A DEVASTATED runner has vowed that he will still be taking part in a cancelled half marathon, as a tribute to his father.

Mark Sutton was among the 650 competitors who were disappointed to hear the the Bolton Community Half Marathon had been called off at just two weeks' notice due to the 'escalating costs' of road closures.

But the 46-year-old will not be deterred, and says he will be running the 13.1-mile course as planned next weekend after raising hundreds of pounds for Bolton Hospice.

Mr Sutton's father, Tony, died after a battle with lung disease in July and spent the final week of his life at the hospice.

The runner said: "He was in hospital for six weeks and, after we were told that he would not make it, we were hanging on to the hope that we could get him into the hospice.

"He was there for a week before he died and it really did lift him for the remaining time that he had, and also lifted us as a family.

"I have done quite a lot of fundraising in the past, and after my dad died I knew that I wanted to dedicate my next few events to Bolton Hospice and raise as much money as I could for them.

"They suggested that I try to get a place in the Bolton Community Half Marathon, so I have been in training since then.

"I was really looking forward to running in my dad's memory, so when I heard the news that it had been cancelled I was absolutely gutted.

"I thought it was a joke at first, nobody seemed to understand why it had happened.

"But I decided straight away that there was no way I was not going to run that half marathon."

The tanker driver, from Little Lever, will be setting off from Le Mans Crescent, in Bolton town centre, at 10am on Sunday, September 10 and has invited other disappointed participants to join him.

He added: "I will be there as planned, and if anybody else wants to join me then that would be great. The more, the merrier."

Race organisers Mad Bull Events had previously stated that they would bring back a full marathon to Bolton for the first time in 30 years if more than 1,200 people signed up to the half-distance event.

Mr Sutton, who has entered the ballot for a place in the London Marathon, added: "I would definitely like to do a marathon in Bolton. I have wanted to do one for a while, and there would be nothing better than doing it here."

Bolton had a full 26-mile road marathon between 1981 and 1987, when between 8,000 and 11,000 people from all over the world ran and tens of thousands of people lined the streets.