I promised Jasmin I would not post this until I had word that Laz had lit his cigarette, to signal the customary bizarre but official start of the race.
It is a totally honest opinion of the event from someone well used to seeking out extreme adventures and challenges.

Adrian.
You ran Barkley in 2022. You have done so many amazing challenges over the years. What inspired you to go to the Barkley Marathon?

Jasmin
I think it’s one of those things that has grown on me over the years. I guess. I don’t even know when I first became aware of it. It was very much an event that was similar to the Spine, I said, why would you want to do that? It just sounds like you’re suffering without any pleasure. It just grew on me, the idea of could you do it? The thought of running laps put me off a little, but having been there now, I can say it wasn’t a problem. There weren’t many bits where I felt I recognised something again.

Although we were running the same loop, It didn’t feel like we were in the same race each lap. It never felt like I was out repeating myself and doing the same lap every time.

Adrian. Don’t you do it in reverse sometimes?

Jasmin.
I did it twice in one direction, and then you changed direction. I think some years he switches each lap.

Adrian.
What inspired you to go back again?

Jasmin.
I honestly think I could do it better. I think it’s possible. I feel one can finish it if one is in good form and with some things all coming together. I guess that’s why I’m going back. Whether that happens this year or not, we’ll see. I think it is a possibility.

Adrian.
You have done many challenges and races over the years that have stretched your capacity. All the many challenges you have done over the years, you seem to take in your stride.
Of all the challenges you have done, where does this rank in terms of difficulty if you can rank it? It might be a pointless exercise, but can you rank it against other challenges you have done?

Jasmin.
It has to be one of the hardest, if not the hardest race that I have ever done. I guess because I didn’t finish it.
For most events that I would go to, I would know that if I did it slowly enough, I could get around and reach the finish, barring injury.
But that’s not an option at Barkley because you have tight cut-offs together with battling the clock.
Part of you is always thinking about the time, and many other things crop up to slow you down. I would say that the Barkley is definitely amongst the hardest, if not the hardest, thing I have done. Mainly because I didn’t manage to finish it. It’s still unfinished business.

Adrian.
And is it any one particular thing, or is it a combination of things that makes it so hard?

Jasmin.
Yes, I have thought a lot about this, but I think it is a combination of things. ,
It’s difficult because you don’t have a GPS, so you can’t track yourself to know 100% all the time, exactly where you are or how much ascent you are doing.
You do spend the whole time going up or down. If you look at the time for what distance you are doing, or think you are doing, it’s slow.
I mean, like you think, how can you be going that slowly?
But I think, I think it’s because there is a lot of climbing in the race. And then on top of that, you’ve got the navigation, which is not exactly the kind of classical navigation you are used to. You haven’t got a good map. It’s not like a classic UK Ordnance Survey or Harvey’s map. There are very few features on it to help you recognise where you are. and Then you’re in the forest pretty much the whole time. It’s quite overgrown forests too, quite wild.
There are many things in your way. Lots of briars and fallen trees and rocks. Long sections of it, you have to climb up or slither down. You know the sort of thing. We can get a short section like that on a run in Scotland where you clamber around a bit, and it’s over, and you can get running again. At Barkley, due to the terrain, you’re doing that a lot, which breaks up your rhythm and slows you down.

So it’s kind of that. Then there is the weather! Last time, the weather was nice on the first day. Then it rained all night, really hard, and many people dropped out with hypothermia. The National Park, where it is held, has a habit of doing that. The weather can change quickly, and you need to be prepared for that.
It’s also the isolation of it all. You’re really on your own. If you fell and broke your leg or an arm, you would have no way of telling anyone where you were last year half the time on the third lap, I spent a lot of the time getting quite lost. So if you were lost and then something happened, you would be pretty screwed really until someone found you. It’s so easy to wander off the course and make it hard for someone to find you.
So I think it’s all these things. It’s the navigation, It’s the steep ascents, It’s the general difficulty of the terrain, and It’s the fact that you are so vulnerable on your own because you seem cut off from everything. Even though it’s not such a big park, it’s quite a small area in itself, but it feels very remote when you are out there on your own, completely in the middle of nowhere.

Adrian.
Thank you for painting such a vivid picture of the reality of Barkley. What you are saying tells us a lot. I have often wondered exactly what the course and terrain are like. Finding precise details of the race is part of its mystique. There’s no website with pictures or stunning video clips. You don’t get live interviews where a camera is stuck in your face with someone asking “how are you feeling?”. There is pretty much nothing. You rely on post-race reports from runners for a sense of the event. There is certainly no live tracker to indicate to a watching world where you are! It is the antithesis of trail and mountain running events as many people experience them. You paint a great picture of almost the loneliness you can feel. You have painted a picture of the terrain as well. It sounds like you are going through a three-day obstacle course race with mother nature providing all of the obstacles.

Jasmin.
Yes. I mean, it felt like sometimes. I think that the terrain is just so relentless. It kind of comes at you all the time. It all adds up.
Individually, those little things wouldn’t be very much, but it is happening constantly. It may sound strange but there are very few bits of the course where you can run freely for any length of time. It’s like it’s a race but it’s not a race. At times you feel you are going nowhere very fast! You’re so motivated to get moving, but you are faced with all these obstacles. I guess that’s, what makes it what it is. You are dealing with everything as it hits you.

Adrian.
You mentioned the climbs and that you didn’t have much idea how big the climbs were when you were doing them. In retrospect, when you’re looking at them, how high are you getting?

Jasmin.
Altitude isn’t an issue at all in that respect. I think I would have to look them up exactly, but I would think you are going up to anything up to a thousand metres. So nothing worse than Scotland, in some ways.
There are other races that I’ve done or might plan to do, where elevation and altitude are factors, and you need to factor that into your training. This isn’t the case with Barkley.

Adrian.
When you are heading up to the top of a summit anywhere in Scotland, or The Lake District, you get above the tree line pretty quickly and get open vistas, and you have rocky plateaus or scree slopes to deal with. At Barkley, do you ever get out of the trees anywhere to enjoy a view?

Jasmin.
Not much. I mean, there is a view that people see when you do see pictures of the race. There is a place where people are allowed to come and see you. They are not allowed to talk to you or give you tangible support. I think that there’s a bit of a view there.
You’ll see it in the pictures. You’re in this space where the trees have been felled so you can see around there. There are not many places where you get that much of a view, and you certainly don’t have time to stop and take it in. There are a few places, but not a lot.

Adrian.
How has your build-up been? I know your build-up has been a bit erratic, but just describe how your build-up has been.

Jasmin.
I have had trouble with my knees. Also, working full time and having two children is hard to juggle training too. I was pretty tired in the autumn, so I couldn’t train hard at that point. When I started feeling good around Christmas, I injured my knee. That held me back a little too. Since then, I’ve had six to eight weeks of, I would say, proper training now. I’m still not sure if my knee is going to hold up or not, so we’ll just have to go and see. There are so many unknowns about this race anyway. The knee is just another unknown to add to the mix. It’s not as if you’re going fast in the Barkley, because of the terrain. It’s just relentlessly difficult.

Adrian.
I think our old friend Martin Hyman once told me when I was in a similar situation, “You have lifetime miles in the bank as well, so that will stand you in good stead in an endurance event.”

Jasmin.
That is very true. It’s a lot about pure grit as well.
It would be good to feel completely confident about fitness, without worrying about injuries. That’s the one worry I think about. There’s nothing much to do about it, the way it is.

Adrian.
In a race like this, It’s like any challenge, You have to be fit and physically strong. However, it’s almost, beyond the physical for a lot of it, into the realms of mental strength in tandem with physical strength. There seems to be such an inner element to this race.
How does Jasmin’s inner runner cope with all of this?

Jasmin.
I think when I’m racing, you’re pretty alive and quite competitive. It’s not about being competitive with other people, it’s more you are competing in little games with yourself. How much you can achieve. I think that’s the beauty of the event. It gives you the chance to put yourself against the limit of what you’re doing, and there aren’t that many times you consciously put yourself in such an extreme situation.
I think when I am there, I just kind of get focused on just trying to do my best. I will try to get quite involved in the race and then stop thinking about everything and all the other peripheral things. I think about my children and when I go away from the kids, I generally miss them loads. When I start racing, it’s okay, I can set those thoughts aside.

Adrian.
Was there ever a point in last year’s race when you felt, “This was just too much, and, oh my gosh, why on earth am I here? Was there any moment like that?

Jasmin.
Good question. For me, quite a lot of time when I go to most races, I genuinely enjoy the freedom running gives you. I can’t say that Barclay was like that. A lot of it was type 2 fun. It was all right when you look back on it, but the time wasn’t that enjoyable, especially the second Lap. The weather was just awful, and it was pitch dark in the forest. You can see, from the fact that most people dropped out on the second Lap.
I remember thinking it wasn’t so much that I wanted to quit, but it was more that I couldn’t see how it would be possible to continue for parts of Lap2. Then it stopped raining, and the dawn came and it all got better, and I finished Lap 2. Then it was inevitable that I was going to start Lap 3. There wasn’t any question by that point, but there were times in the night when it felt pretty hard. That was probably as close to wanting to stop. Then there was Lap 3, which was hard because I was very much on my own and I kept making mistakes finding the route Then it came down to the wire in terms of getting back for the fun run finish. So in terms of actually what were the hardest bits, We are probably at points in Lap 2 when I got pretty cold, and it was so dark and lonely, but you find a way.

Adrian.
You are not allowed support on the course. It is a self-sufficient event. When you finish each lap and get back to almost the sanctuary of the yellow gate, and what passes for Race control, do you have support waiting for you, or are you self-sufficient then as well?

Jasmin.
You are right. We can’t receive any support out on the lap.
You can have someone back at the car park area at the end of each lap.
I had Konrad, my husband, there which was great.
Konrad will be there again this time too.

Adrian.
Okay. So when you are crewing someone in a short lap race or a longer trail race with frequent checkpoints, you get to see your runner quite often and you are kept busy. What does Konrad do while you are away for several hours trying to find your way around the course? It could be ill several hours before he sees you again.

Jasmin
I don’t know. I don’t know what he was doing, to be honest. I think there are quite a lot of other helpers there.
I got the impression that there’s quite a rapport that builds up between the crews. it’s a bit like a party in the camp. All the people that are not doing the race. Then there are all these local “old-timers” that are there. People who have run before or been involved with the event over the years. Some local regulars start, out of tradition, but don’t even finish the first loop. They just seem to start every year. There’s like a campfire going, and lots of people standing around there, so I think there’s good company in the camp. Lots of discussion about the people coming back in and so on, and wondering who is going to make it back and when. We are also staying close enough for him to have popped home if he wanted or needed to. You never know when someone’s going to reappear because they might have dropped out and find their way where back and things like that.

Adrian.
Tell me, do you carry a phone for even a little safety??

Jasmin.
No. They won’t let you carry a phone.

Adrian
Do you find that a little scary, or is that all part of the drama, and what makes it a unique challenge?

Jasmin. Probably both.

Adrian. That seems the right note to finish on. Here is hoping all goes well and your knees behave themselves.

Jasmin. Thanks. I hope so too.

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