waiting nervously at the starting line of her first 155 km race around mont blanc , 29-year-old lizzy hawker looked down at her holey long johns , clumpy trail shoes and the poorly fitting rucksack she had borrowed , then up at the elite lycra kit of her fellow competitors .
she would be covering almost the same distance as that between her birthplace in the london suburbs and southampton , where she was studying for a phd in environmental science .