Email: alisongrist@tiscali.co.uk Call: +44 (0)7940 59 00 70

October 2009: I’m fairly fit at the moment but that doesn’t stop the butterflies that bound around inside my tummy as I wake up to eat another bowl of energy-giving porridge at some ungodly hour. Today it’s my second half marathon in three months. This one’s for charity.

My sister Anna and I have agreed to take part in the Royal Parks Half-Marathon. We are joining a team Calvin Clarke, our cousin, has put together to raise funds for the Pulmonary Hypertension Association. Calvin’s daughter, Lucy, sadly died from the rare lung disease last April.

So I’ve been running whenever I can – along the Brittany coast on holiday, on rainy Saturday mornings when my son’s at football. As the days get darker and I’ve grappled with writing and directing a new film project, edit days have eased into night runs under street lamps. My personal goal is to complete the half marathon in two hours or under.

Back to the morning of the race and there are thousands of people here at Kensington Gardens, which means colossal queues for the Portaloos. My son can’t stop staring at a pretty little girl behind him in the line. She has twin siblings nearby in a double-buggy. I look up at her Daddy in charge of the buggy – it’s Coldplay’s drummer, Will Champion. His wife jogs on the spot beside me, looking trim and lithe and I envy her figure after three babies. As our bladders almost burst in the wait, personal trainers take to the stage with microphones and embark on a warm-up routine. I watch the long snakes of people, desperate for the toilet, stretching their limbs out to the beat.

I meet up with Anna one minute before the race starts and I’m bending over tightening my laces when the gun goes off. We really enjoy the first half. The sights are spectacular and include the Palace of Westminster, the Thames embankment and Buckingham Palace. I feel like we’re running the actual London marathon without having to do the gruelling mileage. There’s lots of support with hordes of people cheering by the side of the road. Our pace is around nine minutes a mile. I’m happy with that but Anna is worried because she doesn’t usually go that fast. She feels OK though, so we press on. Then she spots a running club colleague and is happy when we pass her.
Halfway in and we’re back in the Royal Parks running along the Serpentine before zig-zagging our way past each mile marker. It’s getting tougher though.

We guzzle our 49p-from-Asda Lucozade gels and keep plodding onwards. At 9 miles I look at my watch and realise we’re slowing down. Anna is feeling the pain. Much as I want to run the race with her, I realise that unless I move ahead, I’m not going to break the two hour barrier. I push on.

Towards the finish, there’s a marshal who yells encouragement “you’re almost there, only 200 metres to go, move it!” so we start sprinting with every last heaving breath we can manage. After 200 metres, we realise the marshal was lying - we’re nowhere near the finish! There’s at least another 400 metres to go. But eventually the finish banner comes into sight and we cross the line with a wry grimace and acknowledge that the marshal helped us to achieve a better result.

My time recorded was 1 hour 58 minutes, my sister just 3 minutes behind. We are both exhilarated to record such good personal bests. I guess it underlines one of the reasons why we put ourselves through the pain. Together with the eight other members of our charity group, we have raised a grand total of £4,308 for the Pulmonary Hypertension Association. I think of lovely Lucy, who had an abundance of dreams and a will to live, and consider that if this money can go towards preventing other people from dying of this disease, then I would do it again in a heartbeat.