WARRIOR POSE Sarah Morwood stands tall

Sarah Morwood was told she might never run again. She disagreed…

FINISHING THE SPARTATHLON,

a 153-mile ultramarathon said to be one of the toughest road races anywhere, is an achievement for any runner. For Sarah Morwood, who 18 months previously had been told she might never run again, it was something extra-special.

Rewind to January 29, 2016: Sarah was riding her bike near her Devon home when a driver pulled out of a junction without looking. The resulting collision sent Sarah flying over the car bonnet and onto the far side of the road, fracturing her patella. ‘I smashed the windscreen with my head, so, actually, coming away with just a busted-up knee was quite lucky,’ says Sarah.

Still, the diagnosis wasn’t good. When Sarah asked the knee surgeon when she might be able to run again, the answer was brutal in its frankness: ‘You might not.’

Such news would be tough to take even for the casual runner. For Sarah, whose rapid ascent in the sport had led to her being called

up to the Team GB trail-running team, it was a hammer blow.

‘Running had become the centre of my life,’ says the 34-year-old doctor. ‘Since moving to Devon in 2012 and joining a running club, I’d progressed from being a weekend plodder to someone who was winning races. To have that taken away from me, just as I was hitting my stride, was utterly devastating.’

Things went from bad to worse when, five weeks later, Sarah fell over and re-fractured her knee. Cue another round of operations. This time, however, she was treated by a surgeon who gave her a slightly more optimistic diagnosis. ‘He told me, “I think you’ll be able to run again; give it a year or so, but you’ll get back into it.” What no one could tell me, however, was whether I’d be able to compete again.’

In the meantime, Sarah did all she could to remain fit. There was the handbike – a gift from her mum – set up in the living room and used every day. There were the long walks on crutches that led to Sarah getting repetitive strain injury in her wrists. Most imaginatively of all, there were the one-legged sessions on the rowing machine. ‘I’d put a towel under my foot and let that foot slide back and forward so it wasn’t actually weight bearing,’ she says. ‘I was doing anything I could to be fit!’

What she wasn’t doing a lot of was running. And that, for Sarah, was a problem for several reasons. ‘I have a history of eating disorders,’ she says. ‘So I use running as a way not to worry about food. I also use it to help manage my depression, as the endorphins from running act as a natural antidepressant.’

After months of hard work and slow progress, Sarah was given the green light by her surgeon to start running again. ‘He told me I mustn’t do anything stupid,’ she recalls. So, like many a rehabbing runner before her, she took this as the all-clear to do something stupid. ‘I immediately went out and ran a mile. I couldn’t sleep that night from the pain.’

Sarah needed a proper plan, so she enlisted the help of ultrarunner and race director James Elson, who tailored workouts around Sarah’s injury. The first big improvement came in January 2017, a year after the accident, when Sarah finally had the metalwork taken out of her knee. ‘After that, I went for a run and managed to hit sub-sevenminute-mile pace. I just hadn’t been able to do that with the metal still in my knee. It was like everything was beginning to click back into place.’

With her speed returning, Sarah used spring 2017 to take her first tentative steps back into racing. Encouraging outings at the Imerys Marathon in Cornwall and Eco Trail 50-miler in Oslo led to her toeing the start line at the South Downs Way 100. Before the accident, Sarah had become something of a 100mile specialist. Could she still do it? You bet. Despite spending miles 25-50 ‘vomiting and feeling terrible’, she rallied to beat all the women (and all but three of the men).

But Sarah wasn’t done yet. Having achieved a pre-accident qualifying time for Spartathlon, she booked her flights to Greece and, on 29 September, took her place on the start line. If one were to design the ultimate knee-unfriendly course, it would look like Spartathlon: 153 all-concrete miles from Athens to Sparta, with tight cut-off times and a mountain plonked in the middle.

‘It was miserable from the outset!’ says Sarah. ‘But the end of it makes up for everything – it’s such an amazing finish. I wanted to go under 30 hours; I managed 30:10 in the end. I’d love to go back and do it again, now I know I can run that far.’

For now, Sarah’s just pleased to be back running. She’s still not pain-free – and perhaps never will be – but she has a new appreciation for the sport that was so nearly taken away from her. ‘There are very few runs that go by where I don’t at some point think, “I might not have been able to do this.”’

‘ WHAT NO- ONE COULD TELL ME WAS WHETHER I’D BE ABLE TO COMPETE AGAIN’