Another sporting victim of the coronavirus outbreak, the event originally scheduled for May 3 was cancelled last month due to organisers being unable to guarantee a safe environment for competitors.

However, they would have been forced to pull the pin in the time since decision, due to stricter government regulations on public gatherings.

It's a big blow for organisers who had provided both local and visiting runners a popular event, held on one of the friendlier and forgiving half marathon courses around.

Numbers were also looking promising for this year's event before its cancellation.

Bathurst Half Marathon committee member Andrew Meenahan said it was naturally disappointing to pull the pin on the event.

"We ultimately had to cancel it because we couldn't guarantee a safe and memorable event for all competitors," he said.

"Our numbers were tracking better than ever, possibly because other events were falling over, but we ensured everyone would be getting refunded in full. A lot of events don't do that and they force you to roll entries over into the following year's race.

"We're fairly confident that our entry numbers were tracking well and the event has grown a lot over the last few years."

The committee decided to outright cancel the event, as opposed to postponing the race to a later date, with an already crammed calendar of delayed races making that option difficult.

However, even with the 2020 Bathurst Half Marathon cancelled, organisers are hopeful to keep the competitive juices flowing by other means.

"We're planning a virtual run," Meenahan said.

"We're still getting the details together at the moment, but we'll be coming up with a way people can participate running on their own or in twos.

"We'll then be encouraging people to share what they do online and post photos."

The committee are expected to announce the details on the Facebook page in the near future.

Bathurst hasn't been the only event on the Central West calendar to recently cancel their run, with Mudgee forced to do the same last Sunday.

The Bathurst race was set to be the first of five events for this year's NSW Regional Distance Running Championships, with Mudgee's round on August 18 originally planned to be the second event.

Dubbo Stampede organisers also announced on Thursday that their event will be run as a virtual race.

The last two events on the calendar are the Forbes Running Festival (October) and Carcoar Cup (November).