Joyce Matthews has a bucket list. Nothing too unusual about that, you might say, because a lot of people do.

But the thing that makes Joyce’s bucket list just that little bit different is that she wants to get everything ticked off by the time she is 50.

“I want to run the five big marathons,” said the Cirencester Athletics Club member. “I want to run London, New York, Tokyo, Boston and Chicago before I’m 50,” adding with a laugh, “then I’m done!”

All being well she’ll get the first one out of the way when she competes in the delayed London Marathon, although it will be the first time that she has run over 26.2 miles.

“I’ve run lots of halfs and I’ve done 20-mile training runs,” said the 45-year-old mother-of-two, who is looking forward to the big day on Sunday 4th October.

Joyce, who was born in Tanzania, has always liked running. She spent her formative years in the country of her birth and then Kenya before moving with her family to the US – her dad was an airline engineer.

She’s been in this country since the back end of the last century – “I went to university in Plymouth and that’s where I met my husband Peter,” she said – and moved to Cirencester in the mid-noughties.

She joined Cirencester AC some eight years or so ago and added: “I love running, I always have, and Cirencester is a great club, friendly and very supportive. I’ve always wanted to run the London Marathon.

“I’ve always entered the London Marathon ballot and not been accepted but now I have, it’s brilliant.

“I can’t wait to experience it, it’s an amazing event.”

So, what sort of time is she hoping to go round in?

“I want to do sub-four hours,” she said, and there is every prospect of her getting somewhere near her target if you look at her half-marathon times.

“I ran a personal best 1:38 three years ago at the Worcester Half which isn’t too bad, it’s alright,” she said. “And I ran 1.44 in Amsterdam in October 2018.”

She also ran 1.38 in the London Vitality Big Half at the beginning of March which she was “quite pleased with”.

It certainly all adds up for Joyce, who works as an accountant in Minchinhampton, and she’ll certainly be able to count on the support of her family when she runs around the streets of London.

“We’re all going up the night before,” said Matthews. “We’re doing it properly, staying in a hotel overnight. Then we’ll go out and get it done!”

And once she has, that will leave just four of the big five marathons to complete!