Last Sunday, at the precise moment we in church were beginning to think about The Body, our new series on Christ being the head of the church Shelley Dring was exactly 101.3 miles away as one of 57,000 fitness fiends lining up on the start line for the 40th running of the Great North Run.
Over the years the event which began in 1981 with a field of just 12,000 runners has grown and grown and is in fact currently the world’s biggest half marathon.
The GNR’s official website tells us that Shelley completed the course in a fraction over two hours and that she came 10,396th. In other words she finished in a faster time than it normally takes me to walk to and from church and ahead of 46,604 other competitors!
Besides all the obvious benefits of taking part in such an amazing events, and like the majority of the runners Shelley was also raising money for a charity. In this case it was the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. Her appeals page is still open and you can find a link to it by clicking HERE
Well done Shelley, maybe next year MBC can get a team together and we can all go on an outreach mission to Tyneside. 