Our Gold Medal Achievements

From improving fitness to overcoming fears to campaigning for a good cause, three women tell Amy Hunt how they battled a problem… and won.

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Anna Peska, 42, lives in Crouch End, north London, with her partner and three-year-old son Alfie. She is a freelance illustrator and photographer.

It was a flight to Frankfurt for work when I was 29 that triggered my debilitating fear of flying. On the day of the flight, I came down with a flu virus and felt awful with a high temperature and terrible headache.

I had flown fairly frequently both on holiday and for business, and though I didn’t enjoy it, I didn’t have a problem. I don’t know if it was the fact I was feeling ill because of the virus, but as the cabin doors closed I felt overwhelmed with panic at the thought that I couldn’t leave the plane. I was shaking, sweating, close to tears and thought I was having a heart attack.

I didn’t recognise what was happening at the time but it was a panic attack – I was travelling on my own and told myself to keep breathing. The cabin crew were sympathetic, handing me water, but I was shocked. Flying had never affected me like this before.

Four days later, I just couldn’t face the flight back to England, so I booked a train home. A 48-hour train ride was preferable to being on a plane again, never mind that it cost a fortune.

Once home, I saw my GP who attributed my panic to the fact that I’d been feeling ill. I was given Valium and sent on my way. Looking back now, I suppose I came to associate being on a plane with feeling as horrendous as I did on that flight – it was something I never wanted to feel again. So I began to avoid flying.

I missed out on a lot of international freelance work and didn’t see my brother, who was living in Chicago, for three years. The furthest I’d go for a holiday was Cornwall.