My first Great North Run was in 1991. For complicated reasons, I ran it under false pretences while underage with literally 4 days notice and no training at all. This left me unable to walk properly for several days afterwards. Since then, I have run quite a few of them (all, I hasten to add, under my own name) and I completed the 30th Great North Run on Sunday (and my n’th, where ‘n’ is probably around 13ish). My time was 1:58:18 which is better than I might have hoped, given my threadbare training schedule, but still just over twice the course record. I lost a few vital seconds at the start telling Dec (or possibly Ant) that he should be running it.
