Courage of Jane is mirrored in family’s challenge

HE confesses to finding the endless preparation a “mind-numbingly boring” experience.

But that didn’t stop Mike Tomlinson from going the extra mile in the memory of his wife Jane.

Ten years after she crossed the finishing line of the London Marathon, Mike and daughter Beki completed their own extreme challenge – as part of the bid to take her charity’s fundraising total to £5m.

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Some 37,500 people took part in yesterday’s marathon, amateurs competing in the same race against the world’s best.

There was all the colour, camaraderie and costumes which has made it one of the world’s iconic races.

But it was hard work for Mike and Beki, who ran the Paris Marathon, before cycling through Yorkshire to London for the marathon, in pouring rain.

Mike has been battling flu since last Wednesday and was visibly shaking before the start of the race. “I didn’t know whether I would be able to run but I was absolutely determined, even if it meant going out in a blaze of glory by keeling over at mile 10.

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“I desperately wanted to do it, funnily once I was going it wasn’t too bad.

He added: “I’ve enjoyed the cycling, I find it easier than running. I find running mind-numbingly boring. I am not a very good runner. I think this will be the last. I think two in a week is two more than I want to do in the rest of my life.”

Mike had tried to come in at four hours 52 minutes – the same time Jane ran it in 2002 – but in the end finished just a little too quick at four hours 47 minutes.

“I think Jane would have creased herself laughing,” he said. “It has been a most difficult challenge, but everyone has finished and everyone’s marathon time is respectable.”

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Beki also fought nausea and a dodgy knee cap to finish in four hours 30 minutes. She said: “I felt as if I hit the wall 10 miles early. I think she (my mum) would be proud and she’d think we were stupid – but do it any way.”

As well as the Tomlinsons, attention was also on Steve Prescott, the 38-year-old former St Helens and Hull FC star who has been on an eight-day endurance challenge, with former Great Britain rugby league captain Paul Sculthorpe, including the Paris Marathon, cycling to Calais and battling 10ft waves to kayak across the English Channel.

Steve, who was diagnosed with a rare form of stomach cancer in 2006 and given months to live, has been raising money for the Steve Prescott Foundation, which he set up to support Christie’s Hospital in Manchester, where he has been treated, and Try Assist, formerly the Rugby Football League Benevolent Fund.

Steve, who finished in four hours and 23 minutes, said it had been an “incredible journey.”

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Among the many inspiring tales of endeavour is also that of Claire Lomas – for whom the end of the race could still be weeks away.

Claire, 32, from Eye Kettleby, near Melton Mowbray, was paralysed from the chest down five years ago after a freak accident at the Osberton horse trials.

She was told it was unlikely she would ever walk again – but slowly she was making her way round the course yesterday, the first person in the UK to be fitted with a robotic “skeleton”, which allows her to stand upright and walk.

Every week she has been training with the revolutionary system, which she likens to Wallace and Gromit’s “wrong trousers”, at Cylone Technologies at Ottringham, near Hull. It is both physically and mentally exhausting – Claire has to concentrate on every step she takes, shifting her weight and tilting her pelvis so that motion sensors round her waist and on her feet detect changes in balance and the four motors strapped to her hips knees and ankles do the walking for her.

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She is absolutely determined to finish the course no matter how long it takes. One problem could be the weather – she has never done it in the rain and the machine is not water-proof.

Talking to the Yorkshire Post from a bus shelter yesterday afternoon with the rain beginning to come down, she said she was “about knackered” but delighted to have doubled her personal previous best of a mile. She said: “It has been amazing – there is nothing else quite like it. It could take a couple of weeks, maybe a bit more, but we’ve got loads of people coming and that makes a big difference.

“I’ll take each day as it comes – I can’t say what I am going to do, because I don’t know what my body will be like.”

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