GET well messages have been pouring in for a woman who has been described as one of the outstanding distance runners in south-west Hampshire.

Schoolteacher Anthea Waters, pictured, is in a stable condition in Southampton General Hospital after being badly injured in a head-on collision on the A35 west of Lyndhurst last weekend.

Anthea, who suffered internal injuries and bruising to her body and head, had been in the forefront of inter-club distance running from 10km races in the New Forest area for almost 20 years.

She is still a great stalwart of New Forest Road Runners and club chairman Mike Ryan said: "I am getting inundated with calls from people asking how she is. She still holds quite a few trophies which will be due back soon and there is nothing we want more than to see Anthea well enough to bring them back and then fit enough to compete for them again."

Also a leading cross country runner, Anthea is the current individual women's champion of a ten-race series of five-mile cross country races contested by 12 clubs in Southampton and south-west Hampshire.

A former matron at the Edinburgh House School at New Milton, she was persuaded to take up teaching and had a spell at Foxhills School at Ashurst before spending two years teaching in Dubai and then returning to take up a post at Ringwood Junior School.