Fourth at the Games in Birmingham, 35-year-old Adams pulled clear of the field in the mass-participation 14km event - back for the first time since 2019 after its COVID-19 hiatus - to win in 41:08, 14 seconds clears of Ed Goddard.

The fulltime electrician and two-time Olympian's victory came a decade after his last City2Surf win.

"I've been struggling a fair bit with jet lag over the last few days. I'm in between London time and Australian time so I've been falling asleep about four o'clock every afternoon, conking out and waking up with a bit of a headache and migraine and that, so really struggled since then but I thought that wasn't too bad," said Adams.

"I think most people say you probably need to have a couple of months off after a marathon and then start building up, but I did a race two weeks later, maybe it was a bit silly doing that."

World cross country representative Leanne Pompeani won the women's race on debut in 45:43, less than 30 seconds ahead of Chloe Tighe, with Aynslee Van Graan third.

"You look at the past winners' list and see who's done it, all our Australian distance running greats have done it so it's nice to get my name on that list too," Pompeani said.

More than 60,000 people are believed to have taken part in the 50th staging of the City2Surf.

Australian Associated Press