BEEN there, done that and got the T-shirt. Yes, I completed the Jane Tomlinson 2001 Run For All 10K, which I’d feared I might not manage, and did it in one hour, seven minutes and 23 seconds, which was a lot better than I’d hoped.

At this point you may say, what’s the big deal? More than 6,000 people took part; an awful lot of them did an awful lot better than me, some of whom appeared significantly older than I, and I noticed some who seemed to be carrying even more extra weight than me who were moving along quite nicely when I was struggling. Many of these people had poignant reasons for participating, or were raising massive amounts of cash for good causes.

But I hope you’ll bear with me if I tell a little of my tale, because it was, in a way, a big deal for me.

Almost exactly four years ago I suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon, which meant a very important muscle controlling and powering my left foot was divided neatly into two parts. It was sewed back together very successfully at York Hospital, but what really hit me wasn’t the operation or even the initial pain of the injury but being stuck on crutches for several months, unable to put weight on my left leg.

Not being a professional sportsman with access to top-class physiotherapy, when I finally got back on my feet I found I could walk more or less normally, though not as well as before and with occasional pain and discomfort. But run?

I didn’t have the strength or spring in my ankle to get on my toes and run as I had previously, although I could sort of shuffle at speed across the road to avoid traffic.

I was fairly resigned to never running properly again when earlier this year I found the spring seemed to be partly restored, and shortly afterwards an old friend who lives in the south suggested he might visit and do the Tomlinson 10K; would I like to do the same?

I hesitated, other friends warned me not to do it (or laughed at the thought!), but in a rush of blood to the head I signed up. I had about six weeks to get in shape, but ran into difficulties as I found my left leg was much thinner and less muscled than the right, for obvious reasons.

I must have been subconsciously putting more weight on the right while training and was soon out of action with a calf strain. I got going again, and did a circuit longer than the 10K a week before the event; trouble was, I probably walked nearly half the distance.

I was desperately nervous before Sunday’s run, fearing I wouldn’t make it round. But sometimes there’s comfort in being in a crowd, and I had no opportunity to start too fast in the jam at Knavesmire. I settled into a pace much steadier than my training efforts, and hit the riverbank on the way back before I had to start alternately running and walking; not through bursting lungs or leg pain, as in the training, but because my legs turned to jelly.

Maybe the fact my training was all in the cool early mornings and Sunday was pretty warm made a difference. Then I misjudged my “burst” for the finish – as did a woman just behind me, who cursed fluently when she realised there was still 1km to go. But finish I did.

Is there any wider moral to this? A couple of people I spoke to afterwards mused on taking part themselves. Did they think if I could do something like this, maybe they could too? It would be nice to think so. Meanwhile I’ll have a rest, but I mean to keep on using my rediscovered ability, even if London 2012 will probably have to get by without me.