Ultrarunner Paris hopes Barkley feat will inspire more women
MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) – Three days after becoming the first woman to finish the Barkley Marathons, one of the world’s most notorious ultrarunning races, Jasmin Paris’s hands were still black with dirt so deep it would not wash off, and her feet swollen and blistered.
The 40-year-old Briton’s achievement, completing the grueling 100-mile race on Friday, less than two minutes ahead of the 60-hour cut-off time, has triggered a wave of admiration from a trail-running community well-versed in the history of an event that in many years nobody manages to finish.
Despite her glittering record, Paris said her ability to pick up the pace over the final grueling mile surprised even her.
“I knew I really had to run otherwise I wasn’t going to make it and I really, really wanted to walk, everything in me was telling me to walk,” Paris told Reuters on Monday.
“But the idea of putting myself through five laps of that again [another year] – I poured everything I had into trying to run. One of my thoughts was ‘I either slow down and stop or I push harder..,’ and I somehow forced myself to go faster.
“I didn’t even know that was possible. I thought I was already at the very limits of what I could do.”
Paris was one of a record five finishers from the 40 entrants in rural Tennessee’s Frozen Head State Park and one of only 20 finishers in all since the event was extended to 100 miles in 1989.
When Paris reached the finish line gate, she bent over it from the waist before sinking to the ground, utterly spent.
“It took me a long time before I could breathe normally again,” she said. “And I’m still sore because of all the scratches.”
The mother of two children aged three and six has received hundreds of messages since and hopes her remarkable feat inspire other women and girls.
“I take on new challenges because I love running in the mountains and I find it exciting to challenge myself and find out the limits of what I’m capable of,” she said. “There is a big dropout rate with girls in sports, and women often lack confidence doing exercise.
“The kind of feedback I’ve got from people is they have been inspired, lots of young girls with stories about being inspired to keep playing football with the boys and things like that. I knew if I managed to finish the race that might happen,” she added.
“I’m really glad I helped to prove that women can do these things and I hope it inspires women to take on their own challenges, whatever they might be.”
The Barkley Marathons was created by Gary Cantrell and Karl Henn in 1986 in a mockery of the nearby 1977 prison break of James Earl Ray, who covered only about 12 miles in 54.5 hours on the run.
The runners must cover five 20-mile loops over steep wooded terrain full of thorn bushes, and climb and descend 54,200 feet each – about twice the height of Mount Everest. There is no path to follow nor cheering spectators. Participants tear pages from books at checkpoints that they must present as proof at the finish line.
It is a very long way in every regard from Hadfield outside Manchester, where Paris grew up, and she now combines her love of the trails with her job as a vet and lecturer at the University of Edinburgh.
She became the first woman to win the Montane Spine Race, a 268-mile ultra-marathon in northern England, famously stopping at checkpoints to pump breast milk for her newborn baby.
Paris trains at 5:30 most mornings so as not to disrupt family life, and one recent session saw her scale her local hill 17 times between 1 a.m. and 10 a.m. Another session saw her scamper up Scotland’s Ben Ledi five times – a mountain that takes the average hiker four-and-a-half hours to climb once.
But there will be no round of sponsor-pleasing events as Paris represents no brands or sponsors, instead racing for The Green Runners group which she co-founded.
For now, she is looking forward to a return to her true love of fell running among friends.
“It’s time to let my soul recover a bit in the Scottish mountains and have some fun.”