Anna Rutherford made history this past weekend at the first-ever Castle to Castle Rat Race, a 100-mile ultra from Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland, in the northeast of England, to Edinburgh Castle.
The 43-year-old mother of three not only won the race, she finished so far ahead of the competition that she was already home and in bed by the time the next runner crossed the finish line.
Rutherford completed the route in 17 hours, 23 minutes, and 11 seconds, more than two hours ahead of the first male finisher, Danny Castro, and a full five hours in front of the next woman.
The race began at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday, July 13, and finished just after 12:30 a.m. Sunday in Princes Street Gardens, beneath Edinburgh Castle.
“I was singing 9 to 5 running up the Royal Mile and everyone was singing along with me,” Rutherford told BBC Scotland.
“Because the race finished in Princes Street Gardens, you couldn’t make a lot of noise, so I collected my medal and my parents had waited at the finish line for me. It was beyond my wildest dreams to run 100 miles in that time. But I just went home and went straight to bed.”
Rutherford ran the final 50 miles solo after passing the men’s race leader near the halfway point.
She managed her own fuel along the way, eating pretzels and mixing stock powder with water at 10-mile checkpoints. She even missed one aid stop where she’d stashed hydration gels and a note from her son.
Still, she never lost her rhythm, even stopping to check on a man lying on a golf course near Gullane.
“He said he was just ‘looking at the stars’ so I had to crack on,” she told BBC Scotland.
Originally from Milngavie and now living in Peebles, Rutherford is no stranger to long, lonely miles. In 2021, she set a women’s record on the 212-mile Southern Upland Way, finishing in 62 hours and 34 minutes.
That effort came just nine months after giving birth to her second child. Her secret then? Stock cubes, which she credited for keeping her electrolytes balanced. This time, she said the race was just as much a mental battle as a physical one.
“It doesn’t matter what the distance is, about 70 or 80% of the way through, it is going to feel really hard because you’ve done the hardest bit, you are getting tired, but there is still a long way to go,” she said.
“In a way, I just embraced it. There’s a lot of really, really good ultra-runners out there, who talk about the psychology of getting into this pain cave and just knowing that and almost looking forward to it.”
She cited Jasmin Paris, the first woman to finish the Barkley Marathons, as a particular inspiration. “Someone like Jasmine Paris, her saying ‘just watch me’ before she did the Barkley Marathons, I found that very humbling.”
Rutherford also praised race organizers, Rat Race Adventures, for going out of their way to support women athletes, including by providing female-specific toilets and sanitary products at every aid station.
“I’m 43, I’m perimenopausal, I’m on HRT, that massively affects your hormones and that has a massive impact,” she told the BBC.
“I got my period on Friday and I was very aware that I was wearing light-coloured leggings, but at every checkpoint, they had female-specific toilets with sanitary products. I think it just shows women do these things too. Women are not just little men. They have their own specific needs, but they were being catered to and I really loved that.”
In a comment on Facebook responding to Rat Race Adventures, Rutherford added, “MASSIVE congrats to RatRace for catering for women so well! I hope that came across, I was blown away!”
From her ability to balance family, law work, and training up to 120 miles per week, to her country-music-fueled climb through Edinburgh’s historic center, Rutherford’s performance stood out not just for its speed, but for the kind of mental fortitude that defines the best of the sport. And yes, she really did go home and go straight to bed.
