JONNY Kay kicked off a big season for him with a medal at the Northern Indoor Championships.

The middle distance ace aims to make the transition from club runner to national class in 2019.

And a bronze in the regional championships 3,000m at Sheffield last week is an impressive start.

Even more encouraging for the 23-year-old Bolton United Harrier is how he achieved it – by slashing a huge 15 seconds off his personal-best time.

Kay, who is from Heaton and coached by Dave Shaw, has been in top form of late.

He finished a successful year with PBs of 14mins 52secs for 5k and 30:31 for 10k in successive weeks in December.

That followed a summer in which he stepped up a level on the track with a first appearance of his career at the English Championships – where he finished sixth in the 800m and recorded a PB of 1:52.24 – and also set a new PB of 3:48.96 for 1500m.

His target this year is to continue setting PBs and make his first appearance at the British Championships.

His performance at the northern indoors certainly got the year off to a flying start.

"It was a fairly big field for an indoor race," he said. "So me and my coach discussed taking it out at a decent pace to stretch the field out and avoid being tripped or having to run wide.

"It went to plan, I took it out and we went through 2k in 5:40.

"With one kilometre to go, Dom Brown, the winner, took to the front and me and Lewis Jagger followed as the pace increased further.

"By this point we had broken away from the rest of the field and it came down to a final 400m burn-up – which I did in 61seconds and ended with me finishing third in 8.20.93, one second off first place."