Lee Stopford is chasing a hat-trick of wins in this year’s Stroud Half Marathon.

The 38-year-old has dominated the ever-popular event in recent times, winning by 15 seconds in 2021 and by 18 seconds last time out.

And the bad news for his rivals is that he’s targeting a much faster time on Sunday 29^th October.

“I’d like to go round in sub 70 minutes,” said the Stroud Athletic Club runner. And if he does he will be close to his PB for 13.1 miles of 69.31, a time he set in Wokingham in February.

He completed the Stroud Half in 1.11.51 in 2021 and was 28 seconds quicker than that last year, and he’s certainly primed and ready this time around.

“The previous two years I’d run a marathon in the lead-up to the Stroud Half, but this year I haven’t so I should be nice and fresh,” he said. “Hopefully I should be ready on the day and can go a bit quicker than in the last two years.”

Stopford, as you’d expect, is a big fan of the race.

“It’s undulating and not all the same terrain, I enjoy the ups and I enjoy the downs,” he said. “It’s one of my favourite races of the year.”

And he knows the course very well too, having run the race some 13 times, but it’s only in recent years that he has focused exclusively on running.

“I didn’t used to train seriously for the Stroud Half, I used to play a lot of football,” he explained. “I was a centre-back and played for Uley for about 10 years. I was captain for quite a few years, we played at the higher end of the Stroud League.

“I also played for Stonehouse Town in the Northern Senior League. That was a step up, a really good level, I enjoyed that.”

And while he was obviously decent at football, it was also clear that he was a decent runner too.

“I fell into running,” he admitted. “I was trying to do both football and running for a time and people said I should give running a real go.”

He took their advice, retired from football at the age of 31, joined Stroud Athletic Club and the improvement in his running was immediate.

“My best for a half marathon had been 1.33 but by the end of the year it was down to 1.21,” he said. “That was down to proper training, recovery runs. I’ve never looked back. Once I saw the improvement I kept on going, I was doing 50 miles a week.”

And he was happy to challenge himself because it wasn’t too long before he was heading to Paris for his first marathon

“I ran three hours, 15 but I was disappointed with that,” he admitted. “I wanted to to run sub three hours, that’s the holy grail for runners.”

He’s smashed the three-hour mark now, of course – he ran 2.34 in Berlin last year – while he ran 31.36 while winning the Frampton 10K in the summer.

Those are good times and Stopford, who runs his own business, Cotswold Way Scaffolding, is reaping the rewards for his hard work.

“I’m running 60 miles a week these days,” he said. “When I was growing up, I was always active. I was a good runner, speed was never a problem but endurance was.”

He grew up in Ebley and went to St Matthew’s Primary School in Cainscross, which is just a stone’s throw from the Stroud Half finishing line.

These days he lives in Middleyard with his wife Francesca and their four-year-old daughter Mabel.

Francesca has run the Stroud Half in the past – “We ran it together one year,” said Stopford – and she’s training for the Brighton Marathon next year.

Her husband, meanwhile, has his eyes trained on the Stroud Half, a race he wants to run for many years to come.

“I can’t imagine myself not running it,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of runners at our club who are aged 60 or more, they are so inspiring, they provide me with a great motivation to keep going.”

The Stroud Half starts and finishes on Cainscross Road, adjacent to Marling School field. It starts at 9am.