It is not often that you get to meet athletics royalty but the 1,600 or so runners taking part in the Chubb Bermuda Triangle Challenge this week will get to do just that.

Racing in the 10K on Saturday and presenting medals for the Butterfield Mile tonight and the Marathon on Sunday is British legend Paula Radcliffe, who won both the London and Chicago Marathons three times and broke the world marathon record twice. She competed for Britain in four Olympic Games and was the European 10,000 metres champion and Commonwealth Games 5,000 metres champion.

That is not a bad haul for a runner diagnosed with asthma as a teenager and Radcliffe may use her speech at the dinner on Saturday night to talk about the challenges she overcame on the way to being the best female ever to run the marathon.

“It’s really important for those conditions to keep active,” Radcliffe said. “It’s certainly one of the biggest things that I learnt was that being sporty trains your lungs to fight stress and certainly helps to control them in periods of asthma activation.

“Cigarette smoke and pollution used to be a big trigger but keeping calm and breathing techniques really help, and I think sport massively helps with that.

“The best advice that I got from my doctor when I was first diagnosed at 13 was that you have to control it and not let it control your life. I’m really grateful for that and it never went into my head that it would stop me doing anything.

“So that’s my biggest message, that you may have something you need to monitor and take medication for, but it’s not going to stop you doing sport and, in fact, sport will help you.”

This is Radcliffe’s first time in Bermuda and she heard great things about the event from Sebastian Coe, who was an ambassador for the event last year.

“I spoke with Lord Coe about this and I know he had a brilliant time here last year and Steve Cram, a good friend of mine that I commentate and work with, won the Mile back in 1991,” she said.

“I was just so glad that it could work out and that I could visit for the first time, experience the culture, the life of the island and see some of it as well.

“One of the beautiful things about this event is the community, the strength of camaraderie and the experiences and friends of people that you meet through that. You'll make new friends during the runs themselves and you'll support each other through those difficult times, which can happen, particularly in a hilly marathon.

“This is a place where you can make friendships that last a lifetime.”

Radcliffe’s passion running comes shining through but she admits that during her time as the world’s best runner the love for the sport was not always as strong as it was in her youth.

“I loved the feeling of running, running fast and that feeling of freedom that it gave me,” she said.

“Then it became something more competitive and I felt fortunate that I got to essentially make my career doing something that would have been my hobby and that I still do.

“But when you get to the top, obviously there are times when it’s hard and in all honesty you might be coming out for the fourteenth run of that week feeling tired and only doing it because it’s your job.

“The underlying motivation for me was just trying to get the best out of myself and prepare in the best way possible. But on the flip side of it, when you come out the other side I rediscovered freedom.

“I've also rediscovered the social side of it because that’s something you can’t have when you’re running competitively. It’s got to be all about what's best for you and your personal journey and competition.”

Radcliffe’s journey included breaking records and winning medals at some of her sport’s biggest events so it may come as a surprise that she nominates winning the World Cross Country Championships in Ostend in 2001 as her personal highlight.

“It’s funny because for me the World Cross Country win was very, very important,” Radcliffe said.

“I won the junior event in 1992 and that was the win that really gave me the confidence and the sign that I could make it as a professional athlete in the senior ranks.

“I set a goal that day to win the senior race and it took me nine years to be able to do that, so finally achieving it after eight years of finishing second, third, fourth, eighteenth, nineteenth, was very special.”

Runners in the 10K on Saturday will have the chance to run alongside Radcliffe but she promises not to blow everyone out of the water with some fast splits

“I’m just trying to see as much of the island as possible,” she said.

“I have a packed schedule over the next few days, but the biggest thing now is that my competitive days are finished and I just enjoy being a part of it.

“I will just be running around and encouraging people. The biggest attraction of races like this is the atmosphere and if you could bottle that atmosphere of this event, I really think it would make everybody in the world a better person.”