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The Royal Parks Half Marathon has announced that the 2022 event will be held on Sunday 9th October and has opened a ballot to allocate places.
The race is returning to its traditional route which begins and ends in Hyde Park. The route was changed for the 2021 event so the start and finish line was in seperate locations to make social distancing easier.
The ballot is free to enter and remains open until 5pm on Wednesday 2nd February, with the results announced on 4th February. If you have been allocated a place, you will need to pay the £59 entry fee by 5pm on 11th February or forfeit your spot.
However, there is the option to pay the £59 upfront to gain entry into a second-chance ballot if you are unsuccessful in the first, with the results from that draw revealed on 14th February. If you strike out in both ballots, your £59 is donated to The Royal Parks charity.
There are, of course, other ways to secure a spot. There are plenty of charities offering places in the Royal Parks Half Marathon in return for fundraising. Here’s the official list of charities with Royal Parks Half race places on the Royal Parks Half website.
Even if you do get a place through the ballot it is well worth raising anything you can for charity. The suspension of mass-participation races during the pandemic has hit charities especially hard, which rely on individual fundraising of this sort for a significant slice of revenue.
The Royal Parks Half celebrates its 15th anniversary this year and is London’s most scenic half marathon. While the London Landmarks Half Marathon in the spring also runs through central London and takes in sights like Trafalgar Square, only the Royal Parks takes runners through Hyde Park, The Green Park, St James’s Park and Kensington Gardens.
While the route narrows somewhat through the parks, making it less attractive to PB hunters who may find themselves held up in congested stretches, the atmosphere and support makes it an event every distance runner should have on their bucket list.
Enter the ballot | Free to enter, race place £59
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