In-form Stroud Athletic Club runner Alister Liscott is looking forward to taking part in the Sharpness 4 tomorrow.

It’s a new race run over four miles and is part of the 2025 Gloucestershire AAA Road Race Series.

Liscott, who is 38, is leading the series and he said: “I want to become the first male runner from the club to win it, Emily Chandler won the female category last year.”

After tomorrow’s run there is just one more race remaining, the Guy Fawkes 5 at Tewkesbury on Sunday 2^nd November. 

“The road race series is something I’ve been targeting, it’s all been going very well,” added Liscott.

It certainly has, because he’s won the Blaisdon 10K and Stroud Beer Race, and he finished second in the Cirencester Summer Sizzler and the recent Bourton Half Marathon. He also finished eighth in the Bourton One Mile Challenge back in May.

The series consists of 12 races over a variety of distances and runners must score in at least five events to qualify for the final standings.

Liscott, who joined Stroud AC in 2021, has already qualified and while finishing on top of the table at the end of the season is a big target, it’s not his only aim over the coming weeks.

The ever-popular Stroud Half Marathon, which takes place on Sunday 26^th October, is another race in which he wants to do well.

“The race is a big one for the club, I’m taking it very seriously,” said Liscott, a plumber who is originally from Birmingham.

“I was eighth last year and sixth the year before although in a slower time.”

He finished in one hour, 13 minutes, 55 seconds 12 months ago, which is more than 90 seconds slower than his PB of 1.12.09 which he set in Birmingham in early May.

“I was really pleased with that run in the Birmingham Half,” he said. “If I can have a really good run in the Stroud Half I think I can beat last year’s time.”

He also wants to beat his friend and Stroud AC team-mate Matt Hudd.

“We have a friendly rivalry,” he said. “He’s a great runner, he’s beaten me in the race for the past two years, beating him is my first goal!”

There will be some serious runners in this year’s race. The 2024 winner Dylan Gillett, who runs for Western Tempo, has entered again, while Stroud AC’s Lee Stopford, who missed last year’s race after winning it in the previous three years, is also set to run.

So, too, is Stopford’s clubmate Nic Coyle and Liscott added: “Nic is by far the best marathon runner in Stroud, he’s run 2.23, he’s a serious runner.”

Liscott is a decent marathon runner himself. He set a PB of 2.34.49 in Valencia in December last year and is heading back to the Spain’s third largest city in a couple of months’ time for another crack at the 26.2-mile race.

“I’m hoping to have a really good six-to-eight weeks of training,” he said. “Hopefully, I can run a similar time to last year.

“I’m hoping to get a championship place in next year’s London Marathon. They’ve changed the qualification process, you used to have run under 2.38 but now it’s the fastest 500 who qualify. I think 2.35 will be enough.”

Liscott has yet to run the London Marathon and if he does qualify, it will be another standout addition to his running CV.

And it’s a CV that is all the more impressive because he took up running only in 2017, soon after he moved to this part of the world.

“I started when I stopped drinking,” he said. “I needed something to fill the void. I didn’t join a club but after a while my running started to plateau, so my partner suggested I should join a club.”

That was clearly very sound advice from Lisa Bonsey, a CrossFitter, because since joining Stroud AC, Liscott hasn’t looked back.