All marathon runners are heroes, but Clare Foreman is more heroic than most.

Despite falling and cutting her head badly at the 18-mile stage of Sunday's London Marathon, plucky Clare carried on running and finished in a time of 3hrs 52mins 40secs.

“I’m sitting in an ambulance on my way to St Thomas’s,” said Clare, from Lordswood, when the Messenger telephoned her after the race.

“I slipped on the road after a storm in the Canary Wharf area. There was lots of blood all over my face and I felt a bit woozy.

“I wasn’t sure if the St John ambulance would let me continue, but I decided to finish and got away as quickly as I could.

“The crowd were terrific. They could see I was a wounded soldier but kept encouraging me to complete the race, calling out my name, which they could read from my T-shirt.

“I could hear them calling: 'You can do it Clare’.”

As soon as she passed the finishing line, St John Ambulance officials insisted that she should be taken to hospital to be stitched. She was met there by husband Stuart, and children Jessica, 13, and Sam, who is nearly eight.

“I feel both terrible, because of my headache, and terrific at my achievement, all at the same time,” she said.

For more pictures and stories from this year's London Marathon see Friday's print edition of the Medway Messenger.