PAOLO Di Canio revealed that his competitive nature pushed him to choose to run Sunday’s Swindon Half Marathon after initially setting out to complete the considerably shorter fun run.

The Town boss had been invited to start the half marathon, five-mile terrain and two-mile fun run but then decided to tackle the shortest of the three courses along with assistant coach Fabrizio Piccareta and stadium manager Mark Isaacs.

But after complete the two mile run, the trio decided to see just how far they could run.

Di Canio told the Advertiser: “I know some newspapers made a joke of this situation, saying I made a mistake but this was not the case.

“First of all we decided to go there because we started the first group for the half marathon, then after 10 minutes we started the second group before finally it was the fun run, which was two miles.

“Myself, Fabrizio Piccareta and (stadium manager) Mark Isaacs thought maybe we could do a run for 10 minutes and then go because I had to take my daughter to the train station at 4pm.

“So we decided to start and follow the group for the fun run for two miles, but after one kilometre we then thought that the fun run was too short and, now that we were running, the competitor inside of me came out.

“So then we decided to run a minimum of five miles, so we went back 200 metres or so to then follow the right road for the half marathon.

“When we were nearly to turn and follow the second group (for the five-mile terrain) I then turned to Mark and Fabrizio and asked: ‘what are we going to do, are we going to follow them or go on the half marathon route?’ “So we decided to follow the half marathon. After another kilometre we lost Marc but myself and Fabrizio decided to keep going.

“So we did that, even though I felt very painful in my knees and I couldn’t stand it because I had not trained for it.”

Di Canio crossed the finish line with a very respectable time of 1hr 49 minutes – just 36 minutes behind winner Dave Roper.

He added: “By the end I was glad with my time because I had not trained for over two years. I’d only played five-a-side football.

“But it was not the time that mattered, it was the fact I did not walk it at one point.

“This was my half marathon, it was very good. Mark and Fabrizio finished in two hours 20 minutes, so all-in-all it was all very good.”