium.
“It’s an amazing finish,” says race director Judith Manson. “It’s definitely the highlight of people’s day when they enter the stadium and hear the roar of the crowds. It’s a finish like no other, it really is.”
Judith is full of praise for the rest of the route: Green Park is, she says, a lovely place to start, while “the bit in the middle is pretty special as well”.
She adds: “The whole route, it’s fantastic.”
And with the crowds lining the streets to cheer runners on, she’s not wrong.
“The Reading community has really embraced the event,” she says. “We definitely feel that.”
There will be some road closures and to the non-runners, she promises to keep disruption to the minimum.
“We have rolling road closures, as soon as we can open the road and get that area of Reading moving again, we will.
“It’s nothing new,” she adds. “The route hasn’t changed for a number of years, the timings haven’t changed, which means the road closures are the same as they were last year, two years ago, the year before that … People know what to expect, and we try and keep consistency.”
One of the things that helps make Reading special is the way in which residents line the streets with entertainment to cheer runners on.
“There will be pop-up entertainment that we won’t know about until the day,” she says. “People just come out and start banging their drums or whatever. There will be things that happen around the route that we haven’t organised – the community comes out and supports everyone. It’s just fantastic.”
And there are also a team working hard to ensure the Marathon takes place smoothly.
“We couldn’t do it without the support of so many people,” Judith says. “Obviously we’ve got our headline sponsor, Unleash Performance, who joined us for the first time last year, and they’ve been incredible.
“And there is also the statutory services, Reading Borough Council, the police, the NHS services … all of those cogs in this massive wheel. We really couldn’t do it without the support of them all.”
Of course, there’s also the runners – and we’ll be telling their story in next week’s round-up. Demand will be huge, order your copy today.
