This year’s Fairford 10K has sold out.

It is one of the highlights of the two-day Fairford Festival, which starts tomorrow, with 500 runners set to be on the starting line at 10.30am on Sunday.

The race, which was first run in 2012, is organised by Cirencester-based club Running Somewhere Else and race director Kevin Joynes-Creed is obviously delighted that the event continues to be so popular.

This is the first time that Joynes-Creed, who has just turned 49, has been a race director, although he knows plenty about the Fairford 10K.

“I was assistant race director to Pauline Tilbury last year, I’ve marshalled the race and I’ve run it too,” he said.

James Bellward of the RAF holds the record for the fastest Fairford 10K – 31 minutes, 43 seconds in 2019 – and Joynes-Creed added: “We describe it as quite an undulating course. Fowler’s Hill about halfway round is the main hill.”

Joynes-Creed has a best 10K time of around 48 minutes, a time he set in Swindon, but he obviously won’t be running on Sunday because he’ll have too much going on.

Not that he’s on his own, of course.

“I know I’m the race director but I’ve got a team of seven or eight who know their jobs inside out,” he said. “And we’ll have about 60 club members out and about around the course.

“We always get a lot of positive feedback from runners and it’s because as a running club our members marshall the event as runners, we know what runners want.

“We put on the type of race we would want to run ourselves.”

The facilities are great too – Fairford Cricket Club is the race HQ – and Joynes-Creed is grateful for all the support they receive.

“We wouldn’t be able to put on the race without the support of the Fairford Festival,” he said. “And in recent years the Co-op in Fairford has donated 1,000 bottles of water to our runners.”

That’s meant more money is left to give to charity and Running Somewhere Else’s chosen charity this year is Teens in Crisis.

“We hope to raise a substantial amount,” added Joynes-Creed.