Mark Kelly's Running Life!: Capesthorne Hall

As the weeks tick by and the Manchester Marathon looms closer, the races are still coming in thick and fast.

My legs were still rebuilding from the Trimpell 20 mile event a couple weeks ago. York parkrun was a chance to test my speed endurance, so this week was the Cheshire Half marathon.

All three put in my calendar to test the various distances and intensities that perfect my target marathon pace.

The long runs I have been doing are now adapting my legs for the stress of 26.2 miles, thankfully Manchester is virtually flat so I don't have hills to put into the equations, so I have avoided hill training, except for the Rochdale 10k.

If you recall, I am running the Manchester Marathon to raise money for my chosen charity SarcoidosisUK, which has been a great help since I was hospitalised and diagnosed with Pulmonary Sarcoidosis back in 2019.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/mark-kelly57

I need a bit more to get to my target; throughout the year, I have set myself challenges to help prepare myself, some good and some not so, especially cycling!

For the first time in a while, I was back at Royton Road Runners to lead my group and attend a "leader meeting "afterwards.

We were targeting a 5:00km pace, but as group A and B merged together, it pushed the pace up a little; it gave me some PR's, which was nice.

Cheshire Half race report

It was a great morning for racing, dry, cool and overcast; this being a RRR championship event, there were plenty of clubmates in attendance.

It was a rolling start, in pairs, I set off as usual just a little quick, the red mist comes up but I usually get into a stride, fine for a 5k, not so for a half marathon! I was quickly caught by clubmates (the fast ones) and eventually, my mate Shane pulled up alongside.

I have never beaten Shane, so I wasn't expecting to see him for long, but the pace he was doing was okay and we got chatting; pretty soon the kilometres were clocking off, we continued to talk throughout the race the course is great and pretty flat, pockets of support around the leafy lanes of Cheshire were welcome and water every 3 miles was welcome.

To quote our chairman Bryan Lawton, "if you like hedgerows and cows to look at, you will love the course."

As we got closer to the finish, we were picking off runners and trying to keep the pace up; the last 1.5km I could not stay with Shane and tried to do my best to push for home, a sprint finish and my last KM was the same as my first 4:04!

I was 7th V45 male on chip time, 1:29:08 so very pleased and confident I could push for a 3:15 marathon, so I will stick with that pace and see what happens!

7th in my age group

The route and splits

Nice and even pacing, thank you Shane

I am now wearing calf supports, working well so far

Finally, over the line and a sprint finish

I was checking my progress on runbritainrankings.com and was surprised I have moved up in my handicap and ladder positions. If you didn't know about it, let me summarise how it works; when you enter races in the UK, they are usually tied to UK athletics. So if you are a club runner, it automatically links your race result (including parkruns) to your profile.

This then tracks your results and uses algorithms to establish how well you did; not all 5k's are the same; some are hilly, twisty etc. it also looks at the weather at the time. It is pretty nifty software, the feature that took my interest is rating me against my age group in my postcode (OL2), which is North Oldham effectively. I have been second for a while to my club captain Carl and, as of this week, have just moved ahead of him, sorry Carl!

Climbing the ladder

I am 12th overall and 10th male, so I hope to keep on improving, you can see from the graph my rise and disappearance in 2012 as injury stopped my running. Since 2018 I have been gaining fitness, losing weight, a plateau in 2020 as racing was suspended due to covid and my continual climb now things have resumed.

It gives you the 5 best performances that contribute to your score. They are weighted to course difficulty, and more recent races are given more importance to the ranking, so my 2011 London Marathon of 3:09:08 doesn't figure in the computation. In fact, the Ron Hill 7 mile race (hilly) I did recently is my +1 and Trimpell 20 (flat but long) +5