Cumbrian vet Sabrina Verjee smashes Wainwrights record
Video report by Fiona Marley Paterson.
A Cumbrian vet has smashed the record for running all 214 Wainwrights continuously.
Sabrina Verjee, from Ambleside, ran the 325-mile route in 5 days 23 hours 49 minutes, completing the challenge at 06:52 on Thursday morning.
She broke the standing record, set by Paul Tierney in 2019, on just eight hours of sleep.
It's the third time Sabrina has taken on the challenge. Last year she completed the run in under seven days but, due to a knee injury, she was forced to accept help during some of the descents.
In May, she postponed the challenge for the second time after 'brutal' weather caused her asthma to flare up.
The 40-year-old told ITV Border she is relieved she can now focus on something else now.
What is the Wainwright challenge?
The Wainwrights are the 214 hills and mountains that feature in Alfred Wainwright’s famous seven volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells.
It has become a popular tick list for walkers, but the first recorded continuous run was completed by Alan Heaton in 1985, in nine days and 16 hours.
Two years later, fell running legend Joss Naylor set a new record of seven days, one hour and 25 minutes.
That stood for 27 years, until Berghaus athlete Steve Birkinshaw knocked almost 12 hours off the time in 2014, when he completed his run in six days and 13 hours.
In 2019, Paul Tierney, from Windermere, lowered the record by another seven hours.