SUPERMUM Viv Pountney is aiming to relaunch her triathlon career less than a year since she broke her neck in a fall at her home in Naphill.

The 48-year-old mother-of-two was just millimetres away from being paralysed from the shoulders down after the accident in her kitchen last May.

She spent three months in a neck brace and even now has four pins in her neck, but that hasn't deterred her from hitting the comeback trail.

This week she finished 24th at the six kilometre Bucks and Beds Cross Country Championships at RAF Halton and now has her sights set on the Hart Triathlon in Hampshire on May 3, almost a year to the day of her fall.

She said: "I have entered myself for four races this year and my aim is just to see if I can finish one.

"It never crossed my mind that I wouldn't be able to do it again. When it happened and when I was in hospital I was just thinking about how soon I would be able to do things again.

"It would have driven me bonkers if I thought I couldn't do triathlons again. It would have been the end of me."

Just two years ago Pountney was representing Great Britain at the World Triathlon Championships in Mexico where she finished 19th overall and the fourth best-placed Briton.

And the High Wycombe Swimming Club and High Wycombe Cycling Club member hasn't given up hope of getting back to that level. She has one eye on the 2006 World Championships in Switzerland.

She said: "Sometimes when I'm training I just think I'm lucky to be doing it all."

After her horror fall, when she whacked her head against the worktops, she came to in a pool of blood on the floor and called out for help from husband Nigel who was asleep in the room next door.

She was then rushed to Wycombe Hospital before being moved to the trauma unit at The John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

She came out of her neck brace on July 30 and was running again in November.

She said: "I've been running, I've been cycling and I've been swimming. Now I've got to put them all together again."

Her first scheduled event in Hampshire includes a 400 metres swim, a 20 kilometre bike ride and a five kilometre run.