Jasmin Paris reflects on an eventful year.

Jasmin Paris has had quite the eventful year.  Her many achievements over the last 10 years have brought wide respect from the mountain and ultra running community. Her phenomenal Accomplishment, in March this year, of becoming the first female runner to finish the legendary Barkley Marathon was well documented globally, bringing her to a even wider audience. I caught up with her for a chat recently, where she refelcts on her year. Despite achieving global attention and recognitionshe retains a totally down to earth approach to running and life in general,  striving to retain that connection with the outdoors, wild open spaces, and the traditional British Fell running community.

Back to Basics.

AS. After all the excitement from your early-year adventures, which we’ll touch on later, and the subsequent aftermath, I sense you have just been enjoying summer and autumn. You seem to be getting back to basics and just enjoying yourself lately.

Jasmin. Yeah, especially like now in autumn. It’s definitely been like that. It was really good to do all the Fell Relays, like the Ian Hodgson’s and the FRA”s. Also the OMM. I mean, the relays were always a lot of fun, and  I think for the Hodgsons, I was grinning from ear to ear the whole way around. Before the autumn relays, I also did a “Frog Graham Round” with an old friend. 

NOTE: The Ian Hodgson and the FRA (Fell Running Association) relays are long-time classic club relay events held each autumn. The events are run over four legs in traditional British hill terrain. Some legs are run solo, some in pairs. Some legs are marked, some unmarked and need navigation skills. It is British fell running at its finest.

The OMM is the Original Mountain Marathon, a two-day orienteering-style event with an overnight camp. All gear must be carried by the runners, who compete in teams of two and navigate between control points.

 

Jasmin. It’s just fun being back as part of an event that’s a bit chaotic, isn’t it? The Relays have always been about as true to the spirit of fell running as you can get, I think, because, you know, they’re proper traditional routes.

They’re classic hill runs, and the descents are always kind of manic and exciting, and you do some sliders. It’s pretty steep in places, and the climb to the top, after the start, is properly steep, and it’s just really good to get back to real grassroots racing. It was just good fun. As I said, I grinned the whole way around and then, just being part of that social scene afterwards where you are in the field and you are watching all the teams come in to finish. There’s a lot of banter, and I’ve always loved that there are no egos at all in fell running. It’s competition, but it’s a kind of healthy sort of competition with banter between teams, with people genuinely treated as equals, and I like that.  I love that about these events.

AS. Do you feel there is a difference between the Hodgson’s and the FRA relays?

Jasmin. I mean, I do love running in the lakes. And the Hodgson’s takes you right up onto the tops. The FRA relays are variable because it depends on where they are. I think I love them both, and they have their own merits because the FRA relay is always somewhere different, and I tend to run the nav leg on the FRA relays, so there is always this element of uncertainty.  I think they both have their own appeal. I like that the FRA relays have this element that everyone is in the same place. Particularly this year,  I don’t know if you heard, but at the start and the finish, all the runners went out up this really steep hill and then came back in, as well, down this steep field. So it was fun watching people run out because almost everybody was walking by the top of the hill. Then coming back in, some of the slides that people were doing were fun. It was like a proper traditional steep slope to descend on. It was so much fun for the spectators as well watching it all happen, and having the kids there with us was nice. Konrad and I  both ran leg three on separate teams, so there was this period when we were both away, but the fell running community is such that you have enough friends around to help out. Two friends of ours, Alice and Tim, were there, and Tim just looked after four children instead of two for that period of time. 

  I remember when I was injured once, about ten years ago,  I went to the Three Shires Fell race.  I was going to look after John Ashcroft’s kids. I wasn’t expecting to look after anybody else, but by the time the race started, I had acquired several more children and a dog. I was just like a little shepherd. 

It’s been really nice to get back to fell racing and the kind of events that are low-key, no-media hype events. Just get back to the absolute basics of why I love it.

AS. It’s a bit low-key on one level, but Carnethy, which, for those that don’t know, is your club, are quite competitive with these things.

Jasmin. Yes, they are, which is good. It felt competitive as well. I ran the FRAs with Fiona Bunn, and she is very competitive. It’s always kind of fun if you actually are competing for a podium place.

AS. Being on the navigation leg with someone like that, do you ever get to a point where, if you’re not arguing, you are discussing with each other which route to take?

Jasmin. It was funny.  I’ll tell you what actually happened, and this was a bit controversial. They accidentally gave us only one correct map. The people that were handing out the maps gave us a leg one map and a leg three map. So, I got a leg three map, and Fiona got the leg one map. By the time we worked this out, we were like a field further on. So rather than running back and wasting two minutes or something, I just gave her my map, and we both just ran, but I didn’t have a map. So it was the weirdest thing. We ran the whole nav leg, and I didn’t have a map. It wasn’t my fault, but I was just following her all the way. 

I’ve never done a nav leg without a map, and I found it disconcerting, I guess. I always like knowing where the next place to dib the control will be, but I just had no contribution, at all, to the navigation. I was just following Fiona along.

Frog Graham Round

AS. Most people are familiar with the Bob Graham Round. Tell us about the Frog Graham Round.

Jasmin. I did that in mid-August with an old Carnethy clubmate Eleanor Johnstone, who now lives in the Lakes. It’s a variation on the Bob Graham Round but involves open-water swimming as well as running. 

You run around 40 miles in the North Western Lakes, centred around the Bob Graham route, but you break it up by swimming across four of the Lakes, Bassenthwaite Lake, Crummock Water, Buttermere and Derwentwater.

Like the relays, it was good to do something different and fairly low key, away from the spotlight of competition.

Konrad and the kids were there, which was great, as they met us before and after the four lakes to give and recieve our wetsuits. We even had Moss, our border collie, to run with us on one of the legs.

It took us 13 hours, 3 minutes and 4 seconds.

Girls on Hills.

AS. Slightly tangential, but I saw that you were recently involved with the “Girls on the Hills” weekend up in Glencoe.

Jasmin. Yeah, that was nice.

AS. Briefly tell us what it is and what it involves. Also, how you got involved and what your thoughts are on what they’re doing to encourage girls out onto the hills.

Jasmin. So they just asked me whether I’d go along. I think they organise these weekends, and each year in November is always a yearly meeting. It’s all about getting women out in the hills and giving them the confidence, and I guess the skills, to get out and take part in things like trail running, hill running, and mountain running. Or whatever else you want to call it. But it was a really good weekend.

They asked me, and my challenge lately is always the time.

I have been asked to do so many things this year, which is good, but it’s a real challenge for me to balance things.

I essentially want to spend all my free time with my kids because it’s difficult when you’re working. I am working full-time, and on top of that, you want to try and train and then all the free time I have, I protect it. I’m pretty sort of protective over it. 

But at the same time, you know, when there is something like that, something you really want to support, you want to say yes once they ask you.

So I compromised and said I wouldn’t come for the whole weekend but would come for a day.  I went up on a Friday, and we stayed the night. It was nice because my mum came as well. We got a rare kind of opportunity as we had the car drive up and the car drive back to talk to one another, which is kind of rare as well because there are always children around.So, we stayed over the Friday night and did a talk in the morning, and then joined them for a run on the hill, which was nice. We went along the West Highland Way. Over the Devil’s Staircase, from Glencoe over to Kinlochleven. It was justgreat to get out with lots of women, and people seemed pleased and inspired to have me there.

It’s a huge privilege to be in a position where you can inspire people. I think I’m very lucky to be in that position, and I feel a sense of responsibility to try and do my best and earn that. I feel I should live up to that if you see what I mean.

AS. Definitely. The runners who were there at the weekend. Were they just all levels of experience, from total beginners to experienced runners?

Jasmin.Yes. There was quite a wide range of runners. Just watching people run, some people were much slower and mainly walked up the hills, but I think that the way that it was planned, there was lots of opportunity to chat. I tried chatting with lots of people. In fact, I tried to chat with everybody. I didn’t have any agenda to try and run fast or anything. I just wanted to be there and talk to people and inspire them. We chatted a bit about how the Glencoe Skyline race always finished on that long downhill section into Kinlocheven. It was nice to point out things from my various memories of the times I’ve raced there about what happened where and that sort of thing. 

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The Tor des Geants and dealing with (perceived) Failure.

AS. Backtracking a little to the Tor des Geants, in early September. It didn’t go to plan this year.  I don’t want to dwell on the actual race because that has been well-documented elsewhere. Do you ever see experiences like that as failure in themselves or just part of collecting experiences as you go through life that make you who you are in some ways?

Jasmin. Yes. I mean, it is interesting because Tor Des Geants did make me think quite a lot about things. I get asked quite a lot, especially after Barkley, about “Why do you do this?“

 I think Tour de Geants just brought that home a bit more and crystallized that question a bit more for me. It just made me think of every side of it. I mean, in terms of the race, you know, I thought I was pretty well prepared. 

Then I went there, and it was a pretty big disappointment, the way it turned out. I still don’t really know what happened. The wheels sort of fell off after eight hours, and I hiked on for another 24 hours. It was pretty miserable, and in the end, I called it a day. I think it’s only the second race I’ve dropped out of in that way. The first was the UTMB in 2022. There were some differences this time in the sense that Konrad had come out there. I don’t know if you knew, but he had surprised me by turning up to crew me out there, which was an amazing surprise.

It was like the best possible kind of surprise, you know. A surprise that you could only wish for. The advantage was when I did drop out, the silver lining was that we had two days together. So, it turned into a positive experience. Two unplanned days with no children around, hanging out in the mountains.

We were staying in Courmayeur, in a lovely flat that we had been lent and spent two days with no agenda, no children and no work. So, we actually talked to each other more than we have probably done for the last seven years in one go. 

We just had that time to spend entirely with each other with no running or anything. It was a really positive thing.

I don’t know if I would have felt quite as ok about dropping out if it hadn’t been for that. Looking back, I think the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think that, for me, after I’ve done something big like Barkley,  I need a bit of time to re-establish that connection with nature and the mountains and remember the thing of why I do it. 

I’m not saying that  I hadn’t done that in time for the Tor, and that was the reason it all went wrong. I  had a definite feeling at the Tor, where I was almost resenting the mountains that were appearing. I think it was because I was feeling so awful, and when I saw another mountain ahead of me,  I wasn’t looking forward to it.

There are times when it’s hard in a race, like Barkley. It’s hard, and part of you doesn’t want to climb the next mountain, but you automatically do it. 

It’s almost like it’s a kind of challenge, and you know it’s going to be hard, and mentally it’s a totally different thing. 

But the Tor this year, I just didn’t want to be there, and I didn’t want to climb that next mountain. I think I was just having such an awful time, and I was feeling so terrible that mentally when it came to the Tor and it all went a bit wrong, I just didn’t have it in me anymore. 

I just didn’t have it there to fight that battle with myself. 

So,  I think it’s a really hard thing to visit and try to unpick that mental and physical side of ultra running. I thought it was difficult for me to say back then, you know, did I have a virus? Was I still fatigued from the effort and aftermath of Barkley? Or was I just mentally not ready to do that sort of thing again? I don’t know. But what I do know, is a big part of the reason I stopped was because I didn’t want to feel like that about the mountains.

I’m okay with the feeling that a challenge is hard, like Barkley. I knew that was hard, but it’s not like I hated the forest or the climbs. I didn’t feel like that about it. I don’t want to feel like that about those beautiful places that have always made me happy and always made me feel at peace. I don’t want to destroy that relationship in a way. I’d rather just stop and come back to it when I’m ready if you see what I mean.

Recognising when taking a break is a good thing!

AS.  Your honesty is very refreshing and relates to another question I had. I talk to a lot of ultra runners. You do as well. You must see this yourself, but there are always real dangers of over-training and over-racing and burnout. It’s a balance. You’ve alluded to it yourself there. You probably hadn’t recovered fully from Barkley, and as we know, recovery isn’t just physical after a huge effort you have devoted so much time to. There is a big emotional and mental recovery to go through too, before you’re ready for the next challenge.

What advice do you have for people who are trying to balance having a busy life and wanting to push their own boundaries out and do something really life-defining for themselves, while not burning out and breaking down?

Jasmin. Yeah, I think I’ve seen both sides of this in the last few years. I think the reason, honestly, I was able to do Barkley this year was because last year I was willing to sacrifice things. Last year, I didn’t run the Tor.  In the second half of the season after July, I had three or four months where I didn’t do that much in terms of training and certainly in terms of competing. I didn’t really get back into things till the end of October into November last year, and there was this period, essentially all the second half of the summer into autumn, that I didn’t do very much. I didn’t really train or anything. The reason was that I knew that I wasn’t quite right and I was tired.  I also knew that if I wanted to do Barclay again in 2024, I needed to be back to my very best form. I was aware that there was no way I would get back to that level, alongside having a busy work life and children and things, unless I just took a step back from running. 

So I did that. I have seen both sides of that, and it just really worked.

When I came back in November (2023), I just had that hunger for it again. It was like, I really wanted it again. I was excited about training. I just found out I could get up again in the mornings. I could juggle everything and fit it in. So, I guess what I’ve learned and partly now I can see the other side of that again, is that I can’t always be full-on with my running. I think, in some ways, I have to prioritise certain things at different times of my life, and after I’ve done something big in running, I just need to take a step back. Maybe when I was younger before I had kids, I could try and keep the pressure on more consistently, but now I just need to back off again after I’ve done something really huge like Barkley. As I said, I saw that last year. After the Barcley effort in springtime. I was selected for the World Trail Champs in Innsbruck at the end of May, and I ran ok, but not great.

Then, in the summer, I ran the Tour of the Matterhorn race, which had a lot of family stuff happening in the background. As I said, the second half of the season into the autumn, I didn’t do anything. I think a big part of why it all came together for Barkley was because I was willing to take that step back. Most athletes probably find that quite difficult, as running is a bit like a drug, isn’t it? There’s always this idea that you need to be doing something. It’s difficult to let yourself get unfit, I think.

But I consciously made the decision that I was okay with that. It was a bit like putting a racehorse out to pasture, you know, after its season of racing. I just needed a break.

Learning from Mistakes.

AS. Wise words there, which I hope people reading this will listen to.

You are not a professional full-time runner, but pro-runners, I think more in the States, always seem to have pressure to have that next race coming up. It must be hard, month after month, always having a target in line with no respite.

How would you encourage people to deal with a race or challenge that doesn’t go to plan? Sometimes, people have a race that doesn’t go to plan, and their whole world falls apart for a bit.

You’ve also had your own way of dealing with that.

Is there simple advice you can give people at any level who might be training even for the London Marathon or Edinburgh Marathon and it just doesn’t work out, and they have a bad experience, but they still love running and the journey they are on?

At this point, Jasmin’s daughter is heard in the background. Jasmin breaks off to chat with her.

Jasmin. In some ways, and this sounds a bit corny, but in some ways, I guess if I think about failures, the two races I really think of are the Tor de Geants and UTMB. The two races I dropped out of. Most of the races that I stuck out, even if they didn’t go very well, I still don’t think of them as a failure because, in my head, somehow I still managed to see it through to the end. I guess the first two times I went to Barkley, I  failed in what I was there to try and do, which was to try and finish.

But in those examples, I saw it was a kind of success because it was a stepping stone to what the final result was going to be. So that would be a fairly good example for someone who did feel that a race hadn’t quite gone to plan. Try and see thepositive sides of it.  I saw in my first Barkley, that I still managed to do three loops. I actually learned a lot, and  I came back from Barkley and I wrote myself really comprehensive notes, which I then embellished the next year. 

I guess I saw it more like I went there to finish, and although I failed at doing that, I had achieved something.

I’d achieved something on the way to that success. That’s why when I went the second time, I finished four loops andalthough I was timed out and officially I still only finished three, in my mind, it meant a lot because I’d done that extra loop even if it was over time. I’d still finished four loops.

I’d still had that extra time out on the course, those extra experiences. In my head, I knew that when I went back this year, (2024), I’d done seven loops, and of those, four loops I had done completely on my own in the forest. So I think that’s a good thing to remember that these are all learning experiences, and you’re building, and even if it goes wrong, you can learn from the experience. At Barkley, you learn a huge amount from the mistakes you make, especially when it comes tonavigation. 

I think you can use that as a metaphor, even for other things in other races. If you’re a marathon runner, you’ll still learn something from whatever went wrong to make you have a bad race. So I think, if you look at it that way, you can turn it into a much more positive thing if you feel that failure is not what happened at that time.

The failure would be not to recognise the mistake, or not to recognize what you could do differently next time to change that situation. That would be the only way you could fail out of the situation. So, if you are honest enough to consider it that way, I think that’s a really positive way to look at any race.

In terms of not feeling too down about it, the other thing would be going back to the whole reason why you run in the first place.

I’ve learnt now that I just need to reconnect and remember I’m not a full-time athlete running as a career. I’m doing it because it brings me a lot of joy and it makes me happy. In the last month or two, I’ve been going out and doing a bit of exploring.  I’m not wearing a watch, I don’t have to hit a certain pace, I don’t have to do a certain number of miles or a certain amount of ascent, it’s just nice to explore, and then if I want to walk for a bit, I walk for a bit,

I look at the views, or maybe I’ll meet a friend, and it’s okay if they’re not much of a runner because we kind of jog or walk. I think you need to make time for that as well. Especially just rediscovering your “why.”  Why you’re actually doing this

 

Adapting to being in the spotlight.

AS. You alluded to this earlier, but your achievements have brought you to a much wider audience, especially this year. How do you handle being a role model? 

You don’t traditionally like the limelight, but you seem to have adapted to being in the spotlight.

Jasmin. I still feel it’s a bit bizarre, mainly because I don’t feel like I’m anything special. I still often don’t really feel like I’m the athlete in the room, if you see what I mean, and I still find it quite bizarre. 

Nevertheless, as I alluded to before, I think I’m incredibly lucky to be in this position. I am very inspired by the stories that people might send me. I received several letters, emails and cards from people after Barkley telling me about their own experiences and how it changed something for them. 

That really makes an impression on you. Just this idea of all those lives you’ve touched for a moment and that you might have changed something for them.

Even to do that for one life is an incredible thing.

This is slightly off the point, but sometimes, when I’m talking with people, especially if we come onto the subject of Barkley. They’ll tell me that moment where they were, when they got the tweet through that I’d finished the fifth loop.

I love the fact that people can tell you and remember exactly where they were when they got that tweet and how they felt.

In some way, we were connected for that moment. Like I knew where I was, and they knew where they were. And I had this connection to all these people, all around the world who were checking that tweet at that moment. So, yes, I think it’s just that I’ve drawn a huge amount of inspiration from all the stories, especially when it’s kids.

Whether it’s kids, or adults writing about their own kids that changed somehow. The little girl that, after the Barkley thing broke, carried on playing football, even though she was about to drop out. Hearing stories like that from people who had almost given up on a dream or who didn’t believe they could do something, and then they tried because they thought, “Why not?” 

I got a lot of messages saying people have these mantras like, “What would Jasmin do?” That seems to be something that people ask themselves when they’re in deep spots, “What would Jasmin do?”

Which I think is slightly weird but also kind of wonderful, that it’s able to inspire them to keep them going in that moment. 

It’s just funny, isn’t it?

Advice for a younger version of yourself.

AS. Reflecting on your life in running. Just running alone, let alone all your other activities with work and family. It’s been one incredible adventure. What advice would the Jasmin of Autumn 2024 give to your younger self,

starting doing local fell and orienteering races? Or perhaps it’s a little girl who wrote to you for advice?

What advice would you give the young girl wondering whether she should get into running or any sport for that matter?

Jasmin. I mean, as I say, I’m super lucky because I’ve done a pretty good job over the years of not losing sight of that.  I guess if I were to talk to any younger athlete, and I’ve said this a few times, and I’ve been talking to athletes across different disciplines and things as well, is not to lose sight of what it is that first inspired you. What you first fall in love with when you took up that sport, because I think if you can nourish that and keep sight of that, it becomes much easier to see why you’re doing it when it gets hard and when you have the setbacks and so on. 

So I think for me, somehow nurturing that feeling of like the wild abandon, of free abandon, of hurtling down a hill with your arms wide open like an aeroplane, that you might have had when you were a kid. You know, that joy when you want to whoop inside. I actually did whoop, when I was running the Ian Hodgson’s relays at one point on one particular descent because it was so glorious. 

I think if I had one piece of advice for people, especially if maybe they want to be professionals is not to get too bogged down by all the pressure of the media. The kind of recognition that people want, or all the trophies and all that. Just keep the joy in it because I think the rest will follow if you can keep that joy. If you have that, then you’ll never really lose it, if you know what I mean. That might sound very corny, but it’s true.

AS. Is that what really makes Jasmin tick? Is that your big WHY? Just experiencing the joy of what you’re doing?

Jasmin. It’s just that connection with nature. Being outside and the kind of silence of……..

NOTE. At this point, as if to bring things back to reality, Jasmin is again interrupted by her daughter Rowan, who has come to tell “Mum” that her doll’s head has fallen off and needs to be fixed! 

“ I’ll fix it as soon as I finish chatting to Adrian,” she reassures her.

Jasmin Continues 🙂

A large part for me is just that connection with nature and wild places. It only has to be my local Pentland Hills at sunrise, or the Moorfoots nearby or running along the country road at night when an owl’s flying and swoops down over you, and the stars are above, and it’s silent. You know. 

Those experiences are really important to me and always have been.

I think that’s a big part of why I fell in love with Fell Running in the first place. Somehow, it took me to wild places, as much as you can get wild places in Derbyshire! I mean, it’s not that wild, but in the Peak District, at least I could get up onto the hills easily. I could get up onto Bleaklow every day. I think just that connection with nature has always made me feel better. Being out in nature makes me feel that all the little things that worry me every day go away when I’m outside. Running helps, but I don’t have to be running. I can be walking. Just being outdoors, especially in big mountains, makes you feel small, doesn’t it? They give you a sense of perspective. You feel small but in a really positive way?

Being in the city makes me feel small, but not in the same positive way, whereas being in nature makes me feel small, but in a kind of comforted way. Like, you feel okay because although you feel almost irrelevant, everything’s right with the world. So I think a lot of what drives me in terms of running and being outside, and definitely what fuels my training, is that even if I don’t want to go out in the mornings, and it’s dark and everything, when I get out, I’m always glad that I went because I always come back feeling better than I did when I set off.  I think most of that is just about that connection with being outside.

Do your children have any idea what Mum and Dad have achieved?

AS. Your family is really important to you. Do your children have any vague idea what Mum and Dad have achieved in their running years?

Jasmin. I don’t think they have that much idea, especially for four-year-old Bryn. I honestly don’t really think he gets it very much yet. This year, he was pleased to see me back from Barkley. He was pleased to see us both come back. The first year we went, he gave me the cold shoulder for a few hours after I came back. He wouldn’t look at me. He was quite little then, so I think he wasn’t very pleased that I’d left him, but this year, it was just like genuine joy to see us back. My daughter, Rowan. I think she’s getting it a little bit. Part of that is because she’s at school now, and her friends talk about it. They talk about having seen me on the telly, and I was in the Guinness Book of Records, and she saw the picture. 

The funny thing is,  Guinness sent me a copy of that, and she’s not really interested in the picture of Mum.  She’s more interested in the person that has the longest nails or the longest hair. She would take it to school to show it at “show-and-tell” but she wouldn’t show me to her friends. She would show the person with the longest nails or hair. So that gives you an example, I think, that your kids are pretty good at keeping you grounded. To them, you’re just Mum or Dad, and that’s good because that is how they see the world. We are just a completely normal `Mum and Dad.

I think it’s good to keep your feet firmly planted on the ground, because you just come home and straight away if you go back to doing all the usual things, like the house is a mess and you’ve got to tidy the washing, you’ve got to do the washing up, and I just don’t imagine your famous for too long!

What’s next for Jasmin? Seeking out new challenges.

AS. What’s next? Is there an adventure in the future that might surpass Barkley? You’ve set the bar pretty high now, haven’t you?

Jasmin. The thing is, Barkley is quite unique, isn’t it? There are a lot of races out there that I’m kind of interested in doing, but there aren’t that many races that I can think of that are unique in a way that Barkley is

If you have any good suggestions for me, feel free to let me know. I think there are races that I want to do. I’d like to run Hardrock one year.

At some point, just for the kind of interest of it, I’ll probably want to run a Backyard Ultra. It’s a bit of a weird concept, where you run around loops as long as you can, but  I’ve always found it fairly interesting, and the challenge of how far you can go is intriguing.  There’s a lot of mind stuff going on in a race like that where it comes down to you versus the last man standing.  I find that side of things quite fascinating.

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of what happens when you put yourself at the limit of what you can do and how far your mind can take you. Finding a fairly unique challenge in the sense that I don’t think until you do it, you have any idea really how you’re going to respond to that situation. 

So, I think, at some point, I’ll do one just because I’m intrigued about what it would be like. It’s not a race like Tor de Geants, where it’s easy to see the attractiveness of that race. I mean, that’s all about incredible mountains, and I’ll go back to the TOR because it’s unfinished business.  I’d like to do that again at some point,

So those are things I’d like to do. There are lots of long-distance trails that would be fantastic to have a go at some point. It’s just trying to balance that with everything else.

You know, like the Appalachian Trail where Tara Dower recently set this incredible record there, didn’t she?

Note. American runner, Tara Dower, set a new overall supported fastest known time (FKT) on the Appalachian Trail in September 2024. She recorded a time of 40 days, 18 hours, and 6 minutes.

 I like doing all the Monroes so I’d like to do that at some point, in a kind of self-supported style. So there’s lots of other things. At the moment, there’s nothing that I’m obsessing over like I did over Barkley. 

That isn’t surprising because it took a while for the seed, or the idea of Barkleyy, to really lodge and take root. Even once it was there, it wasn’t until I’d been for the first time and experienced it that it became a bit of an obsession, if you see what I mean.

I think something like that will take a little while for it to become a thing. Ultimately, Barkley is a fairly unique event, and I’m not even sure if there’ll ever be anything quite like that for me. 

AS. I am very familiar with 24-hour and 48-hour races where the time is finite and set, but the distance and how manymiles you can log up is open-ended.

With a Backyard Ultra, both the distance travelled and the time it takes you are open-ended, adding to the challenge.

Jasmin. It’s kind of interesting, isn’t it, to know how far can humans go in this sort of situation,

Adrian. As you may know, I spent a month helping at the Sri Chinmoy 3,100-mile race in New York earlier this autumn.

Jasmin. Yeah, I know. I’m really fascinated by that race, but I’m more fascinated by that mindset. It’s quite incredible that they’re doing that for an incredibly long period of time, aren’t they?  How long is the record for that?

AS. The men’s record is just over 40 days. (40 days, 9 hours, 6 minutes and 21 seconds, to be precise 

Jasmin. 40 days, did you say?

AS. Yes. Andrea Marcato, the Italian who has won it for the last four years, took just over 44 days this year.  (44 Days, 03 Hours, 04 Minutes and 06 seconds.  The women’s record is held by Tsai Wen-Ya, from Taiwan, in 45 days, 12 hours, 28 minutes and 44 seconds. You have a 52-day time limit, but it’s the repetitive nature, just going around this block. There are no mountains or navigation skills needed!! It’s way beyond just a purely physical adventure.

Jasmin. How much do they sleep?

AS. Well, there’s a mandatory six-hour break. The course is open from 6 in the morning until midnight.

Jasmin. OK.

AS.

They’ve got to go home. They all stay within a kilometre of the course.  Some of the runners get lifts back. Some of them cycle back to their places. Then they cycle back the next morning as it’s a 6 AM start each day.

You can take little breaks during the day if you want to. You can go for a power nap.

Jasmin. My brother lives in New York. I could do that one year when the kids are a bit older.

AS. Chatting to some of the runners, they get quite attached to running around the block, although they sometimes wish they could escape and find a hill to go up somewhere!

Jasmin. I think that sounds quite insane.

AS. You would probably prefer a backyard ultra, where the course often includes some trails and undulations on the laps!

Jasmin. Probably. Yes.

AS. Jasmin, thank you so much for your time. Fascinating, as always, to chat with you. I’m going to leave you to go and mend that doll now.

Jasmin. It was my doll when I was a kid, so that’s why the head falls off.  I feel a connection with this doll because it was mine, so we’ll have to fix him.  He has the same name as my brother. When I was a kid, I had a girl doll named after me and I had a boy doll named after my brother. So, the girl doll is no longer with us, but the boy doll is still going, and that’s him.

Take care, Adrian.

You can’t help feeling that Jasmin, although, on her own admission, was mildly obsessed with finishing Barkley, she won’t let it be the only thing to define her life. Her many other previous achievements are a testament to that. Personal boundaries are all relative and there to be challenged, whatever our current capacity. You feel that with Jasmin, her next big challenge will be something that, as she says, will test her in ways she won’t know or understand until she is looking right at them.

Short Video of Jasmin Paris, during the Two Breweries Fell Race in the Scottish Borders, Sept  2022

HERE jasmin @2 breweries

More information on the Frog Graham Round can be found HERE

An account,from a Carnethy Hill Runners perspective, of the 2024 FRA relays can be read HERE

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Adrian Tarit Stott.

The author is a former GB 24-hour ultra international with over 100 ultra race completions.  He has also been involved in organising ultra-distance races for over 30 years.  Still an active recreational runner, he is currently a member (Voluntary) of  both British Athletics Ultra Running Advisory Group (URAG) and The Mountain and Trail advisory group while also a part of the selection and team management for both Scottish and GB ultra teams.

He is a freelance writer in his spare time, contributing articles and reports to several websites and magazines including Athletics Weekly and Irunfar.