MP Sir Kevin to run London Marathon for Rotherham branch of Age UK

Sir Kevin, MP for Rother Valley, will be one of 16 politicians taking part in the April race around the capital.

He hopes to raise cash for the Rotherham branch of Age UK and said he had been training for the event for several months.

Sir Kevin said: “I normally go out running on my own in the countryside and all you’re looking for at all the time is for cars that might come sneaking along narrow lanes.

“But here you have the situation where you just set off for the day and it’s fantastic, it’s just absolutely brilliant — the number of people who turn out to watch it is fantastic.

“I’ve done a few half marathons but they’re not on the scale of the Virgin Money London Marathon. This is really something special.”

Sir Kevin said he didn’t have a target finish time — just completing the full marathon was his aim.

He said: “Because of my age I thought Rotherham Age UK might be the charity that I'm going to run for.

“They’re very active in my area, they are looking after elderly people quite a lot and I think that’s a worthy charity for me to get involved with.”

Despite his parliamentary and constituency duties, Sir Kevin said training was going well.

“It’s been going not too bad except that I had a problem with my hamstring which I have sorted out now.

“When I first said I was going to run the marathon somebody said to me: ‘The best advice I can give you is to just go out and run for three hours. If you can get that in your head and go out and run for three hours then you’ll run a marathon’ — and that’s what I have to do. I am yet to run three hours but I will do before April.”