“IT WAS very difficult,” said Jane Tomlinson yesterday. Some of us might use that phrase to describe getting out of bed on a Monday morning, but she was referring to the epic 4,200-mile (6,760 km) ride across the US that she had just completed.

Her website describes it as “the greatest endurance feat ever to be attempted by someone with terminal cancer”, and it is difficult to dispute the claim.

On Wednesday her husband Mike had grave fears that his 42-year-old wife was too ill to complete the final leg to New York. But somehow she found the energy to continue, despite the pain and suffering that she had inflicted on her body over the past nine weeks.

As she rode into Battery Park yesterday, an emotional Mrs Tomlinson said: “I’m just relieved it’s over. I thought it was going to be a bit of an adventure but it turned out to be a bit of an ordeal.”

At the finish, Mr Tomlinson said that it had been distressing to watch his wife going through pain. “There are at least seven or eight occasions where I asked her to pack it in,” he said. “She ignored me like a good wife should, and she’s been proved right. I’m very, very astonished that she’s here.”

One of her co-riders, Ryan Bowd, 27, a lecturer at the University of Leeds, said that Mrs Tomlinson had battled on despite “agony so fierce you can only appreciate it when you see it”. “As we rode, Jane was visibly in greater pain than I have ever seen her in. On the climbs you could hear her purging the pain through muffled grunts and groans,” said Mr Bowd, from Calgary, Canada.

“[Then] something clicked into gear for her and she seemed to bottle up her pain and pick up the speed. I realised that I was watching Jane turn the impossible into the improbable and then reality.”

She faced strong winds and baking temperatures as she cycled from San Francisco across America’s vast interior.

Steven, the couple’s nine-year-old son, accompanied his parents. He said: “I think it’s great to be here because there’s nothing else to do: we can just get on as a family and enjoy what time she has got left. I’m really proud of her.”

They also have two daughters, Suzanne, 21, and Rebecca, 18, who remained at home in Leeds. Mrs Tomlinson, a radiographer, now plans to spend some time with her family.

Six years ago she was told that she had metastatic breast cancer and had six months to live. However, she was determined to prove that a diagnosis of cancer did not mean the end to an active life. Since then she has completed a full ironman event — a 4km (2.4m) swim, 180km bike ride and full marathon — in less than 17 hours and run the London Marathon three times. She has also completed the New York Marathon and three London triathlons.

Maureen Rutter, director of Macmillan Cancer Support, said: “Jane Tomlinson is an inspiration to the many people in the country who are also living with cancer.”

Donations can be made at www.janesappeal.com

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