FROM ONE EXTREME TO ANOTHER!

Armand is an ultra-trail runner, covering distances of 160km or morein treacherous conditions that take a punishing toll on his body

BY RICHARD VAN RENSBURG PICTURE: PEET MOCKE

“In the pouring rain and pitch dark my headlamp and the hood of my rain jacket made it feel as if I was wearing a helmet,” he recalls. “So at least I knew I wasn’t insane.”

And last year, at the Tor des Géants across the Italian Alps – which can be compared to nearly four back-to-back Comrades marathons but across mountain peaks – he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw a gnome complete with staff.

Seventy hours of sweat, pain, sleep deprivation and isolation were playing tricks on him again. “It was only when I eventually touched ‘him’ that it slowly transformed into an unusual rock formation,” Armand says.

This sort of thing happens when you’ve been pushing yourself over 330km of inhospitable landscape, catching only a quick nap here and there.

ARMAND has been running since his school days in Pretoria, where his cross-country teacher taught him it’s not about who you are but about who you can be.

He’d completed five Comrades by the time he decided five years ago to focus on ultra-trails.

He’s now aiming for his 10th 160km run and is unsure how many 100km ultra-trails he’s done.

One of the highlights was finishing in overall third place and first in his age category in the Ultra Fiord. It’s run in the far south of Chilean Patagonia, in icy and often stormy weather through fjords that were formed over thousands of years by huge glaciers. He’s the only South African so far to have run that gruelling 160km race.

He’s also run ultra-trails in Andorra, Mauritius, Australia, Morocco and the US, but the Ultra Fiord and Tor des Géants are prime examples of what endurance sports addicts like Armand take on.

“You fly to the ends of the Earth to run across a glacier,” he says dryly.

The Ultra Fiord involves crossing freezing rivers and snowfields and struggling for kilometres through mud, sometimes waist-deep.

You need to keep awake throughout most of it – if you doze off you could