What a glorious day to run, cool, light breeze and lovely autumnal sunshine. The organisation is now so good that I even got to have a longer time in bed on the Sunday morning before setting off for Newcastle. All seemed to go well until just three miles from the start when the traffic ground to a halt. From having plenty of time I really worried about making the start, but all ended up fine. The baggage buses were closer and set off later so ended up spending the usual hour sitting and waiting for the run to start.

Remarkably I was almost at the front of the crowd so it was easy to start running from the first. Hadn’t realised that Tony Blair was one of the celebs on the starting podium, but had no time to jeer on realising it.

The run was just about as good as it could have been under the circumstances. Despite a general lack of training it was possible to keep a good pace, and more importantly not to go too fast. In the end a time of 1 hr 40 mins 25 secs was much better than I had expected.

The occasion is really very special. Such a wonderful atmosphere that in the end it doesn’t really matter what time. Having said that, an old acquaintance who also took up running relatively late ended up winning in her age group!