A writer who composes couplets in praise of singlets was yesterday appointed poet in residence for the Great North Run, Britain's most popular half-marathon.
And while Andy Croft ponders his feet and metres in preparation for this year's event in October, a fellow poet, Clare Pollard, will be cutting and shaping a poem created after a residency last month in a hairdressing salon in Durham.
Both posts are funded by New Writing North, the literary development agency for the north of England.
"Running is a good time for rehearsing ideas in your head," said Mr Croft, who has completed 30 half marathons and plays for a hopeless five-a-side soccer team (Methuselah's Losers) in Middlesbrough.
"There is a terrific rhythm which helps you do the scramble-shuffle of words, ideas and feelings. It's a bit like doing the ironing or decorating - it liberates one side of the brain. You look spaced out, and perhaps you are."
Mr Croft, 43, said that the media tended to concentrate either on the star athletes at the front of the run or those in funny costumes at the back, but there were 40,000 entrants for the 13.1 mile course along the Tyne from Newcastle to South Shields. His aim will be to celebrate the enthusiasts in the middle who train, sweat and try not to give up. "It's about doing it, getting up off the couch and having some pain," he added.
Although he will not be composing during the run (which might destroy his chance of beating his best time of 1 hour 49 mins), Mr Croft, a literary critic and author of 18 football stories, hopes to produce running quotes for T-shirts and the Tyneside metro, a schools poetry pack, and an epic work to mark the day.
"It needs to be a big poem for a big event - something running to several hundred lines. A short poem like a haiku would be bit silly, and I'm long winded by nature."
He hopes the poem will be heard on Radio 3 or used for a film about the 20-year-old run.
Meanwhile, staff at the Toni and Guy salon in Durham are preparing to hear the new poem by Ms Pollard, a Cambridge undergraduate, which will be premiered among the salon's lacquers and lotions on June 3.
"I was really worried about the residency," said Wendy Buttleman, the salon's manager. "I'm not really into poetry at all, but I found it really interesting. She spoke to all the staff and clients and seemed to fit in everywhere. And she helped make the tea, do the laundry and sweep the floor."
