NEARLY 500 pre-entries for Sunday's Dover Mercury Half Marathon indicate perhaps the largest entry since Deal Tri Club restarted the popular race two years ago.

Runners from all over the country will converge on the Duke of York's Royal Military School for this now traditional pre-London Marathon warm up and seek an appraisal of how their training is going.

Last year's winner, Dover's Mike Coleman, will be defending his title.

The course is a testing one- laproute taking in Guston, Langdon, Sutton, Pineham and back to the school via Guston again.

The Mayor of Dover, Cllr George Allt, will start the runners off at 10am for the 13.1 mile jaunt around the lanes between Dover and Deal which should see finishing times between one hour to over three hours for the last runners in.

The many water and refreshment stations will be manned by local Cub Scoutpacks and the runners can expect good support from within the villages on the route.

Deal Tri's race director, Bryan May, is delighted with the way race preparations are going. He confidently expects at least 700 runners to take part.

He said: "We can still take entries on the day, but please report the race registration early to ensure a start."

Cost on the day is £9 for affiliated club runners and £10.00 for others. All finishers will get a memento of the race and goodie bag.

A full results service will be provided by KM Group newspapers.

As with all Deal Tri events, junior runners are not forgotten and a 1500 metre run race will be held within the grounds of the school after the main event has started at 10:30. Entries will be accepted on the day and the cost is just £1.50.

Entry forms can be downloaded from www.dealtri.ndo.co.uk