Coventry Half-marathon, 19th April 2026

With the city celebrating their football club’s promotion to the Premier League after an absence of 25vears, it must have been a good weekend to be in Coventry! Rose Hawkswood was there, but her focus was on running the half-marathon.

Perhaps over-celebration by the volunteers could go some way to explaining how the course ended up being long – with runners having to run an extra 512 metres. The organisers acknowledged the error and corrected the times to reflect a true half-marathon distance:

“Whilst we don’t wish to take away from those achievements, we need to acknowledge that today’s Half marathon route was longer than 13.1 miles … Our initial investigation shows that the turning point was positioned incorrectly with it being 256m out, which has resulted in the route therefore being 512m long overall. We have worked with our timing company to have all half marathon runners’ results updated to provide a 13.1mile finish time”