It seemed a deeply insensitive question, yet Angela Mudge's eyes widened with interest. Was it outrageous to suspect that being born with her feet facing the wrong way around might have been an advantage in becoming a world champion hill runner?

"I actually agree with you on that, because I've got long tendons in my calf muscles. So you'll probably find that my ankle ligaments are stretched that little bit extra, too," she responded.

"When I go over on my ankles I very rarely tweak them. A lot of people are very stiff in that area, so I think looser ankles are probably advantageous when you're running over that sort of ground."

Perhaps the world's best qualified masseuse, Dr Mudge has a first class honours degree, a PhD and an MSc in chemistry, so would doubtless have the capacity to investigate that scientifically, but has chosen not to.

Just as she has chosen her current trade rather than something more in line with her qualifications in order to have the flexibility to run as much as she wants, so there is a refreshing pragmatism in not needing to know whether she has a physiological advantage. As with everything else, it seems, her approach is to "just get on with it".

To have become a champion runner when, as an infant, she had undergone intense treatment to realign her feet just to have a chance of being able to walk, that philosophy has, more recently, also seen her through a lengthy process of rehabilitation following reconstruction of her knees and a potentially debilitating bout of plantar fasciitis (inflammation of the arch tendon of the foot).

Much more painful still was the loss last year of twin sister Janice to cancer and Mudge admits that for the first time she briefly questioned her motivation.

Yet Janice was her biggest supporter and would have wanted her to just get on with it, so since that dreadful time she has, in spectacular fashion.

Her immediate tribute to her twin's memory was to clinch the overall title in the 2006 Buff Sky Runner Series, arguably the most challenging athletics competition on earth since the races are all on courses set at a minimum altitude of 2000 metres. She successfully defended that title this year and has now set her sights on her own personal Everest.

The Everest Marathon, in which she competes next month, operates outside Sky Runner jurisdiction, at least partly because the starting point is well above the maximum altitude allowed of 4000m.

For such an elite performer it is not just about the taking part. The personal challenge is to beat the women's record of 5hr 16min. The single-mindedness that may take her to it is also reflected in what has stopped her participating previously.

Since Mudge has never felt the need to have a coach in accruing a succession of world titles, it seems in character that her biggest problem in deciding whether to take on the world's most famous mountain was that she baulked at its requirements. The race is on December 5, but the rules dictated that she must be there on November 15 to begin a two-week trek to the starting point at Everest base camp.

"I always said I wouldn't do it because I didn't like the idea of the trek. I prefer to work as an individual, setting my own itinerary, but if you want to do this race you have to accept that," she explained.

The scale of the challenge is underlined by the dual purpose of that pre-race trek which is designed to ensure proper adjustment to altitude and also familiarise competitors with the route.

"Being in Nepal it's not going to be marked, unlike most races where you have your feed stations and it's well laid out," Mudge noted. "The races I've run at altitude we've gone up to altitude then immediately come down. I've never had a prolonged period racing at altitude.

"You have to run with minimum kit list. They are going to provide water every three miles, but you have to carry a minimum kit list including a bivvy bag, Lycra tights.

"You start off at 5000 metres at seven o'clock in the morning and it's minus 20 normally, but later in the race it can get up to 25 degrees, so in theory you can go through a 45 degree temperature range in the course of the race."

That explains why the women's record time is well over double that for orthodox marathons and while Mudge believes there is a real opportunity, her thinking is, as ever, laced with realism.

"The men's record is 3hr 30min by a Sherpa, which is significantly quicker than the women's, and one British man has run 3:59. All the other Brits' best are around four-and-a-half hours though, nowhere near the Sherpa's time," she pointed out.

"If everything goes okay you could knock off a chunk, but speaking to a friend who has done the race twice and who usually finishes in front of me, he has only managed 5:48. First time he got ill and the second time he got dehydrated. There are so many factors."

There are indeed, but anyone who knows anything about this woman would be slow to back against her achieving her goal. From birth to this point in her life she has been beset with challenges that would have destroyed the spirit in the vast majority. For her, however, this assault on Everest is just something else to get on with.