Winter made a snowy appearance at the Xero Milton Keynes Winter Half Marathon – promoted by the brilliantly-named Big Cow Sports – with a snow machine in action at the finish line at Willen Lake on Saturday and Sunday 12-13 December 2020.

The city of Milton Keynes has cemented its place in the nation's affections through its famous concrete cattle collection, an iconic sculpture created in 1978 by American artist Liz Leyh, positioned off Monks Way in North Valley Loughton Park, approximately 9km into the course. 

The half marathon starts and finishes at Milton Keynes' most popular park, Willen Lake, and follows a roughly square, single-lap route alongside Grand Union Canal and through the many linear parks that provide so much beauty and breathing space.

Due to the COVID-enforced reduced capacity entry limit being reached the start gate was open for waves every four minutes for two hours from 9:00am. Separate races were held on both days and the results were consolidated with 1,198 official finishers in 3:53:25.

Sunday produced the faster times with Jordan Clay (Leighton Buzzard, 1:08:40), David Hudson (BRJ Run & Tri, 1:12:05) and George Phillips (City of York, 1:12:08) leading the way. Alicia Lacey (Norwich RR, 1:20:48), Lauren Longhurst (Mornington Chasers, 1:23:55) and Natasha Martin (Kettering Town Harriers, 1:27:02) headed the women's results.

The previous day the top three men were Aaron Burgess (Oxford City, 1:14:04), Jonny Reep (Wellingborough & District, 1:15:24) and M40 Charlie Palmer (Bedford & County, 1:16:46) while the women's podium was Rebecca O'Kill (Southend, 1:24:39), Fiona Carter (Lonely Goat, 1:25:03) and Liza Bradshaw (CLC Striders, 1:26:33).

Nearly 120 runners beat 90 minutes and 682 finished within two hours across the weekend.

The couple pictured enjoying the artificial snowstorm at the finish are #456 Ekta Vashishtha (W40, 2:45:18) and #455 Avadhesh Vashishtha (M40, 2:45:19) – ladies first, of course!

Full results at runABC South race listing here

Image: Milton Keynes Winter Half Marathon on Facebook here