Radcliffe, a three-time winner of the event, is one of five women and five men picked for the event on October 11.

The 35-year-old Bedford runner had promised to target the race in the Midlands after she withdrew from the marathon at the World Championships in Berlin last month because she did not feel she had recovered sufficiently from an operation on her toe earlier in the year.

The Birmingham race also fits nicely into the calendar with the New York marathon a few weeks later, a race Radcliffe has won for the last two years and which she is expected to take part in again.
 
Radcliffe has won the World Half-Marathon Championships three times, including in 2001, the last time the event organised by the International Association of Athletics Federations was held in Britain, at Bristol.
 
Her last victory in the event was at Vilamoura, Portugal, in 2003 but since then she has run 65min 40sec for the 13.1 mile distance, the fastest time ever by a woman.

Radcliffe tops the British rankings for the distance this year having run 69:45 in New York City in August, the race that convinced her she was not ready for Berlin.

Ian Stewart, the 1972 Olympic 5,000 metres bronze medallist who will be Britain's team leader for the event, said: “This is a great chance to support a home Championship with full teams, and I’m delighted that in Birmingham on October 11 that will be the case.

"It’s a new course, in a city of people who will really get behind our athletes.

"Not only are they in a position to show what they can do in front of that home crowd, but they have a genuine opportunity to fight for decent team positions.

"We’re pleased to have Paula on the team and optimistic that we can win medals.”


Related stories
August 2009: Radcliffe set to run World Half-Marathon in Birmingham
August 2009: Radcliffe pulls out of Berlin to concentrate on London 2012
August 2009: Radcliffe wins World Championship warm-up in New York
March 2009: Radcliffe withdraws from the London Marathon - again