\n<\/p>\n
“Everyone tried to put me off at first – people just didn’t believe I would actually do it,” Cox says.<\/p>\n
But on 26 October last year, she set off from the Attari-Wagah border between Pakistan and India, bound for Kolkata, just a few miles from where her father Deric was born. <\/p>\n
She stayed true to the route, which meant there were sometimes days when she ran 42km along a highway “which was boring as hell” but other days were through nature reserves, along canals and through farmers’ fields. <\/p>\n
There were cows, snakes and goats in the road, while drivers regularly travelled on the wrong side of the highways. Some were busy roads and she has a scar on her right leg from a collision with a motorbike while she was running. <\/p>\n
She even needed a police escort at times because she was going through regions known for regular fatal tiger attacks.<\/p>\n
It was often hot, dusty and smoggy and even though she had spent two weeks beforehand doing sessions in a heat chamber to acclimatise, it was unlike anything she had ever experienced. <\/p>\n
And then there was the sickness, which played a large part in her losing more than 10kg during the challenge. <\/p>\n
One such episode also coincided with one of the more surreal chance encounters.<\/p>\n
“It was day 24 and we met Richard Branson at the Taj Mahal,” she says.<\/p>\n
“He was out there to host a charity cycling event and we were walking round the Taj and I was just feeling worse and worse. <\/p>\n
“The evening before, he had invited me for dinner at a really expensive hotel. I had one sniff of an Old Fashioned cocktail and I was like: “oh my god, I’m going to be sick”.<\/p>\n
“I had to run to these really fancy toilets and I was sick everywhere.<\/p>\n
“The next day, I needed to run a marathon and five of the people who were part of Richard Branson’s charity event decided they were going to run with me. I was sick all day that day by the side of the road but I just knew I had to finish.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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“Everyone tried to put me off at first – people just didn’t believe I would actually do it,” Cox says. But on 26 October last year, she set off from the Attari-Wagah border between Pakistan and India, bound for Kolkata, just a few miles from where her father Deric was born. She stayed true to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}