There's no stopping Sharon

Ultra sport, they call it, but this was taking ultra to extremes.

The traffic was fearful, whatever Mr Livingstone's great expectations, worse yet for a chronic asthmatic like Sharon. Had there been a concrete works on every corner there might still not have been enough to cement the changing face of Docklands.

She walks up exactly, almost effervescently on time - grey- haired, slight, weight constant at 5.4k. Whatever the translation into flesh and bone, there is more fat on a Tube ticket.

"I've no pain, no problem, not tired in the slightest," she insists, and sits down gratefully to a chicken salad. At first there'd just been horrible greasy takeaways, says Sharon, and sings praises to St Michael.

None might suppose that for the previous two-and-a-half weeks she has had no more than 75 minutes sleep at a time, that in every hour of the previous 407 she has walked a London mile and that as today's paper is digested comfortably with the cornflakes the event is still not at the halfway stage.

At the end, after 1,000 miles at precisely one mile an hour, she must attempt the London Marathon. For every metronomic mile, at every familiar footfall along the exhaust-fumed streets of the capital, the question echoes: "Why?"

"I don't want to be seen as some idiot with nothing better to do for six weeks," she says. "It is the ultimate mental and physical challenge and I want to prove that I can do it."

Sharon, 39, was born in Cambridge, became a Cleveland bus driver and in the last ten years has moved so swiftly through the gears that she gained a sports science degree, became a lecturer at Sunderland University, studied for a doctorate and is now a fully qualified physiotherapist and masseur.

For six years she has also been Britain's top woman 24- hour runner, sixth in the world with a best distance of 217.5k.

Bill, her helpmate, best mate and running mate, the man who had called her the Wicked Witch of the South, is a long distance lorry driver, so publicity shy that when the BBC came filming at their home in Guisborough he tried to hide upstairs.

"At the university the lecturers would introduce their partners - doctor, professor, or whatever," he says. "It was quite funny when Sharon told them I was a lorry driver."

They celebrated their 11th wedding anniversary during the first week.

The Flora 1,000 Mile Challenge, sleep walking without the shut eye, had first been achieved in 1809 by Captain Robert Barclay, who on at least one occasion had to be beaten with sticks to get him across the starting line.

Two centuries later, six competitors had been chosen from 170 applicants to cover the London Marathon course 38 times. Each paid a basic £7,000, they started on March 2, finish with the Marathon itself on April 13.

Why, why? "It's unique, historic. I've been an international athlete for ten years and this is something completely different. It would have been awful to have missed it."

Lloyd Scott, the man who did last year's London Marathon in a deep sea diving suit and in five-and-a-half days, has already cited personal reasons and fallen by the wayside, though he still hopes to do this year's marathon in a suit of armour.

"He'll be quicker in that," says Sharon.

The others appear sprightly, too, though Shona Crombie-Hicks - the other woman - has had to have medical attention for blisters. Blisters are second nature, says Sharon.

The competitors' home for six weeks is a converted double decker coach, a sort of Tardis in reverse in that it looks bigger without than within.

A curtain separates men's from women's bunks, a false move between Sharon and Shona likely to give new meaning to the phrase about being kicked out of bed.

At one end there's a galley kitchen and recreation area, at the other a quiet zone in which Sharon usually puts her feet up.

The blokes, she says disdainfully, are into silly children's videos. Particularly they like the 1960s programme Banana Splits.

They in turn have formally complained that the electrically operated foot spa into which she twice a day plunges aching limbs takes up too much room. Amid mutterings of enviousness, she is obliged to use it outside.

"I wouldn't say that we get on each others' nerves, rather that we are aware of one another. We are very different characters to be living on top of one another. I'm basically a quiet person, I like to do my own thing."

All competitors walk two miles at a stretch, the last quarter of one hour, the first of the next. Bill acts as her "helper" by day - "basically I'm just a housewife" - others by night. The beds at a "budget" hotel in central London are thus kept warm, like nineteenth century shift workers at the pit.

It is Bill who's had food poisoning, he who'd had a McFlurry to settle his stomach, he who lies awake worrying. Not her.

"I'm usually a light sleeper but I've amazed myself," says Sharon. Nor, she insists, have there been any rude awakenings.

"My helpers say I'm very good, just wake up, put my jacket and my number on and walk back off into the night. I've never sworn at them once."

After just 60 miles, however, she was almost disqualified when a helper misread a map in the early hours. "I thought something was wrong when I couldn't see anyone ahead, and knew it was when I felt a grass verge beneath my feet. There are no grass verges on this route."

She ran back to the bus, found it gone, took fresh bearings and by running a six-minute mile just made it inside the hour.

"Normally I'm in control of everything I do," she said - a clue, perhaps - "but this time someone else was navigating and the responsibility had been taken away.

"I'd planned for all sorts of eventualities but not for getting lost. It was just blind panic for a while."

Now she's back on course - lapping it up, as it were - Bill, batman Bill, carrying a beach chair behind her so that she can grab a few minutes rest between the two miles.

"This event is mainly psychological," she says. "There are people who get quite jealous of that chair."

Three times a day - 2am, 10m, 6pm, they must also fill in a medical and psychological questionnaire.

"You have to say if you're confused, disorientated, exhausted or whatever.

"I have to guard against complacency, I know there might be a crunch day somewhere, but at the moment I'm none of them, honestly, not even bored."

Should boredom strike, she's brought two books - Flanagan's Run and Sports Armageddon. "It's about this bloke who swims across a lake, bikes off somewhere and then runs somewhere," she says.

Bill had been in the Army, met his future wife when he, too, became a bus driver in Middlesbrough. Both left after repeated assaults.

"I was quite fit and hoped I might meet someone to go on five-mile jogs with. I never counted on this." Now he runs marathons and is also a masseur.

"I think I was quite taken aback when she first mentioned this one, but she does so many strange things I could almost take it in my stride."

We are in School House Lane, the school in question agawp with inquisitive kids.

"Where's Lloyd?" they ask, the diver having made a deep impression which Sharon hopes to emulate.

"I've been an international athlete for ten years and no-one's heard of me and hardly anyone of ultra running," she says, though the supposition was slightly changed when a friend posted a good luck card "c/o the Flora 1000 Mile Challenge Bus, London."

The post office delivered it in two days.

The column walks miles 407 and 408 with her, Limehouse to Canary Wharf, before going once again to the Isle of Dogs. Newspaper placards declare that the war in Iraq has begun, motorists hoot in occasional acclamation.

She is lucid, cheerful and chatty, defying all that's feared about sleep deprivation and confident of final victory.

"I think I've surprised myself, really.

"You can't train for sleep deprivation so you don't know what's going to happen next, but the nights seem to disappear very quickly. The worst thing is the exhaust fumes, the asthma."

What she most misses, she says, are a daily shower, the peace and quiet of the Cleveland Hills and their two dogs, looked after by neighbours.

"Last night they had mince and Yorkshire pudding, the night before chicken and rice.

"They're being better fed than we are."

Bill says he's never doubted that his wicked witch would do it but worries about finally getting home to Guisborough.

"I'm a bit scared that she'll start waking up in the middle of the night wanting to go for walks," he says.

Her next big challenge may be the Marathon des Sables across the Sahara, in which entrants must carry their own food and bedding - "everything except water" - over stages as long as 100k.

There's also a Mount Everest marathon, a South Pole challenge and sundry other delights still awaiting the ultra sound. The question returns - ineffably, inevitably - to one answer.

It's there, dammit, it's there.

Published: 25/03/2003