GREAT EASTERN RUN 2017: Clarke wheels his way to another win

Matt Clarke wins the wheelchair race. Picture: David Lowndes

The 40 year-old civil servant from Scunthorpe completed the 13.1 miles in 59mins 7secs to pick up the winner’s prize of £100 plus trophy.

Clarke has a PB of 51.36, set at the Great North Run in 2014, but knew he’d get nowhere near that today.

“There are too many tight twists and turns for wheelchair racers to set really fast times here,” he said. “But I love this race because it’s such a flat course and there is fantastic support all the way round.

“I won it two years ago in 57.59 the first time I came here and would have been back last year but unfortunately I was ill.”

Clarke first took up wheelchair racing in 2008, six years after losing both legs when he broke his back in a motorbike accident.

His first half-marathon race that year was the Great North Run and he was ninth in 62.35. His first marathon followed the year after (2009) when he placed 25th in the London Marathon in 2:17:01.

He now has a PB for the marathon of 1:42:20, which he did in 2014 in Berlin.