'It is no longer a limit on your life' - Former Boston man hopes to inspire others with type 1 diabetes after winning 'Britain's most brutal endurance race'

Chris Cope, 41, finished first in this year’s Montane Summer Spine challenge.

The gruelling event is a 268-mile race along the Pennine Way, starting in Edale, Derbyshire, and ending in Kirk Yetholm, Scotland.Competitors have a time limit of 156 hours to complete the course. En route, there are five checkpoints where food and sleeping facilities (tents) are on offer, but the event is classed as ‘non-stop’.

It is billed as ‘Britain’s most brutal endurance race’.

Chris finished in a time of 79 hours and 10 minutes, having only slept for an hour and 10 minutes in total.

Second place followed 11 hours later and third place 10 hours after that.

The weather, however, was not on the side of Chris and the other competitors.

Rain early on in the race made for ‘boggy mud and water underfoot for most of the way to Scotland’, Chris said.

Later, on Pen-Y-Ghent (one of the Yorkshire Dales’ Three Peaks), in the dark, there was raging wind and hail.

“I felt like I would be blown off the mountain side,” he said. “Indeed, my race number was blown off and was apparently found five miles away by a walker who handed it in to a checkpoint and it was returned to

me later in the race!”

Chris finished the race ‘delirious and happy’, though with trench foot in both feet.

Chris grew up in the Boston area, attending Donington Cowley Endowed Primary School and Boston Grammar School.

Today, he lives in Nottinghamshire, where he works as a GP, but he remains a member of the Boston and District Athletic Club.

The married father-of-two said he was inspired to take on the event due to his type 1 diabetes, which he has had since he was 14.

“I completed this event to raise awareness and inspire adults and children with type 1 as well as parents of kids with type 1,” he said. “It is often felt that diabetes stops you from achieving your goals, but this is no longer the case. Insulin pumps and glucose sensors can now be combined to help form an artificial pancreas. This is called looping.”

Since he started ‘looping’ five years ago, Chris says his life has been ‘transformed’, so much so that he started competing in Ironman endurance events in 2018 and then attended the world championships the following year.

He has also completed the six-day, 236-mile Montane Dragon’s Back Race down the Welsh mountains from Conwy to Cardiff.

“This was the next step and it went better than I could have expected,” he said.

“I had so much support and positive feedback from people with type 1 and parents of children with type 1 during the race,” he continued. “Parents were sending me messages saying that I had inspired them and their children, they called me ‘a hero’ and proved that type 1 should not be a barrier to anything.”

Chris said his aim in talking about this achievement was to ‘spread the message further’ that type 1 diabetes is ‘no longer a limit on your life’.

“It is something to be embraced and looked after so that you can achieve whatever you want to achieve,” he said.

The race has also helped raise £2,400 for Guide Dogs and diabetes looping (to donate vitsit https://tinyurl.com/CCSummerSpine).

• In the embedded YouTube video, find Chris talking at the 1 min mark and, again, at the 6 min 50 sec mark.