The ever popular Ron Hill is inviting his friends from the running community to help him celebrate a major milestone in his running career.

Ron famously keeps a meticulous log of all his runs, and has never missed a daily run for more than 40 years and now he is nearing an incredible 150,000 miles.

He intends to reach the landmark on Saturday, December 22, and Accrington Stanley Football Club has stepped in to make a dream come true for the town's most famous sporting son.

He was taken to watch Stanley as a boy and now before the home match against Shrewsbury Town (kick off 3pm) Hill will reach his target by lapping the ground before breaking the tape in the centre of the pitch.

His great friend Andy O'Sullivan, who every year stages a race in Ron's honour, will provide the commentary, while Andy McAllister will be writing the programme notes. To make his day even more special, Ron would like to start his afternoon with a celebration run of three miles with club mates from Clayton-le-Moors Harriers, and would like to extend the invitation to colleagues from the other local clubs.

Ron is asking runners to meet in time to start their run at 2:10 pm from the Crown pub near the main entrance to the ground. The runners will also be allowed onto the ground to form a guard of honour as Ron completes his task.

Ron Hill was Britain's greatest distance runner in the 60s and arguably of all time. Among his many achievements he won gold medals at the Marathon distance in the 1969 European Championships and the 1970 Commonwealth Championships and set world records in four different distances.

Now aged 69, he is chasing a target of racing in 100 countries before his 70th birthday next September. Since our last update in October, he has added Montenegro to the list, and then a trip to South America to run in Argentina and Uruguay brought his total to 98. In the Officenet 10K at Palermo, a suburb of Buenos Aires, he clocked his fastest time in two years - 47:23 - to finish 125th in a large field of 3500 while in Uruguay he got the star treatment with a special reception in the British Embassy.

He raced in Montevideo at the Nativa 10K, and despite a fierce headwind returned another useful time, 48:47, to be roughly 1100th of 6500.

l Having returned on December 5, Hill was back in local action last Sunday at the Heroes Five Mile Trail Race at Littleborough.

He was the winning over 65 veteran in 43:07, as East Lancashire athletes won both the men's and women's classes.

Lee Passco of Blackburn Harriers was first past the post in 28:35 and Darwen Dasher Linda Clarkson recorded 35:23. Local charities are set to benefit from the race by £300.