Every year, thousands of marathon runners make their way around Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs in the London Marathon. The marathon is an event with global interest and the organisers of The Big Half  are hoping their brand new event will become as popular.

The route for The Big Half started by Tower Bridge by the Tower of London and went east to Canary Wharf before doubling back to cross Tower Bridge and follow the river to finish in Greenwich.

Remarkably after the considerable snow and bad weather, it was bright sunshine as the runners made their way around Canary Wharf. There was real doubts whether the event would go ahead after the terrible weather and the small crowds perhaps reflected some of the uncertainty.

Amongst the elite runners were multi gold medal winner, Sir Mo Farah, Callum Hawkins and Daniel Wanjiru from Kenya.

The elite women included Alyson Dixon , Sonia Samuels, Charlotte Purdue and Lily Partridge.

Unlike the London Marathon, the club and fun runners in the Big Half arrived in Canary Wharf quite early in the race and were in good spirits and full of energy.

The organisers behind the Big Half, hope the event will become a brand-new world-class mass participation event, featuring the half marathon (13.1 miles) and other events. They hope the event will show how sport and community can come together to improve health and wellbeing.

The Big Relay part of the event is exclusively open to community groups from the host boroughs of Southwark, Lewisham, Tower Hamlets and Greenwich  whose runners will run in teams of four, each person will run one leg of The Big Relay – over distances ranging from one mile to five miles.

The Little Half: a fun, family friendly mass participation event that was due to take place over a 2.4 mile course was unfortunately cancelled this year because of the weather.

However, The Big Festival in Greenwich with a huge range of food, music and entertainment is due to go ahead. 

Due the weather, the Big Half was quite low key but with normal weather conditions in the future, the event will hopefully go from strength to strength and showcase some of the delights of  Southwark, Lewisham, Tower Hamlets and Greenwich .