Andy Croft was Poet in Residence on the Great North Run 2000 and has written a modern epic, a runner's version of the largest half-marathon in the world. Great North records, celebrates and gets under the sweaty skin of this extraordinary event.Runners, organisers, spectators, wheel-chair participants, paramedics, traffic police, the bands that play along the way, the months of training and preparation, the heroism (and some of the dottiness) of the Great North Run - all are included in this ambitious new work.