BBC Scotland News
A Scottish ultra-runner finished so far ahead in a 100-mile race that she was already home by the time the rest of the field crossed the line.
Anna Rutherford ran the inaugural Rat Race between Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland and Edinburgh Castle in 17 hours and 23 minutes – more than two hours ahead of the closest male competitor.
The mother-of-three told how she sang Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 to keep herself going during the race and diverted to check if a man flat on his back on a golf course was ok.
However, the lawyer, 43, still managed to finish fast enough that she was driven back home to Peebles by her parents when the other 600 competitors arrived in the early hours of Sunday.
Anna, originally from Milngavie, near Glasgow, began the race in the grounds of Bamburgh Castle at about 07:00 on Saturday and crossed the finish line just after 00:30 on Sunday.
The route followed the east coast through Berwickshire, the Borders and East Lothian before reaching the finish at the Ross Bandstand in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens.
Anna said she only overtook the man leading the race before her about half-way through, meaning she ran the final 50 miles by herself and finished two hours ahead of the fist male and five ahead of the first female.
She said she took to singing Dolly Parton’s country hit as she ran up the Royal Mile towards the finish, before heading home to sleep.
“I was singing 9 to 5 running up the Royal Mile and everyone was singing along with me,” she told BBC Scotland News.
“Because the race finished in Princes Street Gardens, you couldn’t make a lot of noise, so I collected my medal and my parents had waited at the finish line for me.
“It was beyond my wildest dreams to run 100 miles in that time. But I just went home and went straight to bed.”
At one point, while she was passing a golf course near Gullane in East Lothian, Anna spotted a man lying on his back and went to check on him.
“He said he was just ‘looking at the stars’ so I had to crack on,” she said.
Anna said she went through an intense training period leading up to the race, which led to a hospital visit after she began experiencing headaches and feeling faint.
She said she was running about 120 miles (193km) a week at the height of her training schedule.
Stock cubes, pretzels and Paris
Anna previously shattered the women’s record for running the Southern Upland Way in 2021, completing the 212-mile course from Portpatrick to Cockburnspath in 62 hours and 34 minutes.
Back then, she credited eating stock cubes provided by a support van with helping her to complete the cross-country route.
This time, she said she mixed stock powder with pretzels and took on gels and hydration at 10-mile stopping points along the route.
However, she managed to miss one feeding point, where she had stashed some hydration gels and a note of support from her son.
She said she took inspiration from hero and Barkley Marathon finisher, Jasmine Paris, to overcome the mental blocks on the run.
She said: “It doesn’t matter what the distance is, about 70 or 80% of the way through, it is going to feel really hard because you’ve done the hardest bit, you are getting tired, but there is still a long way to go.
“In a way, I just embraced it. There’s a lot of really, really good ultra-runners out there, who talk about the psychology of getting into this pain cave and just knowing that and almost looking forward to it.
“Someone like Jasmine Paris, her saying ‘just watch me’ before she did the Barkley Marathons, I found that very humbling.”
Anna also praised the organisers, Rat Race Adventures, for creating female-specific provisions at each of the stopping point.
She said she hoped her race could help prove that women can “close the gap” when it comes to endurance sport.
“I’m 43, I’m perimenopausal, I’m on HRT, that massively affects your hormones and that has a massive impact,” she said.
“I got my period on Friday and I was very aware that I was wearing light-coloured leggings, but at every checkpoint, they had female-specific toilets with sanitary products.
“I think it just shows women do these things too. Women are not just little men. They have their own specific needs, but they were being catered to and I really loved that.”
