‘I wasn’t sporty but I’ve won a 268-mile race’

“I wasn’t really a sporty kid and came last in cross country when I was 14.”

But that has all changed for 14-time Ironman champion Lucy Gossage, whose latest feat saw her win a gruelling ultramarathon between Derbyshire and Scotland.

The oncologist finished the 268-mile (430km) women’s Montane Winter Spine Race on Thursday evening in 87 hours 41 minutes 38 seconds.

Gossage, from Nottingham, said she had rested for just three hours and 40 minutes over the three and a half days of running.

Snow storms and freezing temperatures greeted Gossage and 150 fellow competitors at the start point in Edale in the Peak District on Saturday.

Prior to becoming a professional triathlete in 2014, Gossage had been spending endless hours in Cambridge laboratories doing research for a PhD into kidney cancer.

“For me, doing things that scare you and seem impossible is what makes me feel alive,” said Gossage, who became a full-time Ironman competitor when she was 34.

“It’s a race that takes you to places you’d never normally go in normal life. All your thinking about is survival.

“I don’t know where that performance came from – it did surprise me. It’s not what I anticipated doing.”

Competitors who take part in the race have to be self-sufficient and carry everything with them along the trail.

Half of those who started the event dropped out midway, organisers said.

There are five checkpoints along the route where athletes can stop to eat or sleep, although many, including Gossage, choose to rest in alternative locations.

“I had an hour and 10 minutes in some village hall, an hour on the floor on some public toilets and 40 minutes at an old farm that had some armchairs and dirty blankets,” she said.

“What’s quite incredible is how a short sleep really can rejuvenate you for the next 12 hours.

“Of course at some points you’re so tired, everything is hurting and you just want it to end.

“But the lows are why you sign up to things like this because when you overcome them you have such massive highs.”

Gossage, who finished third in the same event last year, drew in and overtook early leader Robyn Cassidy to cross the finish line in Kirk Yetholm in first place.

She said she had no plans to take on the event again, but insists she could be tempted by “other challenges” in future.

“I was a shell of myself [after the race],” she said. “I could barely dress myself when I got back.

“It’s something that takes you to a place that life would never usually take you.”