The New Tough

WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES SOMEONE WANT TO RUN FOR 83 HOURS NON-STOP? REBECCA NEWMAN MEETS THE WOMEN PUSHING THEIR BODIES (and minds) TO THE EDGE

- REBECCA NEWMAN

Think about climbing Mount Everest. Then think about climbing it twice. Now imagine that rather than climbing it, you’re running up and down it. That’s equivalent to what Jasmin Paris achieved last year when she ran the Montane Spine Race, a brutal 430km marathon up and down the mountains of the UK’s Pennine Way. In driving rain and gusting winds, the then-35-year-old finished it in 83 hours, 12 minutes and 23 seconds, knocking a huge 12 hours off the previous male record. This, despite stopping along the way to express milk for her baby daughter. In the summer version, another British woman, Sabrina Verjee, smashed Paris’ record, leaving any competition a cool six hours behind her. Then there’s Courtney Dauwalter, an American who finished the Moab 240 (240 miles, or 386km, across the Utah desert) in 2017, 10 hours quicker than the fastest man. And Lael Wilcox, another American, who won the 6,760km Trans Am Bike Race across the US in 2016, famously sprinting the final 210km to beat her nearest competition and becoming the first woman to win the race. And we can’t forget Australian ultra-runner Lucy Bartholomew, who has set female records at the Ultra-Trail Australia and Cape Town.

For a long time, endurance sport seemed like a man’s world. Yet, increasingly, women are not only competing alongside men, but winning – smashing records and overturning people’s expectations in the process. And this isn’t just because they’ve been training for endurance races their whole lives. Many of them didn’t like sport much at school, then one day decided to give it a go, and suddenly found themselves hooked.