The upcoming Manchester Marathon will provide another chance for runners across the north west to participate in a road running race after a long and tough 18 months.
With the pandemic’s strict restrictions mostly behind us, events with mass participation such as road running races have made a re-appearance in our lives.
Lockdown gave the opportunity to a lot of people to try running, who now have the chance to participate in such a big event.
Nick, a member of the Manchester Road Runners committee said: “A sizeable number of people took up running during this time to de-stress, relieve boredom or because it was one of the few things you could do.
“When Covid hit all our group running had to stop. We managed to continue to have a community through this period with virtual events and small group runs.
“Since the club was able to run together over the summer, I realized how much I enjoyed the chance to catch up with people on a run (and enjoy a pint with them afterwards).”
Over the past month, the UK has seen the return of road running with events such as the Great North Run, Great Manchester Run and the London Marathon last Sunday.
This week it’s Manchester’s turn again, with the Manchester Marathon, one of the largest in Europe and alongside it the Manchester Half Marathon.
Up to 40.000 runners are expected in the mass race for both the marathon and the half marathon, each one starting with their own goal and motivation for these races.
A lot of experienced runners have been continuously training since the beginning of lockdown without knowing when they would be able to hit the streets again running in such mass events.
“Many of the runners participating in the Manchester Marathon and Half Marathon had been originally training for the April 2020 edition and have been training incredibly hard to get where they are today.
“The re-introduction of racing has been long-awaited with many of us wanting to find out whether our consumption of banana bread was as helpful to our running performance as we thought.
“We have seen more members of the running club take part in big events in recent weeks, such as the Great Manchester Run and the London Marathon and their performances have been overwhelmingly positive.”
The events on Sunday will begin with the start of the half marathon at 8am, while the marathon begins at 10:30am.
The start/finish area will be located in the Trafford area near the Old Trafford Cricket Ground and for the first time, the Marathon course will be entering the city centre, where all the runners can soak up the city atmosphere and run past iconic landmarks.
Main image credit: Radarsmum67 Flickr Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
