EIGHT years ago, Alyson Dixon’s preparations for the Great North Run were interrupted by a phone call. An official from British Athletics wanted to tell her she had been selected in the GB squad for the first time, and the Sunderland Stroller thought her career had reached its peak.

Fast forward to this weekend, and when Dixon takes to the Great North Run start line on Newcastle’s central motorway, she will do so as the leading female long-distance runner in the country.

She has competed at the Olympic Games in Rio and Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Last month, she led the World Championship marathon in London for more than an hour-and-a-half before eventually finishing in 18th position.

She will start tomorrow’s half-marathon targeting a top-five finish, and while the presence of Kenyan duo Vivian Cheruiyot and Mary Keitany mean a win is unlikely, the Wearsider has still come an awfully long way since, by her own admission, she was “finishing in the bottom three or four in the Harriers League”.

“It was literally this day in 2009 when I got the phone call to say I’d made my first GB team,” said Dixon. “Just to make that team, I thought that was it – ‘this is as high as I’m going to get’.

“Not long after that, I did the Daegu World Championships with a broken foot. I pretty much knew it was broken, but in my head, I was thinking, ‘This is probably going to be my only chance to run a World Championships, so I’m going to do it no matter what’.

“There was more disappointment after that at the Commonwealth Games, and in 2014, I was ready to say, ‘That’s it – I’ve pretty much done everything I wanted to do’. At that point, the Olympics was still a dream that I didn’t think could happen.

“I was ready to walk away from the sport, but luckily Paula (Radcliffe) came on board and helped build my confidence back up. From then, I’ve not looked back. I’ve got faster, I’ve made the Olympics and I’ve made another Worlds. It’s strange looking back and thinking where I’ve come from in these last four or five years.”

The 39-year-old’s rate of progress has been remarkable, culminating in last month’s dramatic run in London.

Racing against the leading runners in the world, Dixon went to the front at around 10km and spent the best part of ten miles leading the field. Roared on by the huge home crowds, she was eventually reeled in with around six miles to go, but while she was unable to maintain her pace for the full marathon distance, she insists she would not change the way she ran.

“At one point, I thought I must have taken a wrong turn or everyone else must have stopped because I was expecting them to come past me so much sooner,” said Dixon. “But I wasn’t running a fast pace. I was just above PB pace, and running what I thought I was well capable of.

“Because it was a Championship, they didn’t want to run as fast, but it was still a jog compared to their standard. I pushed the pace, and learned that I wasn’t quite capable of holding that. But if you don’t try, you never know.”

Having performed with credit at both the Worlds and Olympics in the last 14 months, Dixon has achieved two of her biggest ambitions. The next target is a major medal, and next year’s Commonwealth Games and European Championships are likely to provide her best opportunity of getting onto the podium.

“I’ve got unfinished business with the Commonwealths, and it is my big aim for next year,” she said. “At the minute, I have the fastest English marathon, but it doesn’t just come down to that on the English team selection.

“We’ve got three girls I know of running in Berlin, so they could potentially knock me down and put me into fourth. That team is selected on October 1, so hopefully it will be a nice trip to the Gold Coast next April.

“If I can run the time I did in the London Marathon, or maybe even a bit faster, then there’s a chance of a medal there. When you look at the past Commonwealth Games marathon results, they’re generally not run in fast times. You don’t get the fastest Kenyans out there. I could possibly go into that and really target something.”