"It got to ten o'clock in the evening and I was feeling a little tired and I said: 'We'll finish there and have half an hour in front of the TV.

"I got up to walk to the TV and I was about to sit down when it went off in my head. There were lots of strange lights. The left-hand side of my face had gone. My wife worked out what had happened."

Three days before his 45th birthday, Martin, a senior lecturer at Durham University, had had a stroke.

It had come out of the blue – "My parents haven't had a stroke and my sister hasn't had a stroke" – and it had targeted somebody at a relatively young age.

Even now, 15 months later, Martin still doesn't not know the cause, despite a series of tests. Stress, possibly. He can't be sure.

A stroke in the left-hand side of his brain affected his speech and left him with a semi-paralysed right hand and a weak right leg.

Yet he is determined to keep going, a life strategy that extends to his running.

A keen runner and footballer before the stroke, he is aiming to shake off an ankle injury to line up on Sunday for his first race since that traumatic day in May 2007.

Appropriately it is in Sheffield, where he spent his first 18 years, went to the former Norfolk School and where his parents Fred and Shirley and sister Lesley still live.

Martin is joining the BUPA Great Yorkshire Run in aid of Different Strokes, a charity that helps younger people who have suffered strokes.

"When I spotted this event back in January I thought it was a good thing to go for and being a sort of fan of Sheffield Wednesday, it will be nice to go out to Hillsborough and run under the stand!"

But it won't be easy. "When I run, it's a bit of a challenge to say the least."

Running with a semi-paralysed arm can be uncomfortable and there is the problem with the leg. "I get through 10k reasonably well and the furthest I've done is eight miles. That's a bit of a stagger. But I'm not giving up on being in the Great North Run (a half marathon) in October."

He hopes to get round in about an hour. "Before the stroke I was much quicker. I was in quite decent shape as far as running and football were concerned."

Martin admits he finds it hard to come to terms with the stroke, which saw him spend five to six weeks in hospital. "I think about it on a daily basis."

Yet his refusal to let it get the better of him saw him back at his office at the Department of Economics and Finance at Durham within four months. He is now preparing to throw himself into a new term.

And he determined to show some of his Sheffield steel for the sake of his family, wife Catherine, and children Andrew, 15, and Jonathan, 12, at home in Newcastle.

"I certainly feel unlucky but you just have to keep going. If I can do the 10k run then I'm sure other people in a similar situation can do it."




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