RACING across frost-hardened fields and through dense undergrowth, heart pounding, with baying hounds at your heels would be most people's nightmare.

Add the pounding hooves of huntsmen joining the chase and it conjures up visions of Louis XVI and his courtiers having a peasant shoot.

But for human quarry John Rawlings, it's just great fun.

Marathon runner John offered his services to the Four Shires Hunt seven years ago after seeing an advert for a runner.

"I run competitively – marathons and half marathons – and thought it would be great training and certainly more interesting than pounding the roads."

Since then he has led up to 31 bloodhounds on a merry chase on more than 50 occasions and never once been caught – or eaten!

"The hunt uses bloodhounds not foxhounds," said John, 45, who spends his days in a much more pedestrian manner – sorting our teachers' timetables and computer problems at St Benedict's RC School in Derby.

"The 'blood' refers to their bloodline not to an aggressive habits. They are trained to chase a scent. Once they find their quarry, that's it. Unlike fox hounds, they don't attack and kill – thankfully."

But it is still a nerve-wracking job, which, incidentally, he does for love not money.

"It's always scary because you have to remember the route. It's carefully worked out in advance so that it is safe for the horses to follow and so that the hunt doesn't cross land where farmers object.

"But it's easy to go wrong when you are zigzagging across fields and running through marshes and streams. I have to make sure I don't take them over dangerous obstacles like barbed wire.

"The first hunt I ever did was at Brailsford, the guy in charge made me squeeze through a tiny hole in the hedge.

"I remember having a moment of panic when I set off, wondering which way I was supposed to go and looking for landmarks."

John and the fieldmaster always plot the route on quad bikes the day before the meet. The course can be anything from 15 to 25 miles.

"On the day of the meet, I am introduced to the hounds by climbing into their trailer with them. They have a good sniff to get my scent and then I set off."

Amazingly, he only has a 10-15-minute head start.

"I could do the run the day before but the fresher the scent, the better. If there is a wind, it can blow the scent off course and then you get problems.

"The hounds waste a bit of time picking up my scent. They are let loose into a field and spread out all over, looking for it. When one picks it up, he starts to bay and then all the others follow and the chase is on."

The speed of the chase depends on the weather and the wind direction.

"I zigzag across the fields to slow them down," said John. "It is quite exciting. Sometimes, if the wind is blowing towards me, I can't hear them baying until they are almost on me. But, so far, I've never been caught."

And that includes the occasion when he broke his leg.

"I was going through some thick mud and twisted my foot, breaking my fibula. But, to be honest, I didn't notice at first. I kept running for another two and a half miles.

"Whenever the hunt crosses a road, I am picked up in a Land Rover and taken to another start point. Quite often, my partner, Debbie, will pick me up.

"It is too dangerous for a pack of hounds to go along a road, so the master rounds them up and takes them on to the next point to start again.

"When I got out of the Land Rover to start running again, I realised there was something wrong. That day, the chase was abandoned and the huntsmen just took the horses round for some exercise."

The Four Shires Bloodhounds hunt across Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Notts and South Yorkshire. When John started, there were only two quarry men. Now there are five or six volunteers, including women.

"Female runners are the best," said John. "This doesn't sound very polite but, in fact, they have a stronger scent, so the dogs find them easier to follow."

These days, John tends to run at meets near his home village of Parwich – Tissington, Parwich itself and Chatsworth, which is one of his favourites.

"There are no roads and you get to go behind Chatsworth House, where most people are not allowed. Some of the scenery is absolutely beautiful."

But probably the meet he enjoys the most is the Boxing Day hunt at Ashbourne.

"I've been doing it for six years and it's great fun. There's always a big crowd, including some of my colleagues from St Benedict's who come along to cheer.

"They usually stand on the hill coming out of Ashbourne and pass comments. I won't say what. The worst bit is getting up that hill after a huge Christmas dinner the day before."

It's all right, of course, for the riders – and they even have time for a warming port stop halfway round.

John doesn't. "I couldn't run if I had any alcohol anyway."

So what does happen when the hounds finally catch up?

"Well, it's a bit of a disappointment really. A couple might jump up but most of them just look at you with those big bloodhound eyes as if to say: 'Is that it?'."

And there's another reason he never stops for a pint.

"The hounds are very smelly – and I mean smelly – after all that running through the mud. They mill around me and pass their smell on to me and I am not nice to know. You can see people backing away."