I didn’t get much sleep as the people living next door to the hotel decided to have the loudest house party I’ve ever heard, and factor in that I had to be up at 4am I wasn’t a very happy bunny.

I had to be outside the hotel at 5am to get a taxi to a car park where I would be meeting the coach that would take me to Newcastle for the Great North Run. As the taxi approached the deserted car park I could sense the driver was rather worried about why I had asked him to drive here at that time of the morning.

I managed to grab a couple of hours sleep on the coach, but I wasn’t feeling like I was ready to take on a half marathon. Not just because of the lack of sleep, but I was also not in the mindset, and that wasn’t helped when I realised that the strap on my Garmin watch had fallen off and out of my pocket.

I had a bit of a walk around the town centre to try and clear my head and get myself ready for the race, it wasn’t easy as with 57,000 runners there were a lot of people milling around.

The race actually went OK considering how I was feeling. I decided before the start not to bother trying for a PB as with almost 60,000 runners in the way I wasn’t going to do it at my pace.

I finished the race about 50 seconds over my PB which actually surprised me as I had struggled through a few of the miles due to people getting in the way and not being hydrated properly. Just imagine what I can do if I lose more weight, get a good night’s sleep and take on more water before my next half marathon.

I grabbed a burger and decided to take a slow walk following the signs to the coach that would take me back to Leeds, for some reason the coaches had parked about 3 miles away from the finish line, obviously they didn’t think we would be tired enough after the race.

The coach left an hour later than planned because they insisted on waiting for everyone to return, they eventually left two people behind. I got my head down for another couple of hours until the coach returned to Leeds.

Another taxi from the Leeds car park to the station and I was soon on the train on my way back to Manchester where I would spend the night. I was starving as I got off the train, but at 11pm on a Sunday night it was going to be difficult to find somewhere that would be open. A takeaway shop took pity on me as I walked in as they were closing.

In the morning I’m heading back to London.