Mike Dorey is ready to run through the pain barrier on Sunday.

That’s because the 48-year-old Stroud and District Athletic Club runner is taking part in his first ever marathon – and as marathon debuts go they don’t come much bigger than the London Marathon.

Running 26.2 miles is a challenge for the most experienced distance runner – especially if it’s going to be hot, hot, hot in the capital as predicted – and Dorey freely admits that he is taking a giant leap into the unknown.

“I’ve never run more than 20 miles,” he said. “I’ve done three training runs over that distance and I ran the Gloucester 20-miler the other week.”

So how did he get on?

“It nearly killed me,” he said of the Gloucester race. “I suffered really badly with stomach cramps from mile eight.

“I was in so much pain and I didn’t think I’d finish.”

But finish he did in just under three hours which, he said, was “quite respectable”.

Indeed it was and even though he has found the 20-mile training runs just as tough they have given him a belief that all will be well on the big day.

“They’ve given me confidence because I know I can dig deep when I’m having a bad experience,” he said.

“When I’ve finished I’ve thought, ‘Crikey that was hard’ and then I think, ‘But I’ve still got to find another six miles in London’.

“But you do find a way.”

Dorey found his way to this part of the world when he was 14 after moving to Gloucestershire from Bournemouth.

He has always loved his sport and in his younger days was a keen footballer, playing for Maxi Prest in the Gloucester Sunday League and for Stratton United in the Cirencester League.

“I used to play in goal until my eyesight started to go,” he laughed, “then they moved into defence.”

These days he is a very keen golfer and he’s pretty good at it too, because he plays off nine and is vice-captain at Minchinhampton Old Course.

“They say that once you get into single figures that you become a proper golfer but I’m not convinced by that,” he said.

His love of all things football – he has played a lot of five-a-side in recent years – and golf would suggest that he has come into running late in life but in fact that is not the case at all.

“It’s always been a lifetime ambition of mine to run the London Marathon,” said Dorey, who runs the village shop and post office in Eastcombe.

“I tried to get in it two or three times through the ballot 20 or so years ago but then I picked up a knee injury and gave up running.”

Dorey had joined Stroud AC by that time – he was a member for about six months first time around – and the knee injury was sustained in the ever-popular Stroud Half Marathon.

“I hurt it in the first mile,” he said. “I should have stopped but I kept going and I crawled over the line.

“But the injury meant my running career came to an abrupt halt.”

So what made him decide to give it another go some two decades later?

“Last year I sat down and watched the London Marathon on TV and it brought a lump to my throat.

“It made me realise that I really did want to try and run it.”

With his mind made up, the first hurdle he had to clear was to find out whether his knee would allow him to run over such a long distance.

“I went and saw Sarah Clatworthy, who is a sports massage therapist in Bisley,” said Dorey. “She’s extremely knowledgeable. She took one look at my knee, rubbed it, told me what the problem was and said she’d sort it.”

With his fitness sorted, the second hurdle was to get a place in this year’s race.

He missed out on the ballot but was given a place by Children With Cancer UK, the charity fighting childhood cancer.

So with those two boxes ticked he started his preparations for this year’s London Marathon.

“I started running three or four miles last August,” said Dorey. “I was running very gingerly but I was pain free and I thought, ‘This is a miracle’.”

Running three or four miles, although laudable, wasn’t going to cut it around the streets of London, however.

“I started taking it more seriously,” Dorey said. “I was running on my own but although I was doing okay I was hating every minute of it.”

That’s where his friend Sarah Clatworthy came to his aid again.

“She’s a member of Stroud Athletic Club and suggested I join the club so that I would have people to train with,” Dorey said.

Not that that was an easy decision.

“I was petrified about running with strangers at a running club,” he admitted. “But then I thought, ‘It’s either that or don’t run the marathon’.”

And from that moment Dorey hasn’t really looked back.

He’s stopped playing five-a-side so that he could concentrate fully on the London Marathon and although he’ll initially say “just to finish” when you ask him what time he is hoping to go round in on Sunday, he has loftier ambitions than that.

“I’d like to do it in under four hours, that would be fantastic,” he said. “Three hours, 59 minutes would suit me nicely.”

That would be some achievement of course and he will be cheered all the way round by his wife Debs and sons Jack, 21, and Tom, 15.

Debs has caught the running bug too and completed the Couch to 5K in December.

She is now a member of Stroud AC and dad is hoping that young Tom, a pupil at Thomas Keble School, will join as well.

“He’s a very talented runner,” said dad, who is equally proud of older son Jack who plays football for Chalford.

And while he is clearly proud of them, it’s fair to say that the two boys will be just as proud of dad when he crosses that finishing line on Sunday.