KEEN runners are being asked to pull on their trainers for this year’s Oxford Town and Gown 10km fun run, and help create a milestone for the fundraising event.

It will be the 29th time the run has taken place around the city centre, and the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign hopes it will take the total raised since the first event in 1982 past the £1m mark.

The target for this year’s run, which takes place on Sunday, May 16, is £100,000 – which could pay for more than 100 grants for powered wheelchairs for children, or support a research student through PhD studies in neuromuscular research.

Event organiser Alun Mainwaring said: “We have already got 860 runners signed up and we haven’t even launched it yet.

“It’s so well established that the people of Oxford are looking out for it, which is really nice. It’s great to have that level of support and, fingers crossed, we will hit our target.”

He hopes to sign up 4,000 runners, with each asked to raise a minimum of £20 in sponsorship.

The 10-kilometre run starts in Parks Road outside the University Museum of Natural History and follows a route around the city centre taking in High Street, Cornmarket Street and Broad Street, before finishing with a lap around the University Parks.

The course attracts a mixture of elite runners and enthusiastic amateurs, some of whom wear fancy dress.

Mr Mainwaring said: “It’s one of the fastest 10k courses in the country, which is a good thing for serious runners, because they can give themselves a good chance of getting a personal best.

“It’s always good fun on the day and there should be quite a party atmosphere.”

Mr Mainwaring said: “The fact that it’s Oxford is the selling point, because it’s such a beautiful city.

“For people to be able to run past these beautiful, historic buildings – that’s what people sign up for.”

Last October, the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign gave two grants to research projects at Oxford University totalling about £90,000.

fbardsley@oxfordmail.co.uk