Many congratulations to our first lady Centurion, Ann Sayer, C. 599  who has been awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List (June 2005 ) for Services to Sport.

Ann is well known to Centurions at home and abroad for her ultra distance walking. Ann became a Centurion in 1977 at the "Bristol 100" in a brilliant time of 20:37:14, shortly after went on to do the 100 in under 20 hours.
Ann's walking achievements are legendary. She broke the women's record from Land's End to John O' Groats in October 1980, completing the route in 13 days 17 hours 42 minutes,
Ann has competed in races both at home and abroad, has broken several world track records. In the 1990's, Ann represented  Great Britain in several 24/28 hour races in France.

Ann's CV

1978 being the first woman (Ann is pretty certain) to complete the full 85 mile Isle of Man Parish Walk, finishing third overall, in 17 hrs 51 min.17 secs?
1979, the year before the End to End,  Ann did the 420 miles British Three Peaks, from Fort William over Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon to Carnarfon, of course walking all the way.  Ann took 7 days and 31 minutes, beating Arthur Eddlestone's record by about 11 hours, but (in Ann's words) "you can't keep a good man down and he came back the next year and knocked a whole day off my time!".
 
When Ann started race walking in 1977 the longest distance that women raced was 5K (there may have been the odd 10K).  In Ann's words about her early race walking history:
  "because I had no pure "athletics" background it never occurred to me that I shouldn't be doing the longer distances..... Ignorance is bliss!  I always tried to enter races properly.  Some men organisers were thankfully very supportive, some bemused, some cagey ("Well, we can't stop you walking on a public road"), only once downright negative.  I broke a lot of rules.  And I even wanted to take part in the summer series of 3K races at Woodford Bridge on Wednesday evenings, after all it was my local track.  The thought of having a woman in the same race as men on a track with proper AAA officials was a bit tricky.  One or two of the starters were most unhappy, but were shouted down by the competitors who didn't mind at all (I was not going to beat many of them!).

Ann says that she is only too aware that she couldn't have begun to do the long events and races without the help of a wonderful band of helpers.  Quote:  "I was so lucky!"

Apart from race walking, Ann has given years of enthusiastic and dedicated service to long distance walking, providing great support and encouragement to others, whether walking or helping at checkpoints. Ann has been a member of the Long Distance Walkers' Association (LDWA) for a very long time, having joined the LDWA National Committee in 1976, became Chair from 1991-94. Vice President since 1996,

Ann has also contributed a great deal to the promotion and improvement of the LDP (Long Distance Paths)  network, and recently undertook the painstaking research and cartography for the popular Long Distance Path Chart published jointly by the LDWA and Harveys.

(many thanks to the LDWA website for Ann's LDWA CV)