DISTANCE YEARNING
Sabrina Verjee loves nothing more than running for days and days. The secret to her success: ‘You’ve got to enjoy it.’ Five-mile fell race? ‘Horrible.’ The 200-mile Dragon’s Back? ‘Yes, in a heartbeat.’
Sabrina Verjee has been quietly breaking records and winning unimaginably gruelling ultramarathons for years. In fact, this incredible, inspirational athlete may be the best ultrarunner you’ve never heard of. Until now
If you’re a keen follower of the UK’s toughest endurance races, such as The Dragon’s Back or The Spine Race, the name Sabrina Verjee will already be familiar to you.
But most runners probably have not heard of her. Verjee has a habit of being the first female athlete home, of placing in the overall top five, or winning them outright – all while referring to these punishing tests of physical and mental endurance as ‘holidays’ from her demanding day job. And as the nation locked down this summer, the 39-year-old small-animal veterinary surgeon scaled up her ambitions, becoming the first woman to complete a nonstop 326-mile round of the 214 summits that make up the Lake District’s Wainwrights. It’s a feat that also packs in some 118,000ft of ascent and has only been completed four times. A few weeks later, she set a new women’s record on the 268-mile Pennine Way. RW caught up with Verjee on the trails around her Lake District home to talk hallucinations, projectile vomiting and enjoying the journey.
RW: Growing up in Surrey, your school experiences of sport weren’t particularly positive...
SV: My parents weren’t sporty and I never did any sport at my (all-girls) school, because I was rubbish, which obviously makes you more rubbish. You could only play tennis if you were one of the top three players in the school; the same with running. I really wanted to do the 1500m, but I was too terrible. But there was a 400m grass track and sometimes after school I ran on it with a friend. I remember really enjoying it. I would go round quite a few times; a slow four or five laps, which seems quite a lot when you’re 12.
When I was 16, I went to another school and I started running. We were encouraged to do everything there, and so I did: rock climbing, hockey, football, basketball, rowing, horse riding, cross-country. I did as much as I possibly could. And the more I did, the more I liked it.
You studied Human Sciences at Oxford University. Were you sporty while you were there?
Yes. I started rowing for the lightweights, which was 11 training sessions a week – mental, really. It was really cool, though. I got so fit, so quickly. Then I found modern pentathlon [running, pistol shooting, fencing, horse riding and swimming]. I wasn’t the best at any one discipline, but I was just proficient at all of them. Not many people could horse ride – I’ve always ridden horses – and I wasn’t bad at the running.
So did you find your feet on the trails after university?
I worked as an investment banker for three months and realised it wasn’t for me! You’re indoors all day, sat at a desk. I needed to be outside, using my brain. So I studied Veterinary Medicine at Cambridge University. I did modern pentathlon, but I was also a member of the Hare and Hounds running club. The club got an email trying to drum up interest in adventure racing and I was curious, so I met a guy called Russ in a pub. He mentioned the Hebridean Challenge, a five-day stage race he was planning to do. ‘Ooh, I want to do that!’ I said. He said, ‘Maybe you should start with a two- or three-hour one?’ but I was like, ‘Nah, that doesn’t sound so fun. I want to do this one. I want to be in your team.’ He said no, which peeved me right off. So I thought, ‘I’m going to find my own team and we’re going to beat your team.’
How did that first race pan out?
It was a massive learning curve. We hardly ate anything and were all so hangry! On a time trial at the top of a hill, I had an asthma attack; I was clipped into the bike and I just grabbed a marshal, still attached to my bike. It was too funny. When I came into a changeover point, I tried to get off the bike and fell over – I’d forgotten I was still clipped in. I loved it!
You continued adventure racing for years and you also met your future husband and moved to the Lake District in this period...
Ben and I met in a swimming pool. He pretended to be interested in adventure racing to score! Now he’s more into it than I am. We’ve done lots of mountain marathons together. We lived in a boring little flat in Bedfordshire and were driving to the Lakes every other weekend to get our fill of the hills; seven years ago, we decided to move up here.
And, naturally, you started fell and ultra fell running?
I’d had enough of adventure racing – waiting for these men all the time. ‘Why don’t I do something on my own?’ I thought? So I did the 44-mile Grand Tour of Skiddaw. It felt really good and I won it. I thought, ‘Oh, I’m all right at this!’ Then I started hearing about UTMB [Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, the 100-mile race in the French Alps]. I did a 100-miler in Poland in December, to get points to qualify for UTMB. I’d never done that distance, but I won that one as well. I really liked it. There’s so much faff and equipment in adventure racing – bikes, spares for everything, wetsuits and so on. Trail running is so much more simple. Just put your shoes on and go. No faff!
You’ve run many of the UK’s toughest races, including the 200-mile Dragon’s Back Race three times. What attracts you to the tough stuff? These races are holidays for me, a chance to put the laptop away, leave my phone behind and totally escape work. The first Dragon’s Back was absolutely magical. It’s the journey. You get up each day, run across amazing scenery, eat, go to bed, get up, run again, with loads of fun people. Just incredible.
You have twice placed second in the Dragon’s Back and cut nearly seven hours from your time. How have you improved so much?
A few things have led to improvements. Simply having more experience means I’ve got better at running on fells, the race navigation is easier now (they issue a gpx track), plus there’s route knowledge. I was really happy with how I ran in 2019. For four days anyway. Day five is always a blunder for me. My guts don’t work by the end. Plus I don’t usually sleep well.
What do you think is the secret to success over these huge distances? You’ve got to enjoy it. If you’re making it difficult for yourself and it’s hard and painful, then it’s just hard and painful. But if you can actually •
“If you could do everything you set out to do first time, every time, you are not challenging yourself”
enjoy it, then it’s easier. I don’t push myself too hard, that’s probably the thing. I’m not capable of burning myself out, of sprinting, of hurting. But I am capable of bimbling along happily, and that pace can be kept up for a very long time.
If you asked me to do a five-mile fell race, I’d say, ‘No, that will be horrible’. If you ask me to do the Spine or Dragon’s Back, I’ll say yes in a heartbeat.
You often finish in the overall top 10, top five or even win races outright. Do you think women can be better than men at the long stuff?
I find that generally true – women can get close to men at longer distances. The guys who cane me over 10K, I have a shot at them over 100 miles. No one can run all-out for 100 miles. Everyone has their pace tempered, so that top pace that women aren’t able to compete at is out of the equation and it becomes more about maintaining a disciplined pace. To maintain that pace, you need to look after yourself well; eating, drinking, looking after feet, pushing through any pain barriers, and there isn’t a discrepancy in that between men and women. So it’s more of a level playing field.
Indeed. When you attempted the Wainwrights this summer, not only was it the first known female attempt, but you were aiming for the overall record [six days and six hours, set by Paul Tierney in 2019]. But both your attempts turned out to be controversial...
I wanted to start in May and as soon as Boris Johnson said we could do unlimited exercise I thought, ‘Yeah, he wants me to do the Wainwrights!’ I came up with loads of crazy logistics to observe the lockdown rules. I didn’t think I was doing anything against the law, though I knew it would be a bit controversial. It was going really well, but then I was told it was illegal. You weren’t allowed to stay out overnight, away from your own home. I couldn’t ask people to support me in an illegal activity, so I thought I’d better try again when it was legal.
Then the law changed and you started again, but you faced different challenges, which led to you not claiming a record...
I was just sitting there watching the bracken grow, literally, and watching the weather become wetter and wetter. I had done so many recces and had written a six-day schedule, which would be challenging, but possible. I had to do some long diversions around rivers, which was a pain. But it was still amazingly enjoyable. I was on schedule for about four days, until my adductors [inner-thigh muscles] strained and the bursa [fluid-filled sacs that cushion joints] underneath got upset. My whole body was swollen and no physiotherapist could get there to work out what was wrong with me. I couldn’t bend my knee. I was still quite strong uphill and I was moving on the flat well enough, but I couldn’t descend the rough stuff because I couldn’t get that leg out of the way. So I had to lean on my supporters to get me down. I just thought it was not appropriate for me to claim a record when I’d had to lean on people left, right and centre.
Three days later you said, ‘I completed the Wainwrights round to my own satisfaction... but I do not claim any record for this achievement’ It’s interesting, people’s views on that. What I did was what I did, no matter what people say about it, even myself. I was very pleased to get round all the summits and I wanted to complete the mission, one way or another. I had thought about finishing on Catbells [the final summit] and, in hindsight, that would have been the right thing to do. But people said, ‘No, you can’t, you have to go to Moot Hall [the finish line]’. They saw it as a weakness and I couldn’t have people seeing it as a weakness. But stopping then would have been clearer for people; it would have been obvious that I wasn’t claiming the record. Whereas, I got into Moot Hall and you do all your usual, then I went to bed for a couple of days. I had the media come round and I told them we weren’t claiming a record. They didn’t say it was a record, but they also didn’t say it wasn’t a record. I felt I needed to say something to the people who would actually give a damn, directly, so they could understand what I was trying to say.
Most people don’t understand why I’m not claiming the record, but you’ve got to feel right about it, I think. I just want to do it again and probably I’ll keep trying until I manage to go under six days. If you could do everything you set out to do first time, every time, you’re not challenging yourself.
Two months later you set off an another first-female FKT attempt, to run the 268-mile Pennine Way, trying to beat your own best time from the summer Spine Fusion race, of 82 hours. How was that?
It was awesome – it was fun! The only thing I didn’t enjoy was the wind. It was blowing into my face for 140 miles and at Tan Hill I threw my toys out of the pram a little bit. I was working really hard and not going anywhere. The wind was blowing me backwards. I thought, ‘If it’s going to continue like this, there’s no point.’ It wasn’t just about finishing. I wanted to do it fairly quickly. If the wind hadn’t dropped, I would have canned it for sure.
Then, after less than 30 minutes’ sleep in two nights, exhaustion hit hard on the third night...
I should have slept! I had it in my schedule to sleep. I knew I needed to. But I just didn’t do it, so I paid the price. There was one point when we were literally 500 metres from the camper van but I was insisting, ‘I need to sleep NOW!’ Colin and Sally said, ‘We just need to get you to the camper van.’ It took forever to get there. Afterwards, they said they should have just let me sleep where I was.
The projectile vomiting was weird, too. But I felt good about finishing – it would have been nice to get under three days, but it was very soon after the Wainwrights, so I’m lucky to have been able to finish at all, really. [She finished in 74 hours, 28 minutes and 46 seconds.]
Lack of sleep is a constant challenge when chasing long-distance records. How do you cope with it?
Sleep deprivation is very personal. To me, it feels like someone’s turned my headtorch off and eventually I figure out that my eyelids are in the way. Once you get to the point where you’re seeing things or your eyelids keep shutting and you’re going very slowly, you really do need to go to sleep; otherwise, you’ll just waste loads of time. Even just 10 minutes and you often feel normal again and you can keep your eyes open and move at a different pace.
If you can manage yourself so you don’t get to that point, even better. Caffeine helps. But you need to take it before you get to zombie mode or it just doesn’t work. Short sleeps do work. But it’s inefficient if you need five minutes every hour. Then you probably need more. Also, think about getting good sleep before the race or you’re on the back foot already.
You mentioned ‘seeing things’…
I was in New Zealand for a GODZone adventure race and I had an amazing hallucination that just felt so real. It was really cold, we’d just come down from the snow in the mountains and we were walking up •