Jane: woman of courage. With gallery.

She looks fragile, almost snappable; brown, tweedy trousers hang from her hip bones. Her face is wan and her body looks weary.

Hardly surprising... Just six weeks ago, she was cycling into New York towards the finishing line of her latest epic journey - a 3,700-mile charity ride across America.

With cancer in her bones, there were times on that hellish expedition when the pain got so bad she rode on through a cloud of morphine.

So Jane Tomlinson, yesterday crowned Britain's Woman Of The Year, has every right to be feeling a little frail.

What's really bugging her, though, is the fact that she's just embarked on yet another round of chemotherapy only six months after her last course ended. And it doesn't half play havoc with a working mother's schedule.

There are meals to prepare, a house to run; her family need her and so do her colleagues at the Leeds hospital where she still works as a paediatric radiographer.

Life doesn't stop for chemo.

"In our house, it goes like this," says Jane, trotting out a scenario often witnessed: "What time's tea?"

"Er, I've just had my chemo..."

"Yeah mum... but what time's tea?"

Her kids, Suzanne, now 21, daughter Rebecca, who at 18 has just left for university, and Steven, nine, have grown up around Jane's disease. They have witnessed her down days, her poorly days and, for the last four years, the amazing up days of her fundraising marathons, triathlons and epic cycle rides.

Their remarkable, redoubtable, seemingly irrepressible and as yet unstoppable mother is currently in a low gear, though.

She's slowing to take a break from the strains of being, to virtually everyone but herself, some kind of Wonderwoman.

No more mammoth journeys to raise both the profile of cancer patients and the vital funds for ongoing research, says the woman who has become a modern-day heroine.

It is hard to believe that, back in 2000, no-one outside Leeds knew her name. She was just another cancer statistic, the one in four.

Because of the way she chose to live around her disease, and undertake the most gruelling of challenges that would daunt the fittest person, let alone a cancer sufferer, she is now known to millions. People around the world have cheered on this quiet, unassuming mother-of-three from Leeds who used to list her hobbies as gardening and the odd game of badminton.

A healthy and lazy 45-year-old who can't even be bothered to go to the gym, I sit in front of this tiny yet steely woman and feel guilty that I take my health so much for granted.

"People say to me: I don't think I could ever do those things," says Jane. "But you don't know, until you're sitting in the cancer chair, how you will react and what you will want to do."

Jane herself didn't know, when she set off on the 5K Race for Life back in 2001, that she would end up cycling from San Francisco to New York five years later.

And that, in between, she would run the London Marathon three times, do the New York Marathon, two London Triathlons, become the first cancer patient to complete a full Ironman triathlon, cycle the length of Britain AND all the way from Rome to Leeds.

When most people would surely want to curl up and be comforted, what made her put herself through all of that?

"To raise money for charity. That was the main reason," she says.

Some assume Jane also did it out of defiance, that she was sticking two fingers up at her diagnosis, but she puts this straight: "I didn't set out to battle against my cancer, or prove to myself that I wasn't ill.

I didn't sit there and think: 'I want to take part in endurance events to prove something to everybody'," she insists. "But if someone tells you you are ill and you're going to die, it doesn't mean you can't attempt to do the things you want to do.

"I started doing small events and it escalated. If you can cycle 70 miles, you ask yourself well, can I do that for five weeks, and then for two months?"

Some also choose to believe that Jane's strength of will is what has kept her alive for the last six years. And that she confounded that six-month diagnosis through the power of positive-thinking and pushing her body to its limits. Again, though, Jane is at great pains to point out that this is not the case.

She is emphatic about what has kept her alive: her doctors and her medication.

"Taking part in endurance events is NOT a cure for cancer," she says. "That should be emphasised. I've been receiving treatment virtually continually for the last six years and I've been lucky - I have had good reactions to the chemo. That's why I'm still here."

Says husband Mike: "There was no misdiagnosis six years ago; we saw the scan results, we knew the reality. But, along the way, Jane has made decisions about, and received, the right treatments for her. She has lived to see two of our children grow up and we are incredibly grateful for that."

Jane, now 42, steps in: "But the events DO keep you positive and moving on. They keep you optimistic about your future."

She tells me there are many days when she feels differently, though. "I'm not always this massively positive person that people seem to think I am. I have days when I'm in pain, days when I'm frustrated because the internet supermarket shopping is two hours late arriving.

But you have to recognise when you're down and do something about it.

"When I was diagnosed, I didn't want to be wrapped up in a blanket at home. That's not to say though that there won't come a certain time when it IS right for everyone with cancer to just sit in the comfort of your own home."

Is now the time?

She is back on chemo and she readily admits that she is simply not well enough to embark on another challenge - America was her last big adventure. "I know what I'm like - if I start something, I have to finish it. So I'm not even going to think about doing anything else. I have to acknowledge my body is not fit enough to do it again."

The cross-USA ride really took it out of her. She battled against strong winds, soaring temperatures and dog attacks. In the final stages, as Jane's condition deteriorated, Mike and her supporters thought she should stop, but as ever, left the choice to her and, of course, she carried on to the finishing line.

There is another reason to stay at home now... "I'm a grandma!" she beams.

"It's just the best thing. A new little person in the family."

Jane's face is radiant as she talks of baby Emily, born to their eldest daughter Suzanne just three weeks ago.

She and Mike are also busying themselves with promoting their new book, You Can't Take It With You. It took 18 months to write and is the sequel to The Luxury Of Time.

The first gave a candid account of how her terminal diagnosis in 2000 affected an ordinary family. By then, she had already lived for 10 years with the threat of cancer returning. When she was just 26 breast cancer necessitated a mastectomy. Seven years later, it had spread to her bones and lungs. Steven was just three.

The second book, released on Monday and previewed by the couple at Sheffield's Off The Shelf Festival last week, chronicles how Jane then chose to live her life.

"Choice is such an important word when you have cancer," she says. "To anyone who has just been diagnosed, I'd say, don't let the news take over your life. Do all the things you want to do.

"And to anyone who is supporting someone with cancer, I'd say help them with their choices, whether they want to run or have a girly weekend away. Let them live the life that's right for them.

"I am very proud of the fact that that's what my family and friends have done for me."