I Also Ran

One evening in the early summer of 1995 I received an unexpected phone call from a young lady named Sarah who wanted to contact my daughter, Anna. They had been volunteers together in Indonesia in 1989-90 and Sarah was ringing because she'd just walked through the door of her home in Oxford and seen a programme about Anna on Central News South.

Anna had taken part in a big international race in Nepal and the reporter had described her as a young Oxford woman. Sarah was excited at the prospect of meeting up with her again.

I was taken by surprise, as Anna had never shown any interest or ability in running. She swam, she cycled, she danced, she rode horses, she climbed mountains, but running? No!

I rang Central Television in Birmingham and was told the news would be local to Oxford. I was given the name and telephone number of the sports reporter who happened to be still in Nepal but he rang me back in four days' time and said he was sending a video recording of the broadcast to Anna and I was welcome to open it.

The race was the Annapurna Pepsi Triathlon - reputedly the most beautiful race in the world. To my surprise, he told me Anna had come second in the women's section and fifth overall. The race comprised a 2km lake swim, a 35km mountain-bike ride climbing 3000 feet and down again, a 20km road bike race, and a 12km run up and down the 3000 ft peak.

Later that summer an avalanche on Mount Everest left Anna with a severed cruciate ligament so she didn't race again for a while. Last year she ran her first big Adventure Race as the female member of Britain's Salomon Pilgrims team in the gruelling Raid Gauloises.

Sixty-nine international teams entered this 827km race, run over 11 days from Tibet to Nepal, across the Himalayas, involving running, climbing, trekking, hydrospeeding, canyoning, Canadian canoeing, rafting, abseiling and mountain biking. The Salomon Pilgrims came 16th and completed the race in nine days.

From whom did Anna inherit her sporting ability and her stamina? Not from me!

When I was six, my Aunt May and two of her friends visited us one Sunday. After lunch we all went for a walk through the demesne on which we were living. My aunt had brought me a pair of new shoes, which I wore at once. They were good leather shoes with a strap and a button, rather like character shoes which dancers wear, only they were in two tones of green - olive and sage.

They had smooth leather soles, not at all suitable for running about on gravel. Instead of walking sedately along beside the grown-ups, my older brother and I went tearing all over the place. I suddenly had an urge to see if I could run faster than my fastest! Perhaps I thought my lovely new shoes possessed magical powers!

The inevitable happened. What a fall that was! Blood spurted from a deep cut over my left eye. I still bear the scar 67 years on. My best Sunday clothes were blood-spattered and my shoes had a great stain which turned brown, and scratches on the soles.

Everyone had to return to the house where the visitors attended to my cut eye. The only disinfectant in the house was Jeyes' fluid, which they had to use to bathe the wound. To this day I can't stand the smell of Jeyes' fluid.

In 1934 it cost money to visit a doctor so you coped with things like a cut eye on your own. You managed without stitches or tetanus injections.

That incident cut short any aspirations I might have had of beating records in running. Thereafter, I limited myself to chasing balls on the tennis court, or running up and down the hockey pitch to attack or defend, or trying to make it to the next post at rounders before being stumped out, or to a bus stop before the driver pulled away. More often than not, I didn't reach my goal.

Then, at the age of 58, came my big opportunity. Against the odds, I had survived for two years after a major operation for advanced cancer of the colon. Life had taken on a new meaning for me. I became intensely aware of our fragile hold on life.

When Bob Geldof organised his Sport Aid run for May 25, 1986, I found myself longing to take part but the idea of running put me off. Then, the evening before the run, I suddenly decided to have a go.

Next morning I woke up to a feeling of unreality, and as I listened to the radio I heard a doctor advising people who had never before run not to do so now. He was warning that such people could drop dead.

My husband didn't want me to go and I didn't have any sponsors, but I was determined to go, so I took a sheet of foolscap paper to St Mary's Church and handed it to the curate, asking him to get some parishioners to sponsor me!

Then off to Perry Barr Stadium we went. The organisers were expecting 15,000 on the Birmingham run but 25,000 turned up. There were throngs of people wandering around. An air of excitement surrounded us and everyone was in high spirits.

They ran out of T-shirts. That didn't worry me as I'm not the right shape for wearing T-shirts! Nor could they cope with registering so many. My cousin's three children and her son-in-law were running so we started together. Two of them had run the London Marathon in under four hours five times.

With so many people it took us ages to walk out to the start. Because of the numbers participating, the turn-round in the city centre was to prove impossible, so the 10km was extended by 2km. Just my luck! We set off together at a comfortable trot and I kept it up while the cameras were on us, but then the others went ahead while I ran intermittently but walked most of the time.

On the way back my hands suddenly went numb and I noticed they were swelling badly. I panicked, remembering the doctor's warning that morning. I took a break and threw cold water over myself and exercised my arms by the roadside. This side effect, I discovered later, was quite normal.

In the beginning everyone was sailing past me but towards the end I was passing others! As I approached the finishing-line, I managed a fair pace once more so that it looked as if I had run all the way. What deviousness! Not that it mattered because the important aim was to complete 12km.

My legs were like jelly, quivering uncontrollably and fit to collapse, but eight members of my family were waiting to hug and congratulate me. To them I was the heroine of the afternoon.

It was a truly memorable occasion. The atmosphere was so exciting and uplifting. We all felt part of one big unified world. When I later called at the church to tell them I had run 12km, the curate had promises of £100 waiting for me.

Nowadays, I am often to be found browsing among the magazines in the sports section at the newsagent's. Runner's World, Running Fitness, 220, Global Adventure, High, On The Edge, On The Hill, are on my list of reading, not because I could ever run competitively, but because I have a daughter who is the female member on two of Britain's Adventure Race teams.

My only involvement has been to help with handing out cups of water to the runners in the Sutton Park pre-London Marathon practice run and to providing meals and accommodation for Anna and nine of her fellow-athletes when they came on a training weekend to Cannock Chase.

As they sat after meals discussing and planning strategy, I could whisper: "I also ran. I ran for the world."