As many people know, sport in all its guises is about putting our bodies on the line. Jane Tomlinson did that in a way that broke the basic rule that an athlete has to respect the body. She couldn’t. There wasn’t time. Her body was condemned by a cancer expert telling her she had months to live.

That was the start, not the end, of what made Jane extraordinary. Her nurse, Belinda Archer, told Tomlinson not to waste time looking, or even praying, for a cure because there was none. Archer had run a London Marathon and she saw no reason to discourage Jane from trying.

She did it, three times. She also ran the New York City Marathon, and completed the Ironman Triathlon, cycled from Lands End to John O’Groats, then Rome to home, then 4,200 miles across America. Her cause - her excuse – raised nearly £2m for medical charities.

In 40 years of covering sport around the world, I never met a braver example – man or woman – of unconquerable spirit. To be told the end is months away, to start with no practical experience a marathon on the Jane Tomlinson scale, is beyond sport.

I will never forget our first contact. Cancer Research UK gave The Sunday Times her number, and I called from a boat anchored near the Greek site of Olympia to ask if Jane was well enough to consider an interview. Forty-five minutes later, my battery almost expired, and I had begun to know Jane.

I asked if pushing her body where it had never gone before was an extreme alternative to sitting around waiting for death. Silence for 15 seconds. Then she answered: “That’s exactly why I’m doing it – I was reasonably well before the cancer, now I’m poorly, but fitter in other ways. Going out and facing the challenge is me doing something rather than waiting around and feeling sorry for myself.”

The Tomlinsons, husband Mike and children Rebecca, Suzanne and Steven, invite any of you to run for Jane. In 2004, The Sunday Times entered 50 readers in the London Marathon, but all Jane asks beyond her grave is that people run the Leeds 10K race on Sunday, June 22. This year, it raised a total of £500,000.

It will be her annual legacy. A personal legacy was collected earlier this month when young Steven received Jane’s posthumous CBE from Prince Charles. “Your mum really deserved this,” said the prince. And the boy, 10 years old, was too polite to say he already knew as much.

Jane was 5ft 2in, 7½st and had cancer in seven areas of her bones. She sometimes put off chemotherapy to go the extra miles. She was a mother, wife, paediatric radiographer, charity campaigner and more.

I never told her – there simply wasn’t time – that she helped me to finally understand GK Chesterton’s meaning when he wrote: “Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live, taking the form of a readiness to die.”

LEEDS 10K RUN

To enter the 2008 Leeds 10K: Jane Tomlinson’s ‘Run For All’, on Sunday, June 22, please visit www.runforall.com

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