BEST of luck to Kevin Blake who will attempt to run the Clonmel half-marathon on August 24th in under 90 minutes to raise funds for Treo Eile and Retraining of Racehorses.

Racing journalist, broadcaster, race-planner, owner-breeder, and probably many other things, Kevin knows a lot more about sectional times than we do but we reckon he needs to do the 21km in an average time of 4m 16secs per kiometre if he is to achieve his target.

“I’ve been waiting for the right challenge before asking people to donate and I reckon I’ve found it,” Kevin posted on GoFundMe. “I’ve been road-running for 20 years and only once have I ran a half-marathon faster than 1hr 34min. That planted a seed for a more organised effort and I’ve been training hard since then in advance of trying to knock another 100 seconds off that mark on August 24th.

“I’m only a few months away from turning 40, so my days of personal bests should be long behind me, but I’ve trained as hard on the roads as I ever have since mid-January,

totting up over 1,500km on the road and losing 13kg on the scales. I’ve been getting great help with my training from Trevor Cummins and have a few much faster runners than me that are going to join me on August 24th to try to keep me at the right pace, so trust me when I say that we are not messing about here!”

Kevin is encouraging people to sign up themselves for the race on popupraces.ie or to make a donation to his appeal.

“I have wanted to raise funds for the wonderful cause of retraining and rehoming racehorses for a number of years now,” he explained. “Retraining of Racehorses and Treo Eile do very important work in this area on both sides of the Irish Sea and I am proud to be supporting them. Any funds raised will be divided 50/50 between those two organisations, who do so much for the animals that we owe so much to.”

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT KEVIN'S FUNDRAISER