‘I felt so much support and love out there’

Jennie Stevens at the start of the race at Edale

She began her trek in Edale on Sunday, January 14, joining around 150 other runners to try and travel the length of the Pennine Way in 168 hours.

She carried a special tracker, and like many hundreds of other supporters, Jennie’s mum Lynn and her two daughters watched her as a slowly moving dot on the constantly updated Spine Race map, in her bid rio compete the run and raise £10,800 to help three women from disadvantaged backgrounds take up courses at Sheffield University, where she works as Student Support Manager.

(See: https://www.justgiving.com/page/jennie-stevens-1683283851082)

Jennie Stevens during the Montane Winter Spine Race

As the race progressed, Jennie posted updates as her face, hands and feet became swollen, and the pain in her knees became almost unbearable.

And the weather was freezing: at one higher point in the Pennines she’d been warned that it might drop to -15C in the night ahead.

“I feel pretty terrible today,” she posted in one of her videos. “But unless I have an accident I’m going to finish this.”

And then after more than 250 miles of battling against the elements, on Friday she posted a late night video inside the final refuge hut just above the seven-mile descent from the Cheviot hills to the finish line.

Jennie Stevens during training in the Porter Valley

Viewers could hear the wind roaring outside, and even though officials had warned her of the extreme weather that night, she headed back out into gusts of up to 70mph.

She was hallucinating (she’d managed around 14 hours of sleep over the six days in snatches of an hour or two) and had to stop several times to collect herself.

She knew that even at that late stage in the race, some competitors find the mental and physical difficulty of the final few miles too much, and retire almost within sight of the finish.

But as the race progressed, she said it had became a collaborative event rather than just a personal challenge.

Birthday cake for Jennie Stevens at a checkpoint during the Spine Race

She said that messages from hundreds of supporters and the growing donations kept her going, along with cheering spectators out in the wilds, and food parcels left by well wishers by gates and stiles.

So she steeled herself, and even managed a jog down to the finish line.

The fundraising now needs just over £1,000 towards her £10,800 target.

She said: “I just felt so much support and love out there, with so many people's messages, and people's donations, so my own focus changed throughout the week, and became such an overwhelmingly positive experience.”

But she’s now resting and taking it easy, she says.

And for the moment, she says her plans are for shorter races in 2024.