Mackay aims to pick up pace for treble

Aberdeen AAC’s Will Mackay will attempt to complete a hat-trick of victories when he competes in Sunday’s Kinloss to Lossiemouth half marathon. The Scottish 10,000m track champion first won the Morayshire race in 2015, recording 68min 55sec, then clocked 69:31 when defending his title last February. He is using this weekend’s race to judge how well his preparations are going for April’s Manchester marathon. Mackay has not competed since finishing third in last month’s Gran Canaria half marathon and is looking forward to Sunday. He said: “I recorded 70:15 in Gran Canaria but it was very windy so it’s probably not indicative of where I’m at given the amount of training work I have been doing. “The winner was an athlete who has run 2hr 12min for amarathon, but his time was only 68:30. “I’d like to think I can do between 67 and 68min this weekend but it depends to some extent on the weather. “I feel fit and ready to run a decent time, but you can never tell until you get into a race and see how you feel.” Sarah Liebnitz hopes to emulate Mackay by going for a third win in a row in the women’s division of the race. The Inverness Harriers club member was in great form last year when taking the top prize in 79:24, the secondfastest winning time in the history of the race behind the record 76:30 set by her clubmate Melissa Whyte in 2012. A capacity field of 250 will take part and no entries are accepted on the day.