Katharine Merry won an Olympic bronze medal on the night 112,000 Australians screamed Cathy Freeman to victory so for her to describe the Great North Run as “categorically one of the best things I’ve ever done” is some compliment.
In her first half-marathon the former Great Britain 400m sprinter had the job of setting a pace for those who wanted to get home in two hours 30, and she loved the whole experience of running from Newcastle to South Shields so much she is already talking about doing it again – twice!
“I massively enjoyed it, it was absolutely superb,” she said. “It is categorically one of the best things I’ve ever done, it genuinely is.
“You get such a sense of achievement that I’m getting emotional. You put time, effort and everything into it and when it goes to plan and you see the crowd and hear the stories it’s great.
“I ran with some brilliant, brilliant people.
“I ran with Tina, another Duracell Bunny pacer, who didn’t stop talking all the way around which was a great distraction. It was wonderful to have that company.
“We had three guys with us – one who had come from Nairobi, one an 18 year-old from Blackpool – and they all smashed their personal bests.
“I said I’d do it again before I ran it because I knew I’d love it.”
Merry is not used to having to pace herself, but enjoyed the experience of helping others.
“I would happily, happily pace again and be more confident in a faster time but part of me wants to do it completely on my own to see how fast I can do it,” she said.
“I’d love to run sub-two hour now I’m part of the elite club.
“Maybe I’ll do it twice more!
“It was strange getting my head round having to run at a certain pace, which I didn’t have to do in the 400m.
“I had a wristband with my times to hit written on it and that was quite strange. We started off a little bit quick so I had it in the tank, was comfortable and put my foot down for the last mile to make a lovely lady called Sarah go quicker.
“She was crying at the end, she was so chuffed!”
Sunday’s was the 37th Great North Run and the biggest in terms of runners, with more than 43,000 pounding the 13.1-mile course.
The event has become famous for the support the North East public shows to it – something all the leading athletes including men’s winner Sir Mo Farah and women’s champion Mary Keitany spoke about afterwards.
Merry said: “It’s such a distraction and a nice distraction to take a Haribo or a jelly baby off someone, high five kids or hear people shout your name. It makes it fly by.
“I can’t believe we’ve just run 13.1 miles because that was one of the easiest things I’ve done in the last few months. My training runs have been harder mentally because I did them on my own but on Sunday I was carried by my fellow pacers and the crowd.
“The hardest thing was fitting in the runs during a really busy summer but if I do something, I do it properly and I was organised and ready.
“Every training run went through my mind because I gave the course the respect you have to.”