Ahead of the final day of the European Athletics Team Championships in Gateshead in June this year, a 10km road race took place in the city to give thousands of club and fun runners the chance to be part of the weekend of international sport.
It was not just a one-off because the idea could be the start of something special - only now the 'masses' will be able to take part in the event itself.
At next year's IAAF/AL-Bank World Half Marathon in Copenhagen in March, international athletes will mix with 30,000 recreational runners starting behind them.
The entries have already sold out.
It is, of course, nothing new for the hundreds of marathons and road races which take place around the world each year to combine elite with club runners.
But this has never been done at a major championship before.
The plan is that in the summer of 2016 the men’s and women’s half marathon at the European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam will have a similar feel with recreational runners starting after the elite field.
The event in Copenhagen on Saturday 29 March is set to be spectacular with 60 different nations participating in a field of 30,000 entries for the mass race behind the 300 elite runners from 50 nations chasing the places on the podium.
Jakob Larsen, the director of the Danish Athletic Federation, said: “It's amazing to have so many different nationalities taking part in the mass race.
“The great interest from foreign participants places our event among the most prominent in the international league of recreational races.”
Danish athletes are the largest numbers in the field, followed by Swedes, who make up a third, with recreational runners from other countries including Great Britain, Germany, USA, Australia, Brazil, Iraq, Mexico, Barbados and The Dominican Republic.
Lars Lundov, the CEO of Sport Event Denmark said: “It will be a running festival that involves not only the thousands of Danish recreational runners but also several thousand foreign recreational runners from 60 different nations that will attempt to keep up with the elite through Copenhagen.”