A WOMAN who broke her ankle just 50 metres from the finishing line of an extreme endurance challenge has vowed to tackle the course again next year.

Penny White, 47, of Spennymoor, County Durham, fell as she tried to clear The Blitz - the final obstacle of the Born Survivor Challenge - breaking her right ankle in three places.

Mrs White, a mother-of-two, was airlifted from the event course at Lowther Park, near Penrith, in Cumbria, to the Cumberland Infirmary, in Carlisle.

She has since had an operation to insert three plates in her ankle and returned to her Durham Road home on Monday. (April 6).

Mrs White, a receptionist at the urgent care centre, in Bishop Auckland Hospital, said: “The event was great and I loved every minute of it.

“We’d taken just over two hours to get that far. I’d trained so hard for it and I’m gutted at what happened.

“I tried to run up the obstacle and grab a handle at the top. You had to swing over the top and turn round so that you came down backwards.

“I didn’t manage to do it and I fell on my ankle. I could feel that it was broken straight away and I screamed.

“It’s a shame that it came to an end like this. I broke three bones in my ankle and had plates fitted so now I’m like the Bionic Woman.”

Mrs White was part of a team which included her husband Philip, Gary Freeman and Lee Stephenson, who are all members of Body Force Fitness, in Willington, County Durham.

The team did not do Born Survivor for charity but Mrs White has used previous events to raise funds for the Butterwick Hospice.

She said: “It doesn’t worry me that it might happen again. I’ll be there again next year.

“I aim to do a Born Survivor event, in Manchester, and Muddy Mayhem, in Sedgefield, both in September.”

Kevin Bedford, Born Survivor’s event director, has said 2,500 people took part in the event on Saturday and "very, very few people got injured".

He added: “This was a serious injury but we had taken the possibility into consideration and we had a medical plan in place.”