Running is "excruciating," but somehow she manages, with a chronic bronchial condition and dicky knees. She runs as if her life depends on it, a life that nearly ended at age nine when, as little girls might do, she dashed onto the road outside of her house and when struck by a car, was flipped onto the bonnet and dumped onto the road.

Her injuries were horrifying; a broken pelvis, hip and coccyx. Slowly, painfully, she mended but was told by a doctor that she would suffer with a lifetime limp and would have to face life with the aid of a walking stick.

"That wasn't going to happen...no way, so I started body building when I was fourteen and still do to this day. My best squat is 120 kilograms; my best leg press is 500 kg and I'm a freak doing chin-ups."

Courage and determination seem like insufficient words when the pelvic pain is barely bearable and the sufferer shuns all painkillers.

She is fifty-three, an asthmatic mother of two boys, who only runs at one pace, and that's flat out, at times to her detriment.

OTHER NEWS:

In the eight kilometre Lindsay Kent Memorial Handicap at Stawell last Saturday, she had to stop to suck in deep breaths...fifteen times! Is that an exaggeration? She had the technology to prove it.

Incredibly she won by more than a minute from 495-run veteran, Peter Gibson, thereby shredding the bridesmaid's tag she had earned after four seconds and a third in just six starts with the club.

"I love the bush courses and trails; I love running with people and being part of something good. But I know my time as a competitive runner as I get sorer and sorer with these issues I have."

Did she run the next day? You bet she did, with a younger (and faster) club-mate Tessa Thompson who was Queen of the Hill in the club's One Tree Hill race at Ararat on May 2.

Pettingill will pay the price of success when she is re-handicapped for the ten kilometre Logan Memorial Handicap at Stawell this Sunday...but then she has overcome much tougher handicaps before.

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