I kept reminding myself to take it day by day, and knowing I could do day one due to recently having run the Welsh 3000’s was reassuring. The race briefing was entertaining with Shane, the race organiser, setting out his rules for week, an inspirational talk from Helene Whitaker followed with Shane and Helene both reiterating that they expected about half of us assembled not to finish. The enormity of the challenge finally hit when you look around the room and see so many good, strong runners from all over the world and I started to wonder if I, born and raised in inner London, only discovering the joy of fell running by chance at university was really good enough to finish. 

In 2012 I raced the Dragon and everything that could go wrong went wrong. So why go back? I could do better - I knew I could and it was eating away at me. I was fit and procrastinating about entering but Shane had promised to hold a place for as long as it took me to decide. 10 days before I finally cracked. The email said all that was required: "Room for a little one??"