The Mellieha Athletic Club is thisyear celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Twenty years ago, Joe Borg, Robert Vella, David Gauci and Norbert Grech - all like-minded individuals sharing the love of running - decided to form a club.

It was not easy, and even before starting to walk, they had to crawl around. Nowadays, after 20 years, the club with the Mellieħa Athletic Club (MAC) did not only get up on its knees and started walking but provides a community for some of the best athletes on the island, mostly in long-distances.

Blue shirts are as constant in local road running races as blue skies in a Maltese summer.

But while it is now getting very close to the 20th anniversary, and tasted success, the basics have not been forgotten.

A running academy has been set up where a plethora of people from various backgrounds and with different goals meet, and take one step to another and get united by sharing the exhilaration from the most basic of activities – running.

Runners love to stand the test of distance and time. The club, being made of runners, has a relationship that fits perfectly well with such love, as the head coach Has Kesra has been working with the club for the past 15 years.

Coupling qualifications, love for the sport, and the experience of heading a renowned running academy in Holland, Kesra provides training programmes for most of MAC’s members, with personal advice along the whole way.

Training is varied, from speed sessions on a 400 metre track to long runs on the Maltese roads, where alongside training, a social element is borne, usually manifested in a coffee and maybe snack at the end of a long run.

With MAC currently placing at the top of the MAAA Road Running League and the holders of the Malta Marathon, such relationship is also standing the test of results.

Keeping the position on top of the league and the title of Malta Marathon come next February is the utlimate aim of the elite MAC athletes.

But alongside the top few, another number of blue shirted runners will be celebrating their love to running at the same races and striving for a personal best.

The local roads are not the limit for the blue shirted MAC athletes. Reading and Edinburgh proved host in the past, and this year the Prague Half Marathon on 31 March will once again be the destination and test for MAC runners.

Running is personal. Most runners challenge their own times and self more than fellow runners. And members of the MAC exercise this philosophy perfectly as personal attention to everyone is yielded.

200 members from the age of six to 70 tells it all about MAC.