After setting a women's record for the Everest Marathon, Angela Mudge, Scotland's world hill-running champion, described the experience as the most challenging of her career.

The 37-year-old, who has had a lifetime of fighting the odds - she was born with her feet facing the wrong way - completed the course in 5hr 3min, knocking a remarkable 13 minutes off the 10-year-old women's record held by Anne Stentiford, of Macclesfield Harriers, as she finished in eighth place overall.

While she might have been expected to be better prepared than most for the challenge - she recently retained the world sky-running title contested in a year-long series of marathons at altitude - her time, more than double the world record for the marathon at sea level, demonstrates just how tough the race was.

The scale of the challenge was further demonstrated by the experience of her fellow- Scot, Louise Murray, who came close to being ruled out of the race midway through the two-week preparation trek that competitors are obliged to undertake to reach Everest base camp if they want to compete.

The 30-year-old Scot, spends half her year working above 2000m (6500ft) in the French Alps, yet had a traumatic night after suffering intense pain around her eyes on top of a severe headache in Gokyo, at 4800m, a week before the race. They are classic symptoms of acute mountain sickness, as fluid starts to collect in the brain.

She was given oxygen, steroids and placed in a portable hyperbaric pressure chamber under the supervision of her boyfriend, Jamie, while a porter would blow more air into the chamber at five-minute intervals to keep it at the right pressure.

Next morning, she was helped down the valley and made a rapid recovery as her blood oxygen level returned to something approaching normal. Remarkably she completed the marathon a week later, in under eight hours.