Just occasionally, something can happen in your life that changes it forever.

That something happened to Charlie Gorman and, happily for the 37-year-old tax technologist, it was something that was a force for good. So much so that she is now a keen member of Stroud Athletic Club having never previously done any sport at all.

The married mum-of-two takes up the story.

“There was a presentation at work, it was given by Josephine Bush, an ultra marathon runner.

“She was a working mum, she was so inspiring, an incredible lady. She said it was all about using your ‘dead’ time positively.

“I thought, ‘Right, that’s it, I’m not going to have a lie-in this weekend, I’m going to do a Parkrun’.”

So she did, and she completed it in “something like 34 minutes”.

That was back in 2019 and Gorman admitted: “I had to stop halfway round, I had to walk a bit.”

These days she can run a 5K some 10 minutes quicker and much of that improvement can be put down to joining Stroud AC.

Not that she joined the club straight away after doing that first Parkrun.

“I always thought you had to be a really good runner to join the club and I wasn’t,” she said.

So what made her change her mind?

“I was taking part in a run in Woodchester Park,” she explained. “I’d started walking up a massive hill – I call it strategic walking! – and I got talking to Ryan Major who was also doing the run.

“He suggested I join his running group at Stroud.”

That group is now run by Stroud AC chairman Jim Adams and it’s fair to say that Gorman has not looked back over the past three years.

She’s preparing to run her fourth Stroud Half Marathon on Sunday and while she won’t reveal her target time, she did confirm that she was “hoping for a significant PB”.

Her current PB is one hour, 55 minutes which she set last year and she said: “I just want to get faster.”

And if hard work counts for anything, Gorman certainly will get faster because she trains four or five times a week, with two of those sessions starting at 6am alongside her training partner and fellow Stroud AC member Ieuan Mogridge.

Gorman’s husband Matthew is also a member of Stroud AC these days and he too will be running the Stroud Half on Sunday, a race that starts at Marling School at 9am.

He turns 39 on Saturday – so no birthday cake for him on his big day! – and his wife expects him to complete in around one hour, 40.

The Stroud Half, which usually attracts some 2,000 entries, is one of the bigger events on the Gloucestershire sporting calendar and this year’s race is just that little bit more special because the first one took place 40 years ago in 1982.

“I think it’s one of the best half marathons because people expect it to be hilly and it isn’t, it’s quite flat and beautiful,” said Gorman, who lives in Cashes Green.

“The people really come out to support it. There’s one long hill up to Whitmister and they know that’s the toughest bit; they line the hill, it’s amazing.

“And if you’re running in Stroud kit they really cheer you on.”

The Gormans won’t be running the race together but in years to come they may well be running with their two children, nine-year-old Esme and Noah, who has just turned seven.

The Foxmoor Primary School pupils have already run the odd junior Parkrun in Stonehouse.

Stonehouse was where Charlie Gorman ran her first Parkrun – she ran it with her good friend Joe Phillips, who has since joined her at Stroud AC where, says Gorman, he is “smashing it”.

Gorman, an asthmatic, has been smashing down barriers of her own, of course.

She has already run an ultra marathon and ran the Virtual London Marathon with fellow Stroud AC member Russ Simpson.

The ultra marathon was in Badminton and she completed in around six hours.

“It was about 50K which is about as short as you can get for it to be classed as an ultra,” she laughed.

One of her next targets is to run a road marathon, something you certainly wouldn’t bet against her achieving some time soon.

So what is her favourite distance?

“The half marathon,” she said without a moment’s thought. “You don’t have to run too hard and it’s over quite quickly!”

And what about the lady who inspired her to take up running in the first place?

“I sent her a message not so long ago,” said Gorman, “I just said ‘thank you’.”