Chris Davis has a special affinity with the Tewkesbury Half Marathon.

It was where he ran his “first big race” in 2011 and where he set his personal best time of one hour 36 minutes four years later.

Injuries have restricted him to just the two runs in the Tewkesbury showpiece but he is fired up and ready for this year’s race on Sunday, May 14, when he is hoping to add to those special memories.

“It’s my favourite race,” said the Gloucester AC runner. “It’s a good, fast course. There aren’t too many hills and you can get a good time there.”

The 39-year-old, who lives in Gloucester, came late into the sport, only taking it up at the start of 2011.

“I found an app to track myself walking during my lunch hour at work,” said the IT expert. “Then I started running during my lunch hour – I was doing five miles – and then I started picking up the distances at the weekends.”

That was in 2010 and at the start of 2011 he felt confident enough to enter the Chedworth road race which is run over four miles.

“I didn’t have any proper running kit or running shoes,” he remembers. “I finished in 33 minutes 14 seconds and I was walking towards the end. Somebody said that I ought to pace myself better and I took that on board.”

Davis was a fast learner because three months later he was running the Tewkesbury Half marathon complete with new running kit and shoes.

“I ran two hours four seconds and I was very happy with that,” he said. “I paced myself and didn’t walk at all.”

By now Davis, who in those days was running unattached was bitten by the running bug.

The 2012 Tewkesbury Half Marathon was very much on his radar until he suffered the first big setback of his fledgling racing career.

“I was knocked off my bicycle on my way to work,” he remembers. “I landed on my hip and it was quite a bad injury.”

So bad, in fact, that it prevented him from running for the best part of 18 months.

“I’d try to run but it was very painful,” he said. “If I ran four miles my hip would be really bad the following day. It was like an invisible barrier that stopped me from running any further.

“It was frustrating. I kept trying to come back but I was getting tired because I was unfit.”

Eventually, a physio sorted him out and he made his return to competitive running in the Castle Combe Chilly 10k in late 2013.

The following year he did not go beyond 10k until towards the end which meant he had to give the Tewkesbury Half a miss, something he said “disappointed” him.

But he made up for that disappointment in October 2014 when he recorded a personal best one hour, 39 minutes in the Stroud Half Marathon before producing the best performance of his life in the Tewkesbury Half seven months later, finishing in a time of one hour, 36 minutes.

“I was over the moon with that,” he said. “I remember shooting off at the start and looking left and right and thinking, ‘I’m right at the front, I’d better slow down a bit’.

“I can’t have slowed down too much, though, and I couldn’t believe how fast I’d run it.”

That year he also ran his first marathon – in Worcester – and the extra distance didn’t prove any problem at all. “I really, really, enjoyed it,” he said as he completed in an impressive three hours 57 minutes.

Towards the end of the year, however, his problems with his right ankle first started to become apparent. “It’s my weak spot,” he said.

He had to miss the Tewkesbury Half in 2016 but in the second half of the year he was fit enough to run the Cheltenham Half Marathon which he completed in one hour 43 minutes.

He has been busy this year competing in the Linda Franks five-miler in Cheltenham, the Staverton 10 and the Gloucester 20, but aggravated his ankle problem when he landed awkwardly when competing in the Cirencester off-road duathlon in February. “It’s a little bit tender,” he said.

He doesn’t expect to set a personal best at this year’s Tewkesbury Half as he “eases the ankle back in” but will give it his best shot.

Despite the injuries he confesses he wished he’d found the sport at a much earlier age. At least his two boys – Leo, 8, and Arlo, 6 – have discovered the joy of running, regularly taking part in the junior parks runs at the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham on Saturday mornings.

It is starting to become a bit of a family affair because although wife Steph isn’t a runner, Davis’ brother Graham, 37, has caught the bug.

He started running with Cheltenham club Almost Athletes in 2012 and has just switched to Gloucester AC.

“We just love it,” said Chris. It’s a story that’s set to run and run.