IT WAS blood, sweat and tears of happiness for one couple, as Jack Lawrence proposed to girlfriend H’Eloise Hunt on the finish line of the half marathon.

The thirty one year old from Shirley was running as a pace maker and had decided that after nearly ten years together it was time to pop the question – but he wanted to make it a surprise. Jack, a research fellow in experimental aeroacoustics at Southampton University said: “I wanted to do it at the time she would least expect, so I contacted the organisers and asked if it would be ok to get a medal in advance and have it engraved.”

In a cunning ploy Jack asked his friend Thinos to wait near the finish line with the ring and the engraved medal. And when H’Eloise had collapsed on the floor with exhaustion, Jack swapped the medals to give her the engraved one. When she looked at the back it had ‘Lolo, will you marry me?’ engraved on the back.

“I would have cried if I had had any moisture left in my body! But I was more in a state of shock,” the 30 year old psychologist said. “Then I looked up and he had the ring.” “I was absolutely, one hundred per cent shocked,” she said. “I didn’t expect it at all, mainly because I was thinking about survival.”