It's not a marathon and it's not got Paula Radcliffe, but the Great North Run is one humdinger of an event.This road race in Tyne and Wear attracts the kind of attention and numbers that many full marathons can only dream about. On October 1, when

wearing my clothes under my wetsuit, so it was just a matter of donning socks, shoes, helmet, gloves and Oakley’s.After a while I realised I'd got bag 651 instead of 851, so I had to run back the other way.Then blow me, the 600 row had been removed. I

another chance to see the inspiring views of the Fenland countryside from the summit of the course's 'big hill'.This UK Athletics bronze-graded event comes with supervised bag storage, tidy changing facilities and T-shirts for all entrants, as well

’t practise for an event like this, and I think we’ve learned how far you can push the human body." Fellow forumite JJ was there to cheer the team on at the start and finish. "They’ve been phenomenal," she said. "I couldn’t run that fast for the bus

then, I'd been living the event in my mind and I'd become used to it. The basic absurdity of the idea had long since passed me by. I had convinced myself it was just another race, a point reinforced by the fact that it's not much more difficult to get

was calculated using ratings given by respondents on www.runnersworld.co.uk after they took part in the races. We worked out the average of the 'overall' rating runners gave races, to arrive at a figure between 0 and 100%, allowing us to rank them. However, we