Sara's Nevada Run in Las Vegas

Apart from a couple of niggles and a trip to the physio, my training had gone fairly well. I’d mostly stuck to my schedule of running three times per week for nine weeks. Whilst I go to yoga classes regularly and enjoy walking, I hadn’t done any vigorous exercise for years and my legs took a while to catch onto my new regime.

I can’t recommend the Couch to 5K programme highly enough for running novices like me. Week by week, the podcasts take you from an initial run of 60 seconds all the way up to running for 30 minutes non-stop. Something on Day 1, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever achieve.

The day I received my Amy May Trust t-shirt in the post, was also the day I was due to step-up from an 8- to 20-minute run. I proudly wore the t-shirt and thought of Amy and the reason I was attempting the challenge to keep me ploughing on. It certainly got me through and I felt very emotional by the end. My final training run, a few days before we left for Vegas, was 28 minutes, so I still had a little way to go to get to 5K.

On our first day in Sin City, we headed to the Race Expo. It was now official. I got my race number and the tag for my shoe and started to feel like a ‘real’ runner. On race day itself, we indulged in a hearty Vegas-style buffet lunch for extra energy. As soon as we’d got dressed in our kit and made our way to the start, I started to feel increasingly nervous. I just wanted to get going.