A leukaemia victim affectionately nicknamed Bison has inspired 50 friends to run a half-marathon to raise £50,000 for charity.

Ian Lane, 26, died of acute myeloid leukaemia in September last year.

Now, his university friends have decided to run the Great North Run on Sunday as a tribute to him.

Ian was known as Bison because of his powerful, 6ft 4in build.

He was a skilled track-and-field athlete and once accidentally broke a vaulting pole because he attacked it with such energy.

However, his friends are finding it more difficult to match his athletic strengths.

Samantha Day, 25, from Burgess Hill, said: "I've been training for the past four months and I'm finding it hard. I've never done any running before, let alone a half-marathon like this.

"It's horribly ironic that Ian was always the healthiest of us. He was always urging us to give up smoking and get fit. He was the last person you'd think would get so sick.

"At the finishing line, there will be 50 relieved people thinking only of Ian and how funny he would have thought it that his crisp-munching, fag-smoking, beer-swilling, lazy bunch of mates had achieved something so brilliant."

The group of friends met at Warwick University five years ago. Ian was diagnosed with leukaemia in December 2000.

Samantha said: "We were lucky in a way that we had nine months to say our proper goodbyes to him."

Another of the runners will be Samantha's partner, Mark Russell, 26, a former pupil of Dorothy Stringer School and Varndean College.

The group of fund-raisers, known as Teambison, raised £27,000 last October by taking part in the Tetley's Trek with rugby star Jeremy Guscott.

Samantha, a former head girl of Oakmeads Community School in Burgess Hill, said: "£50,000 is an ambitious target but I think we can do it."

The money raised will go to the Leukaemia Research Fund.

About 47,000 runners are expected to take part in Sunday's run, which goes from Newcastle to South Shields.

Anyone wanting to sponsor Team Bison should go to www.justgiving.com/teambison