Gill Begnor (nee Stonehewer, KHSW 1976-1983) set a new world record in the year's London Marathon for the fastest woman dressed as a bottle!

Gill writes: "I did it! Yesterday I broke the world record for the fastest marathon run by a woman dressed as a bottle and, as there is currently no registered male record, I am now officially the fastest bottle in the world. The low point of the race for me was the last 22.2 miles(!) – every inch of which my legs were telling me that I must be crazy if I thought they were going to run for 5 hours carrying an 11.5lb costume. Crossing the finishing line wasn’t quite the moment of elation I’d hoped for either, as I was too tall to fit under the overhead boards, so the crowds were treated to the hugely amusing sight of a 7 foot beer bottle being knocked over and finishing the marathon on its knees! But I did it, knocking just over 5 minutes off the record and giving my family and friends who were tracking me an extremely nerve-wracking 4 hours 54 minutes and 36 seconds!

The most emotional part of the race was when a man took my hand as he ran past me and said ‘My mother died of leukaemia. Thank you for what you are doing.’ I’m thrilled to have raised over £2300 so far for this wonderful charity which is making such a difference to survival rates for blood cancers. But we’re not there yet so please if you haven’t already, visit my website www.HookyPint.co.uk and help us save more lives. I can promise you that there is not an inch of my body that doesn’t hurt today so I have suffered enough to earn every penny you can spare!"