The mother of all marathons
Woman smashes record for 268-mile ‘ultramarathon’ ... beating all the boys and expressing breast milk as she went!
A NEW mother has smashed the record for Britain’s toughest endurance race by more than 12 hours – while finding time to express breast milk for her daughter.
Jasmin Paris, 35, completed the 268-mile Spine Race along the peaks of the Pennine Way in 83 hours, 12 minutes – leaving male competitors in her slipstream.
She stopped for just seven hours, including grabbing two hours’ sleep, from setting off on Sunday morning to crossing the finish line on Wednesday evening.
Miss Paris, a former vet, said being a working mother helped her cope with the challenge. She told the Daily Mail: ‘I’m a fulltime mum, I have a full-time job, I train quite hard, so I’m used to juggling things.
‘I’ve also had lots of sleep deprivation training with having a small child. Being a vet, I’m also used to being called out lots of nights. That probably helped as well.’
But she admitted she had started hallucinating towards the end of the ‘brutal’ race from Derbyshire to the Scottish Borders, which is the equivalent of ten marathons back to back.
She said: ‘It is really tough. Two-thirds of the time it is dark, and it is non-stop.
‘When I was on the final section I kept seeing animals appearing out of every rock and kept forgetting what I was doing. Every so often I’d come to with a start.’
Miss Paris, who is now a medical researcher at Edinburgh University, was hailed an ‘inspiration’ by friends and fans the world over – including Bill Clinton’s daughter Chelsea. She finished more than 15 hours ahead of second-placed Eoin Keith, a previous winner whose 2016 record of 95 hours and 17 minutes she broke. She is the first female winner of the race.
Miss Paris, like the other 120 racers who set out, carried her own kit. She spent the last 17 hours of the event running on her own after leaving her rivals behind.
She was driven on by the thought of her 14-month- old daughter Rowan waiting for her at the finish. She expressed milk at every checkpoint to be taken to Rowan but said it had been ‘ hard mentally’ to be away from her.
She said: ‘She was very bemused to see me on the finish line and has been very clingy since as if she is thinking I might go away again.’
Competitors faced 50mph winds and driving wind but Miss Paris says the cold may have helped improve her time.
She added: ‘If I went more slowly, I’d struggle to keep warm. I slowed down because I had tendonitis but said to myself, you have to ignore the fact it hurt and carry on.’ Miss Paris, who did the race during a week-long break from writing her PhD thesis at Edinburgh, trained by running up to 100 miles a week with a backpack, even when pregnant. Originally from Hadfield in Derbyshire, she only started ultra-running in 2008 but last year became the British women’s fell running champion.
Miss Paris confessed to being ‘overwhelmed’ with all the messages she has received.
One was from Chelsea Clinton, who tweeted: ‘ Incredible story – inspiration’, while Olympian longdistance runner Jo Pavey called her ‘awesome’.
Miss Paris is not resting on her laurels. She has set herself a new challenge with husband Konrad Rawlik, 35, an academic at Edinburgh. Both are running an ultramarathon in the Alps in August. ‘It’s similar to the Spine but with more ups and downs,’ she said
‘If I went slowly, I’d struggle to keep warm’