Gary Williams, along with 19-year-old daughter Claire, will make the run in honour of wife Kath, who completed the run last year despite being treated for leukaemia at the time.

"If Kath was with us she would be there on Sunday, walking if she couldn't run," Mr Williams said.

Last year Mrs Williams had chemotherapy to enable her to go on the run to raise money for St Gemma's Hospice in Leeds to help cancer patients. She just managed to complete it within the stipulated time, said her husband.

This inspired Mr Williams and his daughter – who has come up from London to take part – to continue his late wife's good work.

"We are doing it for charitable reasons as well but the fact is Kath would have been here trying to help us – and in that sense it makes us closer to her, it has given us a focus," he said.

And the family has been taking the task very seriously. Mr Williams, who is a tennis player, has been training every week so he can do well on the run.

"Kath would have appreciated that I won't be there just to make up the numbers," he said.

"We are not serious runners but we are taking part with 10,000 other people and we want to do a good job of it," he added.

Mr Williams has a message for others in similar situations: "Get through it with the help of family and friends." He said that it was at moments like this when people really found out who their friends were.

It has been a difficult time for the Williams family but it is getting through it together. Apart from his daughter, Mr Williams has two sons, Gareth, 21, and Rhys, 13, who will provide moral support, after which the whole family is going on holiday to recuperate.

Claire is studying to be an opera singer at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London while Gareth is graduating from university.

"Kath was wonderful that way – she knew she was dying but she still wanted her children to be independent," Mr Williams said.

Mrs Williams, a qualified nursery nurse, worked for several schools in Leeds, including Headingley Primary School, St Andrew's Roman Catholic Primary School and Leeds Grammar School.

She also helped young children with particular needs – she helped a child with Down's syndrome to adjust and go back to mainstream education, Mr Williams said.

The Leeds 10k, set up by Jane and Mike Tomlinson in 2006, has helped to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for various charities. Mrs Tomlinson died last year after fighting breast cancer. She was 43.