The 30th BUPA Great North Run takes place tomorrow, with some of the world’s finest long distance athletes starting alongside thousands of fun runners intent on raising money for charity in the North-East’s biggest annual sporting event. Paul Fraser reflects on the last 30 years.

In 1980, Brendan Foster started work on turning ideas he had into reality, sending a short letter of request to Northumbria Police in the hope it would lead to something special. ‘I’m planning to organise a fun run’, it read.

Nearly 30 years later, with the stories from individuals who have taken part fast approaching the one-million mark, Foster could not have imagined his dream was going to become the biggest halfmarathon in the world.

If the plans were being put in place now, Foster’s request to organise an event requiring a motorway to be closed for a race would be unlikely to find its way to the local traffic department.

Thankfully, 29 races later and attracting around 50,000 entrants a time, the Great North Run has become such a British institution that there are no such hurdles to overcome.

Every year is bigger and better than the last, having grown from an event which started with 12,264 entrants on Sunday, June 28, 1981, attempting to run from Newcastle to South Shields sea front.

From the outset it was Britain’s largest road run and heralded immediate justification to the men, alongside Foster, who were responsible for starting a North-East institution.

Foster had invited four – John Caine, Max Coleby, Dave Roberts and John Trainor – along to discuss his hopes of bringing a taste of New Zealand to the region.

They went on to develop the race, having initially bounced ideas off one another over a couple of beers and a sandwich in room 320 of the Five Bridges Hotel, which is now the Swallow Hotel in Gateshead.

“When we arrived, we didn’t know what it was all about,”

recalled Coleby.

“But you could see in his eyes the enthusiasm he had for the idea.

“When Brendan gets locked on to something it generally happens.”

Arranging the meeting was the first step Foster took towards his goal, which was to recreate something he had experienced in New Zealand.

He was convinced that Tyneside could host something similar to the Round The Bays race which has become such a longstanding tradition in Auckland.

During his three months in New Zealand, he had come to realise that Britain was not taking advantage of the first running boom that was gripping the rest of the world.

There were many fun runs, particularly in the United States, and Foster’s experiences and love for New Zealand sparked him into action.

He had seen the Round The Bays race grow rapidly from just 1,200 participants to tens of thousands. Today’s figure is estimated to be more than 70,000.

“With an inspirational picture of 30,000 people running along the road, it made a huge impact on me,” said Foster. “I had never seen anything like it.”

The bug had, well and truly, been caught.

Back in Room 320, the fiveman team was united in the belief that it could be done, and seven months later it was.

After leaving the Five Bridges’ that night, they all had things to think about.

Caine, with Coleby, tasked with planning the route, walked to his car and, instead of heading straight home, he decided to drive in different directions to see where 13.1 miles would take him.

Starting at the Tyne Bridge, he first found himself north at Morpeth, which had to be ruled out because there was already an established race there. Then he ended up at Chester-le-Street; a pronounced hill brought an end to that thought.

Then he headed east, to South Shields.

Caine said: “It didn’t feel right and then I made the dramatic drop to the sea front.

The impact hit me. I thought ‘wow.’ I had this big stretch of road ahead of me.”

Having convinced the rest of the team that this was the route, they had to decide on a name.

The Geordie 5000, the Tyne Race or even just the Newcastle-Shields Race had been mentioned.

Instead, drawing on comparisons to the A1, known as the Great North Road, Caine suggested it be named the Great North Run. “Just like that,” he said.

The first Great North Run was very much a local affair.

Mike McLeod, who won the first two, Jim Alder, Steve Cram and Foster raised the profile. Kevin Keegan, the England and Southampton captain and before his move to Newcastle, was persuaded by Foster to run, wearing a uniquely split shirt that had black and white down one half and red and white down the other.

From the moment Mike Neville, the former BBC presenter, fired the starting gun, the Great North Run was born.

The following year, 17,500 finishers was enough to earn it a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest road race in Europe, while in 1983 Keegan ran again, sparking a “contamination rule”

argument because he was a professional sportsman running in an amateur event.

Foster himself was one of the biggest casualties of the event 12 months later, when a calf injury prevented him from taking part in his fourth.

The 200,000 spectators who lined the streets to watch the action unfold more than made up for his absence on a personal note.

Since then the stars of the athletics scene have followed him on to the North-East stage, with many viewing the event as the perfect way to bring the curtain down on their season.

Steve Kenyon, who remains the last British man to win despite incredibly winning it a year after retirement, will certainly always be remembered, while great Kenyans like Benson Masya, Moses Tanui and Paul Tergat have since been followed on to the stage by reigning champion and two-time winner Martin Kel.

Paula Radcliffe, the last British female to win the event in 2003, is among a strong list of women to have succeeded in the last 30 years, with Portugal’s Jessica Augusto last year followed in the golden wake of the likes of Sonia O’Sullivan, Liz McColgan, Ingrid Kristiansen and Karen Goldhawk.

“It was always one of my favourite road races,” said McColgan, a 10,000m gold medallist at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo, who won the Great North Run in 1992, 1995 and 1996.

“There was an amazing atmosphere. At the start the elite runners would mix with the fun runners and the banter was absolutely brilliant.”

But while Foster and the team have been shocked by the calibre of runners who have taken part over the last three decades, he does not want to take anything away from what the original concept: a fun run.

The images of tens of thousands crossing the Tyne Bridge provide lasting memories, but the race itself has provided the platform for participants to raise money for charity.

Whether it is someone running “for my dad” or 20 soldiers from the King Edward VII’s Own Gurkhas raising cash for Leukaemia Research, as they did in 1986, there is a special place in the heart of everyone who takes part.

“The starting gun was like a blunderbuss, a massive noise, but it started what was one of the greatest sporting moments of my life,” recalled Sir Bobby Robson five years ago, when he was asked to reflect on the moment he started the race alongside Peter Reid in 1999.

“It was absolutely spectacular.

“There were runners of all ages, sizes and colours, all manner of dress. They just kept on coming and coming. I must say I was tickled pink to be a part of it.”

Tomorrow afternoon some will be satisfied with their time at the line, others who will be flagging and those just proud of their achievements, like hundreds of thousands have felt before.

But 30 years after the very first Great North Run, the race has plenty of distance left in it yet.