Most people take a book or a newspaper into the toilet but one sports-mad couple stare at the medals they have won on the world stage.

Lena Poulton and husband Ben hang their sporting gongs on the door of the smallest room of their home in Hazlemere.

Ben’s pride and joy is the 1994 Commonwealth Games bronze rowing medal he won Canada, while Lena’s is a much more recent addition, a silver medal from the World Triathlon Championships in Chicago last month.

She said: “It’s hanging in the loo and it puts a smile on my face every time I’m in there.”

And so it should. The GP, who juggles her surgery work at the Chiltern House Medical Centre in High Wycombe, with being a full-time mum to three boys, only took up the sport two years ago and in that time she has gone from being a complete rookie to finishing second in her age group at the World Championships in Chicago.

She said: “It’s pretty amazing. Since I was a little child I have always dreamed of competing at an Olympics or a World Championships.”

But six years training as a medical student, 15 years as a GP, and childbirth looked to have put paid to those kind of dreams until two years ago, aged 39, when she started doing triathlons and running local races. Poulton did well and the bug was well and truly ingested although she admits that she did not predict the kind of success that she is enjoying now.

She told the Bucks Free Press: “It’s fantastic. To compete for Great Britain and to wave your country’s flag gives you a fantastic sense of pride and achievement and going to the World Championships and winning the silver medal in my age category is the icing on the cake.

“Only this morning I was putting something into the slow cooker and folding the washing when this smile came across my face at the thought of what I had achieved.

“I just feel this real sense of pride and achievement and I want to carry on competing for as long I can.”

Poulton now believes she has found the perfect work-life balance from the stresses of dealing with her patients’ health issues.

She said: “It empties my head from work and recharges my batteries. It’s active relaxation because there’s so much to think about with the transitions and the tactics.

“I’ve got no idea when I last watched EastEnders or Coronation Street, I wouldn’t have the time to fit it in.”

She didn’t find her sporting release quite so relaxing though when she stood in the start area in Chicago waiting for the World Championships to start.

She said: “I had a moment there when I thought ‘what am I doing, why am I doing this’?”

But those thoughts quickly disappeared as she entered the water for the first discipline, her favourite, the swim.

Poulton exited the water in third position and then gained another place on the bike ride and she held onto that position throughout the run to the finish to take the silver medal. This now hangs proudly on the loo door with the bronze medal she won at the European Championships in July and her husband’s rowing medals.

The medals jangle every time anybody opens or closes the toilet door – but its music to the ears of the successful duo.