THERE is a period before lightning strikes when the danger is palpable. Cyclist Lee Craigie experienced it at the top of the Rocky Mountains in North America several years ago, a moment she remembers with a shudder. She was a mountain guide, co-leading a party of 14 over a ridge, all attached to a line. The metal shanks on their boots started smoking and there were sparks from their carabiners. No lightning had struck at that point, just the prescient sparks of electricity, but they had nowhere to shelter. Craigie had no choice but to get the party up over the top and down the mountain, which she thankfully managed to do without further incident, but the risk to life from the unexpected change in the weather had been real and immediate.

“It was the most frightening thing”, she says, and this is why, when she found herself cold, wet and alone on an Alpine col last summer when a lightning storm suddenly descended, she changed her plans and backed off. She was in the middle of an epic unsupported off-road transalpine mountain bike ride, and after having slogged uphill, it was a hard decision to go down. “I wasn’t in a great place emotionally at that moment. It was so hard to keep going,” she admits. “But I’m really glad I did.” Luckily, she stumbled upon a small dairy farm where the three startled farmers “ordered me gruffly into their shack where they fed me, dried my clothes by their fire and demanded I sleep in their cow shed” and she happily passed the evening there before heading off again the next day feeling much better. A couple of days later, she met up with companions and went on to complete the 420-mile route with its 40,000m of height gain in a total of two weeks.

The key was a willingness to change her plans. Not for Craigie the uncompromising approach of some athletes, who would rather call off a trip or take the risk of pushing ahead rather than accommodate such a set back; during years of adventure cycling and competitive mountain bike racing – she is a former Scottish and British cross country champion – Craigie has done things her own way. “If you hold on too tightly to a specific goal, or to a person or place, you’ll only bring yourself misery,” she says. “You need to compromise and change your ideas.”

She will be discussing her trip across the French Alps at the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival this Sunday. The festival will also include a screening of Cape Wrath by Pack Raft and Fat Bike, a beautifully shot account of her recent journey with a friend to Scotland’s most north westerly point. The two trips underline the change that has taken place in Craigie’s relationship with cycling. Once a competition regular, who took part in the European and world championships, she now cycles to test the boundaries of her own capabilities - and find out more about who she is.

Her deep interest in what makes her, and others, tick, shines through when she talks about cycling. Now 37, she started out in her 20s teaching outdoor activities. She then trained as a child and adolescent psychotherapist and set up Cycletherapy in Inverness, which uses mountain bike skills coaching and bike maintenance to promote self esteem among young people. Cycling to Craigie is about much more than fresh air and exercise. “This whole adventure cycling thing I’ve been doing since giving up racing has raised questions about why I do what I do,” she explains. She is fascinated by the need she sees in herself and others to “conquer” wild places.

For Craigie, the Cape Wrath trip was less about the endurance challenge than the personal journey. She had unsuccessfully attempted it four times, thwarted by rough seas, military training exercises, illness or injury, but became ever more determined after hearing a Swedish singer, Sofie Livebrant, sing from her album Lighthouse Stories, which was inspired by Jeannette Winterson’s novel Lighthousekeeping. Listening to the music and reading the book, Craigie was struck by the theme that emerged, of trying to balance the need to be free with the need to belong – strong aspects of her own personality with which she had long wrestled.

She writes in a recent blog: “It has occurred to me that this fascination I have with exploring wild places is an attempt to make sense of the wild place within myself. I've always raged against being tied down while simultaneously longing for the security and simplicity of belonging to a person or a community.

“But I was realising that the wildness in people and places cannot be controlled and any attempt to do so risks destroying a beautiful thing.”

The short film provides sweeping perspectives on her journey with friend Andy by inflatable raft and fat bike (cycles with thick tyres suitable for crossing sand dunes, mud and snow); you assume the crew of a small feature film was in toe. But no; it was made by one man, a drone-mounted camera and a budget of £500. It charts the cyclists’ journey as they explore Smoo Cave, a 200ft-long limestone cavern on the edge of Durness village, before crossing the Kyle of Durness from Keoldale and completing their trip by bike.

In her adventuring, as in her racing, Craigie likes to push herself. “I’ve never really liked being told I can’t do something and I’m really keen to explore the limits of what I’m capable of,” she says. “I’ll think ‘I can’t do that, so let’s nudge it a bit’. You take tiny incremental steps and suddenly you’re somewhere you never thought possible.”

She is increasingly interested in the differences she sees between men and women in the way they approach challenges, a topic she has researched, and feels strongly that women’s more collaborative approach is not given enough attention; not for her that tunnel vision one typically associates with those who reach the top of athletic disciplines: “Women in general are so much more relationship focused and men are more achievement focused,” she observes. “There is so much business and sport can learn about the way women do things, but we are very focused on the male model.” A lot of women in sport emulate men, she notes, but there is a different way. In fact, in order to redress the balance, she and a few friends are setting up a women’s Adventure Cycling Syndicate with the intention of challenging the bike industry and media’s assumptions about the way athletes should achieve their goals.

“Women have a really different set of things to offer,” she says. “For years I’ve been seeing male coaches shouting to women to ‘get up and smash that summit’. But women don’t have the same hormonal make-up as men.” Craigie has often felt that she would respond far better to a coach who took her aside and talked to her about why she might not be getting to that summit. She believes it can help for women to do part of their trip with others, to “bring people who nurture and inspire you on the way”.

She continues to do Cycletherapy with two colleagues and it has now extended to help women with mental health problems. “It’s important to keep your hand in to keep you humble – otherwise it’s all about you,” she says, referring to the way adventure cycling focuses on individual achievement.

Craigie retired from mountain bike racing competitively after the Commonwealth Games and describes that period as the hardest time of her life. “I was grieving for it,” she says. That’s when she started adventure cycling. “I decided that though I didn’t want to race, I did need that challenge; it’s what makes me feel alive.”

She will always remember standing on one of the highest points in the Alps and looking back incredulously at how far she had come: “You see layers upon layers of peaks going to the sea. You experience the way the light changes and the way that in an hour you can have gone through a million layers of environment, sights, sounds, smells.” There is so much more to mountain biking Lee Craigie-style than smashing that summit.

Lee Craigie is speaking at the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival at 2pm on Sunday February 7 at George Square Theatre, Edinburgh; tickets £10 from emff.co.uk or on door. Cape Wrath by Fat Bike and Pack Raft screens at 11am.