EMMA Lee-Smith is used to taking on tough challenges as one of few female Apache pilots serving with the British Army Air Corps in Afghanistan.

And now the 29-year-old from Great Ashfield, who is also a Harleston Magpies hockey player, has taken on arguably her most difficult task yet by competing in the gruelling Marathon Des Sables.

She has been taking part in the run across the Sahara desert, in southern Morocco, to raise money for the National Kidney Federation as her sister, Becky Baker, 30, is awaiting a kidney transplant.

She decided to do the marathon while she was training at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst and since then she has been training in earnest.

She set off on the 156mile race – in temperatures of up to 38C (100F) – on Thursday last week.

Her training has included runs in Arizona, where she has been on army duty, while she has also used a heater and running machine in her bedroom to recreate the desert conditions.

She grew up in Brumstead, Norfolk, and now lives in Great Ashfield, near Bury St Edmunds, while she is serving in the Army Air Corps.

She attended Thorpe House School in Norwich before studying analytical chemistry at the University of East Anglia and then working for Bayer Crop Science.

Since joining the Army Air Corps she has already completed one tour of duty in Afghanistan and is set to embark on her second in January.

Her mother, Judy, said her intrepid daughter had also served alongside Prince Harry during her time at Wattisham Airfield.

She said: “She runs for the Kidney Federation to try to raise some money with her sister being so poorly.”

Mother-of-two Becky is currently receiving dialysis treatment and lives at Bungay with her husband, Matthew, and children Harry, four and Tom, two.

The marathon, which is equivalent to six marathons, is considered to be the toughest footrace in the world and one stage of the race is 57 miles long. The first marathon took place in 1986.