Race date: Sunday 11th January 2026

Race report by Lucy Davies

I booked the catchily named Central Lancashire New Year’s Half Marathon a while ago. I have a friend who lives not too far away in Morecambe and she’d done it before and liked it. It’s a fairly flat road half marathon on country roads from the village of Lea Town just outside Preston.

I really did question whether to do it at all. My training had been patchy at best – I’d only done one longer run. My friend was ill and couldn’t make it. And the weather forecast!!! 😂

But after marshalling at the Round Sheffield Run and watching all those people making it round in the tough conditions, I gave myself a good talking to and headed over to Preston in the evening. I didn’t want to risk an early morning drive across the M62.

I was nervous beforehand but it was a small event so everything was easy. I collected my number at the local school, put a few layers on, took them off again, queued for the toilet, queued for the toilet again, etc, and then it was time to go.

The first 8-9 miles were fantastic. I fell in with two women from Chadderton Running Club in Manchester whose pace really suited me and the miles peeled away. The weather wasn’t as bad as forecast – windy and a bit drizzly but nothing awful. The course was nice. The roads weren’t closed but were quiet country roads with little traffic and there were plenty of marshalls making sure we went the right way and encouraging us on.

At about 9 miles my lack of training started to show. The wind had picked up a lot, the drizzle had turned to steady sleety rain and I started to flag. I said goodbye to my new friends and slowed it down a bit. There was quite a lot of jeffing in those last miles but I made it and was really pleased with my time of 2:21:25, a half-marathon PB for me. And I got the blingiest medal 😊

The race had sold out its 600 places but the results only show 378 people so I guess a lot were put off by the weather forecast or the difficulties of getting there on the day.

The race was won by Andrew Cairns (no club listed) in 01:09:12 and the first woman was Grace McGarvey (no club listed) in 01:24:07. Unsurprisingly I was the sole Strider there.