The Swindon Half Marathon returned on Sunday, with thousands of runners setting off from Coate Water Country Park at 9am. The hilly course took in Dorcan Way, Kingfisher Drive and the Southern Connector Road before climbing Pack Hill towards Wanborough, with roads closed in turn as the field came through.

A Swindon Harriers runner crossed the line first in a little over an hour and ten minutes, with a clubmate second, and the first woman home finished in just under an hour and twenty-four minutes. Crowds turned out along the way, with a particularly noisy welcome in Covingham, and several runners took on the hills to raise money for charity.

For the town's drivers, however, the real endurance event began at five to nine. Motorists heading out for a routine Sunday trip to the tip found themselves on a course of their own, with no crowds, no water and no idea where Kingfisher Drive had gone.

One driver is understood to have followed the diversion signs so faithfully that he completed the full distance, finishing in two hours and forty minutes, well behind every runner, and was handed a medal by a marshal who said she did not have the heart not to.

Organisers are believed to be considering a separate category for motorists next year, with split times at each roundabout and a water station on Wanborough Road for anyone who has been sitting there since the start.

"In my day the only running anybody did was for the bus," said Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old. "Ron did a fun run once, in 1983. He didn't finish. He found a pub on Marlborough Road and told everyone it was a feed station. To be fair to him, it was."

Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said he had taken part. "I did the start and I did the finish. The middle I did in spirit, which is actually the hardest bit mentally," he said. "I've got a medal. Julie from accounts says that doesn't count, but Julie didn't come, so Julie doesn't get a vote."

Brenda was unconvinced. "He went past my window at twenty to ten," she said. "He was walking. With a sausage roll."

At the time of going to press, the last motorist on Wanborough Road had been offered a foil blanket and a banana, and has asked whether that means he can go home.