CROSS country runner Anna Lupton is gearing up for her biggest challenge yet after reflecting on her best ever year of results.

The 32-year-old Radcliffe AC athlete is currently pounding up to 70 miles a week on the streets in preparation for her first London Marathon.

Her participation in the high-profile event in April is a vast departure from her career so far as an off-road runner, but a testament to Lupton’s determination to push herself to the absolute limit.

2010 was a 12 months to remember for Lupton as she won the Yorkshire Three Peaks for the second year running, clocking a time seven minutes faster than her previous effort.

She then completed the Pikes Peak in Colorado, scaling 7,815m in an uphill-only race and finishing in an incredible fifth place.

“2010 was the year it all came together for me,” said the former St Monica’s High School, Prestwich, pupil.

“The Colorado event was an international long distance mountain race and fifth was something I thought I could never achieve. The standard of girls I was up against was such that I didn’t think I was worthy enough to race against them.

“To come fifth in a class field was a great feeling.”

Lupton – who has been a member of Radcliffe AC for six years – went on to represent Great Britain in the World Mountain Running Championships in Slovenia, where she finished 31st out more than 70 women.

She is due to represent Greater Manchester in the Inter Counties Championships in Birmingham in March after a fourth-place finish in the Greater Manchester Cross Country championships.

Lupton has charted a vast improvement in her performances over the last five years and it is perhaps no coincidence it occurred after she met her Salford Harrier boyfriend John Brown who is an international athlete.

“He’s not coached me as such,” she said. “But I learned a lot from just seeing how he trains and incorporated it into what I do.

“It made me realise that athletes are just normal people. I used to think they were special people and that I didn’t belong in their world – where people won races. But I now know they’re regular people.

“After meeting John I realised that he was just a normal bloke who had a life outside running.

“He’s taken me on many a run and dropped me. That’s done me the world of good, because I’m quite competitive and I don’t like it.

“It’s taught me to push myself to the limit and that you really have to hurt yourself in training in order to improve.

“I used to get myself to a certain level then stop because it was hurting. I spent years at the same level, constantly trying to maintain my fitness. But you’ve got to really make it hurt.”

And it’s that approach to her training that the hi-tec librarian has learned to love.

“You can do a 5K road race without much training, but you have to take a peaks race seriously,” she said.

“If you prepare well, you get a result. That’s the wonderfully simple thing about running, that you wish was the same in all aspects of life.”

Looking forward to the London Marathon, she added: “I’ve never done a road marathon before, and I am excited by it because I like a new challenge. It’s a different kind of running – very different from off-road running.

“I love the way running makes me feel. I never finish a run without feeling better than I did before I started. I sometimes have to drag myself out, but I’m always glad I’ve done it. I like having a goal.”