We did the dash, the Doughnut Dash!

WELL Lord Coe, it's little more than 12 hours to go until the opening ceremony of the XXX London Olympiad - I didn't know Fosters were jumping on the bandwagon!

For me, I've got 48 hours to go but there's no flash opening ceremony choreographed by Danny Boyle featuring a cast of thousands and a spectacular lighting of the Olympic flame - just me dressed in a luminous yellow marshal's jacket, clutching a megaphone and nursing 300 Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts in front of around 100 or so hungry runners!

Today was meant to be the start of a second edition of the Round the British Isles in 80 races - beginning with a 5km run in Hyde Park and then a mountain run near Oswestry tomorrow near to the birthplace of Dr William Penny Brookes, the founding father of the modern Olympic Games.

Sadly, that ambitious project faltered despite several months' planning, so instead the Doughnut Dash was born.

It's quite a small beer, low key fund-raiser. If we raise close to £1,000 that will be good, and the event has whipped up a fair deal of publicity already. I've managed to get articles about the race in a few publications, and then on Wednesday morning I was interviewed on BBC Radio Solent's breakfast show by Julian Clegg, which was neat.

I haven't met Julian for a few years, but I used to go on his morning show pretty regularly during my time working for the Southern Daily Echo, and also during the 2007 running challenge. I was asked by the producer to come up with a song to play at the end of the interview about the Doughnut Dash.

Throwing the challenge out to friends on Facebook, they came up with a variety of answers including anything by The Jam, "Stuck in the middle with you", "The Doughnut Song" by Tori Amos, "Jammin'" by Bob Marley and "We did the dash, the Doughnut Dash to the Monster Mash"!

So, I've got a day of rushing round on Saturday. There's water to collect from Sainsbury's and hopefully Tesco's - that was a bit of a farago trying to get a donation of bottled water from Tesco's which required a formal letter and I've got to collect a gift voucher to then spend on water!

Friends have got race materials such as marshal's bibs, megaphones, sign posting, then it's a quick trip to Alton Sports in Eastleigh where they are kindly donating some goodie bags to give to the runners, and then I've got to find 400 safety pins! Bet Lord Coe has never been faced with that task before.

Finally, the doughnuts have to be collected at 9.30am on race morning. I'm just hoping that the weather holds good on Sunday morning and the rain stays away.

For anyone picking up this blog, we are taking entries on the day from 10am, for an 11am start. More details at www.doughnutdash.co.uk - it should be a good 'un.

Right, where's that North Korean flag?!!!