It was another wet and windy day, with temperatures not rising above single digits, for the Larking Gowen Norwich Half Marathon on Sunday, 23 November 2025. Storm Bert had made an unwelcome appearance last year, when 3,106 runners finished. This year's tally was 2,101 finishers – in just over three and a half hours – as both men's and women's event records fell.

The Larking Gowen Norwich Half Marathon was revived in 2024 by Good Running Events from the former 13.1-mile race organised by City of Norwich AC. The inaugural event was a sold-out success, and although numbers were down on the launch event, the quality was high.

The Race Village is located at the Norfolk Showground, and the start time was brought forward half an hour to 10:00am. The Good Running Events pace team was in action, with 22 Race Day Pacers running even splits for times between 1:30:00 and 2:45:00.

Setting their own pace at the front were the leading men and women, despite some standing water following heavy overnight rain. The top three men finished inside last year's winning time.

Martyn Bath (Norwich Road Runners, 1:10:23) narrowly missed his PB by eight seconds as he splashed his way around the fully-closed roads through Norwich and the surrounding villages. The runners-up were George Gay (City of Norwich AC, 1:11:22 PB) and Kim Bowling (Colchester Harriers, 1:12:40).

You have to go back a dozen years to find the women's race winner's previous best half-marathon. Daisy Glover (Framlington Flyers) is currently enjoying a renaissance in form, and she flew round the course in 1:15:00, almost two minutes faster than her listed PB of 1:16:52 set at Cambridge in 2013 – the same year she won the original Norwich Half Marathon in 1:17:25!

Mabel Beckett (City of Norwich AC, 1:19:37) and Leanne Finch (Bure Valley Harriers, 1:21:54) completed the women's podium places. More than 150 runners beat the 90-minute barrier and a thousand stayed ahead of the two-hour pacer. 
     
Results are available at the runABC race listing here.

Photo of 2025 medal courtesy of Good Running Events on Facebook