The ASICS Manchester Half will take place on Sunday, October 4
The 2025 Manchester Half Marathon(Image: Jason Roberts /Manchester Evening News)
Head into Manchester on Sunday morning and you’ll be met with thousands of runners and a string of road closures. That’s because the Manchester Half Marathon is returning and will see tens of thousands of people running 13.1 miles for charities close to their heart.
It’s estimated that 32,000 people will be taking on the half this year, which is a big increase on the 22,500 that are understood to have taken part last year and raised over £1.8m for local and national charities.
And for the first time, I will become one of those 32,000 people running in the event this weekend – with less than two months of training under my belt.
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First held in the city back in 2016, the Manchester Half has gone on to become one of the city’s biggest events and is the biggest half marathon in the region.
This year’s event will, once again, start and end in Old Trafford with the full route taking in the sights of the likes of Chorlton, Sale and Stretford.
I’ve had an on-and-off relationship with running for the past eight or so years. I started with the Couch To 5K app when I was in college in an effort to improve my fitness levels and kept up with the occasional 5k for a few years.
Eventually, due to some minor injuries and generally falling out of love with running, my periodic runs fizzled out until I was only going for a jog once or twice a month.
During lockdown, I decided to take up running again, but this time purely for my own enjoyment. I stopped tracking my runs and my pace and would just head of for 30 minutes or so and run until I didn’t want to any more.
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Gradually, I was running more and more, and at my peak, I was running for a few miles most days – and even attempted the odd 10k – but found any sort of progress difficult because, to be honest, I had no idea what I was doing.
Flash forward a few years, and as other priorities took over, my running journey became a thing of the past.
That’s why, when I was offered a place in the Manchester Half Marathon in August, I jumped at the challenge. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do but never thought I actually would.
As part of my job as a reporter at the Manchester Evening News, I was lucky enough to cover the Great Manchester Run earlier this year, and even interviewed the artist behind the official Manchester Marathon collection in April.
Witnessing the events and seeing the city’s love for running has been a big motivation for me deciding to do the half marathon myself. The fact that it’s one of the flattest courses in the country helps too.
Running a half-marathon with less than two months of training is probably not the smartest thing you can do but knowing that I’m working towards a specific distance and that thousands of other runners will be taking part has been a great motivator to take my training seriously.
As part of the half marathon, participants were also offered a trial with the training app Runna which provides personalised running plans leading up to an event.
I’ve personally found the app very useful and it’s helped give some structure to my training, and provided me with a plan leading up to the event, with runs and workouts customised to my targets.
On the day, I think I’ll be more focussed on getting over the finish line than trying to break any records but still it’s nice to have a goal.
Since I signed up for the event, I’ve been going on about three or four runs a week, doing a mixture of easy 5ks, interval sessions and long runs.
With just a few days to go until the event, I’ve now tapered off from running and am instead carb loading before the event – my favourite part of the training so far.
As part of my run I’ve decided to raise money for Pumping Marvellous, the UK’s patient-led Heart Failure charity.
It’s a cause that’s close to my heart, not just because I know the people who run the charity, but because my grandad passed away from the condition in 2021.
On Sunday, it will be almost five years to the day that he passed away and the half marathon route will take me near where he grew up and where he lived when he was older.
There’s few people that loved Manchester as much as my grandad and I’ll be thinking of him as I – hopefully – complete the run this weekend.
