Ashley Estwanik completed the second half of yesterday's husband and wife double in the May 24 race, and smashed the race record in the process.

Estwanik finished in 1.23.30, knocking four minutes off the previous best set by Dawn Richardson in last year's race.

And the 30-year-old insisted that she couldn't have done it without the support of the thousands of people who lined the course to cheer the runners home.

"It was really, really exciting, the first five miles were a lot of fun, there was a lot of cheering and you just feel so good," she said. "And the Bermudian public, they have a heart like nothing else I have ever experienced before and they just carried me through.

"I did start to suffer a little bit after Burnt House Hill, just getting up and over, I started to feel a little bit breathless. But I was with Simon Ashby and Peter Mills and they really carried me, they were so good. Peter kept waiting for me and it was really awesome.

"Coming down Front Street I did say to Peter and Simon 'I think we're going to make it', but in my head I was 'Oh my God, am I going to make it?' But everybody started going 'your husband just won in 1.08, your husband just won', so I knew at that point I had to carry through and finish.

"The whole time they are going 'oh that's the wife, that's the wife'.

"Thank goodness the crowds were there though, I was crawling up Queen's Street. They must have thought I was a snail. If I had been in no-man's land at that point, with no crowd, who knows what would have happened. I think I would have just stopped and hidden in the bus stop and hoped no-one would notice."

Estwanik came in a good four minutes ahead of second placed Dawn Richardson, and spent most of her race well ahead of the other female runners.

Third female was Victoria Fiddick in 1:29:02.

"I think I was pretty much by myself female wise from mile two," said Estwanik. "I didn't deliberately do that, but I know what I can run and I knew what I wanted to run time wise and I went out and did that. My first couple of miles were nice and easy. I ran probably about 6.20s, and then once I had caught up with Peter and Simon I probably, at a couple of points, went a little bit too fast.

"We hit 5.40s and had to back down a little bit, I got a little excited, but I felt good. But then after Burnt House Hill it started to hurt a little bit.

"The time was about what I thought I could do. If it had been an absolutely perfect race I would have run 1.22.30, or something, but my best time in perfect 50 degree conditions was 1.24 something. So my time was better than that, and these were more difficult conditions to run in, so I'm really pleased with it."

While her time was still someway short of the overall race record, of 1.19.55, set by Sandra Mewett on the old course in 1989, it was an impressive finish, even more so when she has spent much of her career racing over far shorter distances.

"We've (her and husband Chris) really had our heads down since International Race Weekend," she said. "We've both done a lot of running over the years, but training for a mile, 1500 metres is a far cry from running 13.1 miles. You have to re-adjust the body, re-adjust the training to accomodate that. We did a little more mileage, the work-outs were geared towards sustaining a pace, instead of short bursts. It's really being able to go out and there and learning how to suffer."