FOR getting on 20 years Sharon Gayter appeared so regularly and so resoundingly amid these columns that we were almost running mates, and if not strictly running mates then enthusiastically and breathlessly in her wake.

We’d followed the ultimate ultra-runner all over Britain and, through cyberspace, the world. Once we’d managed to overtake her – by means of a taxi from Wick railway station – two miles from the end of her world record run from Land's End to John o’ Groats. They still refused to let us in the pub.

Then she just seemed to disappear over the horizon. It must be four years since her name has so much as been mentioned hereabouts.

An email enquired if she were still up and running, wondered if she might have time for a catch-up last Saturday lunchtime. Sharon’s now 53 and chronically asthmatic; here’s the beginning of her reply:

“You have chosen well. A couple of weeks ago it was over two feet of snow high above Hawes in a freezing cold Wensleydale Wedge, last weekend was Rudolph’s Romp – 24 miles around the Yorkshire Wolds – and this Sunday (December 12) a Winter Wonderland marathon around Newcastle Town Moor. Only one marathon a week during working weeks.”

The ultras, it will have been noticed, alliterate for England.

“In the summer,” Sharon’s email continued, “it was ten marathons in ten days in a glorious Italian setting and 35 degrees. I was also first lady in the Hardmoors 110 miles around the Cleveland Way earlier in the year. Over the New Year we’ll be in Phoenix, Arizona, for a six-day event.”

So yes, she said, it would be very good to catch up.

SHE lives in Guisborough with Bill, the wonderfully supportive husband whom she married at Gretna Green almost 25 years ago, and with Baxter, a two-year-old springer spaniel homed from a rescue centre.

Baxter was in a bit of a state. Chiefly, said the vet, he had weak muscles. He sure as biscuits doesn’t have now.

Alongside Bill, who’s 55 and has two new hips, he’d completed all 24 miles of Rudolph’s Romp – dog fine, master still recovering. That morning all three had completed the 5K run in Albert Park in Middlesbrough – Sharon the first lady, Baxter quite likely the first rescue springer.

“He’s the most stubborn of dogs and when he doesn’t want to run he simply lies down and refuses to budge,” says Sharon, though Baxter may be growing accustomed to life’s pace.

With an agreed handicap system, she and Bill regularly compete against one another in the hugely popular parkruns, loser to make the cappuccino complete with marshmallows and things. It’s Bill’s turn to make the coffee.

SHE came to Cleveland 30 years ago, worked as a bus driver, now lectures at Teesside University in all manner of sports science-related disciplines and, inevitably, runs to and from work.

“My students say they’ve been playing football or something and are exhausted. I tell them I've just run from Guisborough. I think they’re getting used to me by now.”

The house reflects the dedication of a world-class athlete, if not of a domestic goddess. “We live on beans on toast,” she insists.

Amid countless other testaments to triumph, her world records are framed most prominently on the wall. In the hall there’s a 9.5kg trophy, won in Norway, out there because the shelves aren’t strong enough to hold it.

“The luggage limit for the place was just 10kg. It got quite interesting,” Sharon recalls.

One certificate records recent involvement in The High, a Himalayan event run at up to 18,000 feet – “not much point in trying to get a bus to follow me up there” – and in which she was unable to use her asthma pump because of the altitude, had to go on a nebuliser every four hours and still tortuously traversed 220K in two-and-a-half days.

It was the second time the event had been held. On the first occasion, all but one of the runners ended up in hospital.

Then there were the wild dogs. “I’d done my homework and bought a dog zapper. When we heard them down below, Bill gave me the zapper, went to the van and abandoned me.” She beat the record – “blasted it” – by 11 hours. “The toughest race I’ve ever done.”

On the certificate, The High has a sub-title – “Failure is not a crime, lack of effort is.” There’s little chance of the lady being locked up.

THE double garage is now in part a professionally-equipped gym, including treadmill, partly a museum for her mementoes. Their camper van – SG02RUN – sits permanently outside.

On the garage wall there’s even a sign saying “Caution: runner”, given to each competitor before a Grand Canyon event, though the runners might more beneficially have been warned about snakes.

“No one told me until I came across five or six,” she recalls. “Then I learned that that part was called Snake Canyon. The dog zapper mightn’t have worked for those.”

Twice in the past few years she’s been medically advised never to run again – one serious ankle injury, the other to the knee – and twice determined to bounce back.

Even when sidelined, she quickly completed a 32,000-piece jigsaw, claimed to be the world’s biggest, and then rapidly took on a 16,000-piece puzzle reckoned the world’s hardest. “It was all green birds among green foliage. It wasn’t too bad, really.”

So what on earth would she do if permanently unable to compete? “I’d take up something else, maybe canoeing around Britain, a lot of things are possible these days.

“I just love running. I’m still competitive, you’ll never get that out of me. You can have grumpy spells in races, but it’s soon forgotten. I know I’m getting slower, and that can be frustrating, but it doesn’t take away the pleasure.

“There are still category wins, still maybe a world record or two. My friend Shirley Gibson, from Darlington, has just won the over-70s class in a four-day event on Lanzarote. I want to be doing something like that.”

FOR Christmas they’ll be heading to family in Cambridge – “the only day in the year that Bill gets a roast dinner” – preceded, on Christmas morning, by a parkrun. The following day they’ll be on the plane to Arizona for that six-day event.

“It’s called Sun Valley, only supposed to rain once every 30 years,” says the globetrotter. “Last time I did that event it absolutely poured down.”

At Teesside University on April 3 she’ll begin an attempt on the world 1,000K treadmill record, as challenging mentally and emotionally as it is physically. “I wanted to do 1,000 miles but haven’t enough holiday,” she says.

We’ve promised to look in. Since the amazing Mrs Gayter will be going nowhere fast, a chance to catch up once again. This one could run and run.