Held on March 5-6, participants can register right up until the day before, but early bird tickets will close on December 31.

Organiser Anthony Daintith said the upcoming event was due to run a little bit differently to previous running festivals.

"On the Saturday, we'll have three one-mile events - so one mile in distance around Gosling Creek. We'll have a juniors' race, a men's race and a women's race.... The on Sunday morning, we'll have our usual marathons: a marathon, a half marathon, a 10km and a 5km [marathon]," he said.

"We'll also have a number of challenges: in the 5km, we'll have a schools' challenge with a primary and high school division, and a business challenge. We'll also have what's called a government's challenge [for] all the different government departments across the whole festival. So basically what it is is which[ever] government department can run the most kilometres... So the more government department [staff that] register and the longer the distance [they run], the better because we add it all up at the end of the day, and whichever department [has accumulated the most mileage] is the winner."

Organisers of the Orange Running Festival - which will celebrate its 15^th anniversary in 2022 - are hoping they will be able to welcome a large number of runners after the event was forced to heavily reduce participant numbers in 2021 due to COVID.

"So fingers crossed everything will be okay and we'll be back to normal [in March 2022]," Mr Daintith said. "Our aim is to attract around 2000 competitors."

Early bird registration for the running festival is now open and closes on New Year's Eve. To enter, head to the Orange Running Festival website.

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