Today, mountain runner Angela Mudge will compete in the toughest race of her life. Coping with jet lag, altitude and tropical heat as she aims for the summit of the 13,435ft Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia are the least of it. Mudge has gone higher in hotter temperatures. This event is an emotional hill she has to climb. It is her first race since the death of her twin sister Janice last month.

The Buff Skyrunner world series is a daunting physical endurance test for anybody and, despite leading the female rankings, the 36-year-old is dreading the Climbathon. For every reason.

“It’s not my favourite course,” admits Mudge, of Gartmore, near Aberfoyle. She has run up Kinabalu before and knows the terrain. “There will be a lot of steep descents, which will be agony on my knees. But it’s the emotional side I’m worried about. I’ve no idea how I’m going to cope.”

Janice was diagnosed with colon cancer in November 2004, then secondary cancer in her liver. Doctors gave her five years; she didn’t last two.

The pair were close: they studied similar subjects in the same city and both were serious athletes, although they competed over different distances. Now, with her twin fading away, Mudge was considering pulling out of the Kinabulu event.

“The final race is compulsory if you’re to become overall winner of the world series and it receives double points,” says Mudge. “If I don’t run, I will give up all I’ve achieved so far. Janice and I had talked about it. She would have wanted me to run.

“If she were here, she would be telling me to get out there and get on with it. So I am.”

For years, Mudge has been making a name for herself in the challenging sport of hill and mountain running with Janice by her side.

Although not identical, the girls looked alike and had similar temperaments. Both were born with twisted feet. “We got a bit squashed in the womb,” says Mudge. “My feet were pointing backwards when I was born and Janice had one round the wrong way. We had to have our feet in plaster and braces for the first few years of our lives.”

At school they ran at county level and contiuned competing while studying in Leicester. Janice’s progress was stalled by injury in her early twenties, whereas her sister, now at Stirling University, discovered hill running.

Slightly built, Mudge’s running style is smooth and economical. She appears slow but try to keep pace with her on an incline and she’ll leave you eating her trail of dust. She regularly outruns men.

“Something seemed to click when I took up hill running. I like the physical endurance side of pushing myself to run up hills. I seem to be good at plodding on.

“I wouldn’t describe myself as a stylish runner, far from it,” she adds. “I’m better at the uphill sections. There is a technique to running downhill fast and I don’t think I’m one of the best at it.”

The highly motivated athlete has won the British fell running championship four times and twice been victorious in the European grand prix series. “The world events were a logical next step for me as I don’t like to repeat the same races,” she says.

An operation on her knees and a subsequent foot injury saw Mudge miss much of the 2005 season. Somehow she returned stronger than ever, winning last year’s World Masters mountain running championship in Cumbria. But it’s the granddaddy of mountain running sports, skyrunning and the Buff Skyrunner world series, that has proven Mudge’s true mettle.

From full marathons at a height of more than 13,123ft to races with 3,281ft climbs, each event pushes competitors to their limits. Today’s final, the fifth in the series, is a 13-mile race up the highest peak in southeast Asia.

The physical strength and endurance required to win four successive races is incredible. But to pull off so many tough victories while dealing with the mental torture of nursing her sister through terminal cancer appears extraordinary. Angela says that couldn’t be further from the truth. “Janice and I just got on with her cancer in our own ways. Of course we wanted to spend a lot more time together,” she says. “I often stayed at her home and in the early stages we did a lot of walking together. But even while she was ill it didn’t affect my running. She was keen for me to compete in the skyrunning series and encouraged me to enter. She made it easy for me.”

When Mudge was away at a race, Janice followed her progress on the internet. “She even managed to find a video of one course for me, to give me a preview. She became my personal guide.” Competing around the world also gave her some respite from the strain of caring for her twin.

“The races and the training gave me something else to focus on,” she says. “I wouldn’t dare, or want, to go away for long, but these races gave me a break. I wanted to be there for Janice, but it sometimes became overwhelming.”

For the first nine months, Janice was worn out from her first course of chemotherapy. The second course, starting in April, came with far more debilitating side effects.

“This is really when she started to deteriorate and I hated to watch her suffering. We went through some difficult times then. She could be grumpy and I knew it was because she was feeling rotten.”

That did not rule out a bit of sisterly mickey-taking. “I’ve received some very strange prizes for hill running,” smiles Mudge. “The skyrunner trophies are pretty tacky: polystyrene heads, like a shop mannequin. These are spray painted gold, silver and bronze according to your placing. I brought one home for Janice and she thought it was absolutely hilarious.

“ We dressed it up with a hat I won in another race. She would get it out at every opportunity to show friends.”

As Mudge was preparing to set off for an event in Andorra, Janice deteriorated very suddenly. “She had her lungs drained and when I saw her afterwards, she looked so weak,” she says. “I immediately pulled out of the race.” Days later, her twin died.

Whatever the outcome of today’s race, her twin is determined to carry on running.

“My ambitions have changed because Janice died so young,” says Mudge. “She had done so much with her life, but not everything she had wanted to do. I want to make the most of my life and will live far more for the present.

“Over the past few years I’ve focused on European and world competitions and missed other races. So I will probably do more events. Running is what I do.”

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