Covid-19 cancels Arizona outing for north athlete

Stephen Mackay (Inverness Harriers) was poised to fly out to Flagstaff, Arizona, just before the government lockdown was imposed to help control the spread of the coronavirus.

The British indoor championships 1,500m finalist had been invited to help Scotland’s Olympic

Games marathon runner Callum Hawkins prepare for the summer season.

It’s the third time over the past year Mackay’s assistance has been asked to fulfill this type of role.

He trained with middle distance stars Laura Muir and Jemma Reekie in St Moritz last May then with 5,000m man Andy Butchart at Font Romeu, France, in September.

Mackay said: “Callum was planning to do a bit of a speed block of training before concentrating on his marathon work, so he wanted some help with the track sessions.

“But, of course, it was all cancelled.

“It was really frustrating as I’d been trying to get as fit as possible before heading over there and I was ready to go.

“I also had a race set up at Stanford which I was looking forward to doing, so it was very disappointing. However, it might have been worse if we had gone then got stuck over there.”

Mackay enjoyed a good start to the year when setting a PB 3,000m time of 8min 13.19secs when taking silver in the Scottish indoor championships.

He also set a PB indoor 800m time of 1:51.40 competing as a guest at the Scottish Student championships, before going on to finish a creditable fifth in the 1,500m at the British indoors at Glasgow’s Emirates Arena.

His last race before lockdown was the Nairn 10km at the beginning of March when he finished third in another PB of 31:28.

Stephen Mackay