Former Anglia TV presenter in marathon bid

Stephen PullingerPeople in the region will remember her best as the beaming face lighting up the news on Anglia Tonight.Stephen Pullinger

People in the region will remember her best as the beaming face lighting up the news on Anglia Tonight.

Now a reporter on GMTV and ITN, television viewers might soon be able to catch a glimpse of Sascha Williams in a different guise - when she joins 40,000 other runners for the first Virgin London Marathon.

The start of training for someone who confesses she is 'not a natural runner' coincided with her starting her new job in January, with night shifts and reporting assignments to all corners of the country making squeezing in runs all the more problematic.

'I can be sent on the train to Birmingham for a door knock and think I'll be home by 4pm, but arrive back at 9pm,' she said.

However, Sascha, who still lives part of the time in her flat in, Norwich, has a special reason for enduring the early mornings, icy roads and torrential rain.

She is hoping to raise more than �1,500 for Kidney Research UK, a charity close to her heart as her grandfather Patrick Smith, 88, and aunt Cath Morrison are both on dialysis having suffered renal failure.

She said: 'Being on dialysis represents five hours a day, three days a week for the rest of your life. Although renal failure is something that affects older people more, there were people on my granddad's ward in their 20s and 30s.'

Sascha, who will be running the race on April 25 ahead of her 30th birthday next month, said it was possible that kidney problems ran in her family so that was a big personal reason for her wanting to see more research.

Anyone wanting to sponsor Sascha can do so by logging on to www.kidneyresearchukevents.org/sascha