This weekend I made history as I was one of the lucky 5,000 runners, picked at random from almost 43,000 entrants, to take part in the National Lottery Olympic Park Run. The five mile run around the Olympic Park passes many of the iconic venues that will be used for the Olympic Games, including the Velodrome and Aquatics Centre, before finishing inside the Olympic Stadium.

After a week of unusually good weather and record high temperatures for March, I woke on Saturday to overcast skies and a drop in the temperature. This made for good running conditions with only the wind on the exposed parts of the course likely to be a nuisance. Having made my way to the park on public transport and queued for 45 minutes to get through security I finally got my first look at the Olympic Park. Walking down Stratford Walk, past the Aquatics Centre, I made my way inside the Olympic Stadium to soak up the atmosphere before the event started.

Having been entertained inside the stadium by dance troupe Flawless and electronic string quartet Escala, I made my way outside to the assembly area and start line. Even 50 minutes before the start, the assembly area was beginning to fill up fast, so I quickly donned my racing shoes (to which I had attached my timing chip the night before!) and official race t-shirt, and entered the assembly area to start my warm up. This turned out to be a very good decision as I managed to get near the front and with 20 minutes to go everybody was bunched so tight that you couldn’t even move your arms.

At two o’clock on the dot, the race was started by Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrice, who also took part in the run. Being only four rows back from the start line, I was able to get away quickly and settled into a comfortable pace. I spent the first half mile dodging past those runners who had been over ambitious at the start and the mix of celebrities and former Olympians, such as Nell McAndrew and Roger Black, who had assembled on the first row of the start line for the race.

 As I past the first mile marker in 5:25, I found myself in 8^th place at the back of a six man group, with 1^st and 2^nd just 20 m up the road. Over the second mile the 1^st placed runner and eventual winner began to pull away, while the 2^nd placed runner dropped back into the group of six that I was still hanging onto the back of. Although the group was averaging 5:20 minute miles, this wasn’t fast enough for some of the runners who wanted to try and chase down the leader, and so the group broke up just after the two mile marker.

This made the next two and a half miles difficult as I tried to maintain the pace while now being exposed to the full force of the wind. Nevertheless I pushed on and passed a couple of runners who were beginning to slow, but also lost a couple of places to faster runners that had been slowed up at the bunched start. With spectators not allowed on the course, I was cheered on by the construction workers who had been roped into marshalling the runners.

After looping around the Olympic Stadium, the course dropped down into the service tunnels underneath the stadium. Over a minute of running through the service tunnels and a sharp right-hand turn lead me into the stadium and onto the track in 8^th position with 300 m to go. Even with only 15,000 people inside the stadium, a fraction of its capacity, the atmosphere they created was amazing as they cheered me and the rest of the runners home.

This spurred me on and as I rounded the final bend onto the home straight I began my sprint finish. Too quick for some, including my mum with her camera, I passed two runners in the last 100 m to cross both the race and Olympic Stadium finish line in sixth place with a time of 26:37. To have run in the Olympic Stadium and been one of the first runners across the finish line was an incredible experience and has left me with memories that will last a lifetime.