This Sunday sees the Watford half-marathon begin at Cassiobury Park once again, with around 1,700 runners expected to take to the 13-mile course.

The event has been based in the park for the last 39 years, however last year had to be cancelled the day before with ice making it too dangerous for the race to take place.

There should be no such hazards this year and race organiser Richard Parles said he was looking forward to putting that disappointment behind him.

“We’re extremely pleased,” he said. “Last year was quite a disaster and it has had an impact on this year, our numbers are down by a few hundred, which is quite disappointing when you put in work for quite a few months. We were hopeful that we could run it last year, but we did a recce of the course mid-afternoon the day before and it was clearly too dangerous.

“It looks like there could be some rain, this year, but it should be a reasonable temperature, so it’ll probably quite pleasant for the runners.”

The race should see a number of key battles, including the men’s winner from 2018 Paul Martelletti, who will go up against Jonathan Cornish, who he pipped to first place two years ago.

Meanwhile in the women’s race, the winner from 2018 Rachel Felton will also be making an appearance again, with Rose Penfold expected to give her some healthy competition.

“There wasn’t much between them [Martelletti and Cornish] two years ago, so I hope we’ll have another good race, with those two dragging each other on a bit,” said Parles.

“In the females there’s Rachel Felton, she’s running again and there’s another pretty good woman Rose Penfold, she’s pretty high quality as well, so hopefully there could be a good race in both the mens and womens.”