Despite a number of setbacks, a Douglas woman completed a marathon along the length of Scotland’s most famous loch.

Lucy Mann, 24, completed the 26.2 mile route from near Knockie Lodge up to just outside of Inverness.

She was running the marathon to raise money for Hypopara UK which supports medical research on hypoparathyroidism.

However, Lucy’s trouble began before she left the island.

Undertaking a final training session on Douglas Promenades, her inflatable ’Nessie’ outfit suffered a deflating problem.

Lucy said: ’On my practice run the fan in the costume broke, so I kept tripping up over a deflated tail.

’It took me 50 minutes to do three miles in the practice (this isn’t great if you plan to run a marathon).

’I then tried to fix it, didn’t work. I had a day to come up with something that was marathon friendly before I was getting on the boat, so I spent an evening with my friend cutting off bits of Nessie and restuffing. I’m not a natural sewer it turns out. I stabbed myself numerous of times!

’I got to the marathon, with a tail, Nessie hat and covered in glitter. It was freezing at the start, some kind person gave me a thermal blanket to keep warm, I think the blue paint made me look pretty cold!’

During the marathon, Lucy lost her Nessie head, but was making good time, reaching the 13 mile mark in under two hours.

But then she had an energy gel which made her sick.

She said: ’About five minutes later a wave of headaches, sweating and being sick hit me.

’I think I was sick about three times in a row but I picked myself up and carried on.

’From mile 14 I would run a bit, be sick, walk for a bit and that was my cycle and to top it off I had lost my tail too.

’When the sickness did stop it gave me plenty of time to get to know the other runners and I made a couple of great friends. We all helped each other and actually had a really good time.

’In total we raised £1,400 for a fantastic charity and I finished in roughly five hours, 40 minutes, which is not quite my four-and-a-half-hour target.

’It didn’t matter because Loch Ness is beautiful and the running community is fantastic.’