Ithought Imight die, but Ijust made it to one mile. Ichecked on my GPS. There was no other option but to stop. Iowed that to my wife

their world record progression. Hill is not bitter. When I interviewed him before Glasgow 2014 we spoke of how the road-running authorities consider the Belgian course to have been as much as a kilometre short. It had been measured as the average of five cars on the course, inadmissible today. “However, the IAAF [the world governing body] doesn’t want to know,” he said. His was still the era of amateurism. When Hill won Boston in 1970, he recalls: “There was no prize money at all. I got a medal, a bowl of beef stew, and a laurel wreath that agriculture regulations wouldn’t let me take out of America.”

Last year’s winner set a course record, collecting $200,000.

Maintaining his 52-year streak, which until he was 70 averaged seven miles per day, has been achieved in the face of incredible hardship. He fractured his sternum in a car crash in 1993, and was lucky it was not fatal. “That was probably the worst,” he acknowledged. In 2014 he had a biopsy for prostate cancer on the Tuesday, but trained every day of that week, and raced a hilly 10k on the Sunday in 57 minutes.

“They later injected me with radioactive iodine, which killed the cancer. I ran through it – no pain at all. I’ve now been signed off.” He has also survived bladder cancer. It may sound as if the inspirational Ron Hill has had his money’s worth from the NHS, yet I reckon the balance remains in his favour.

“I have had some wonderful emails this week, from people who say I have inspired them into the healthy habit of running. So I have probably saved the NHS a fortune!”

His continuous challenge – the equivalent of more than halfway to the moon – is over but, as he prepared to take his quarter-mile walk last night, Hill vowed: “I shall get back. It might take a long time, but it would destroy me if I could never run again.”