‘I decided to keep my head up and keep going’

She’ll be joined by another 174 starters on this year’s Winter Spine Race, said to be one of the toughest endurance runs in the world: 268 miles of bog, rocks, hills, in the depths of winter.

The annual event, from Edale to Kirk Yetholm in the Scottish borders, involves running and walking pretty much non stop, mostly in darkness, as competitors must finish within 168 hours (seven days) at the darkest time of the year.

Jennie is a Sheffield University student support manager and says she’s loved having adventures all her life.

After years of walking in remote parts of the world, she's recenty taken up fell running, with longer and longer events.

“You ask yourself, what can I do?” she explains, meaning what mental and physical exertion can she put herself through, and still come out the other side with a smile on her face. “Unless you put yourself in these situations, you don’t know.”

During a walking and exploring tour in Mongolia eighteen years ago, one night Jennie was attacked, raped and left for dead by a group of men.

“I took the decision to keep my head up and keep going. I felt at that moment that I had a choice to be a victim or a survivor and I chose to be a survivor. I remember the decision very well.”

She recognises that women who’ve been raped or attacked will respond in many different ways.

Her response was defiance, she says.

“I had to make a decision that this event was going to ruin me, or I’d recover from it,” she said. “And I decided it wasn’t going to ruin me.”

She’s now training as a sexual violence liaison officer for Sheffield University, and also works supporting students in general.

One of the motivations for her run is to raise £10,800 for three scholarships at the University of Sheffield for women from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Many students from poorer backgrounds struggle to meet their living costs while at university, and her fundraiser has already raised over £3,000 towards her goal, with the race not even started yet. (If you can help, see: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/giving/spine ).

After a life of walking in wild places, she only began running five years ago, but her runs have become tougher over that time.

This year, she’s trained hard for the longest race she’s ever attempted, with the help of Sheffield personal trainer, Jess Lishman of reachability.run.

Jennie ran the notorious Fellsman race, over 60 miles of the Yorkshire Dales, with over 11,000 feet of climbing in April, and came in with a huge smile on her face, she says.

Then in September, she ran 135 miles around Anglesey in the Ring O’Fire race, competing against 75 others, and finished as second placed woman, and eighth overall, in just over 28 hours.

“Beating the majority of the male pack is not really that important,” she says, “it’s just another way of patting yourself on the back, and saying I did that, well done!”

Now, she’s resting and preparing.

She’s spent the week volunteering at the Round Sheffield Run last Sunday, and then measuring out her daily 3,000 calories she has to take to fuel her Spine Race run - a mixture including electrolyte gels, dried fruit and nuts, cheese, peanut butter wraps, pork pies, and scotch eggs.

Her two teenage daughters and mum Lynn will be watching Jennie’s progress via a special tracker. (See: https://www.thespinerace.com/race/montane-winter-spine) It’s called ‘dot watching’ - runners are mapped as tiny dots making their way north when the race begins.

She recognises she could get injured, or fail to meet the time cut off, but trying something so extreme is part of what drives her.

“The sense of adventure is everything to me,” Jennie says. “I refuse to be scared of things.”