The 24-hour race: 'It is a battle with your mind'

Ultra-running is one of the fastest growing sports, usually taking place in remote, scenic landscapes. Not a running track in London. Will competitors reach nirvana?

‘I hallucinated, of course. I always do,” Pat Seabrook says. She is 76 and has spent the past 24 hours running round a 400m athletics track in Tooting, south London. She sits in the front seat of her car, peeling plasters off her toes. “At some point I began to think the white lines on the track were ropes, rising up around me, an...