The Ultra Man

How endurance athlete Jason Lane over came life-altering surgery, being run over and profound sleep deprivation to ride the race of his life.

- Joseph Delves

Somewhere just across the Cheat River in West Virginia, Jason Lane is floating above the road watching a man who looks very much like himself ride a bike down the highway. He can feel his hands hurting but they feel like those of a different person. As the miles roll by he’s becoming ever more irritated by his inability to wake up from the dream. In his mind he’s resolved that at some point earlier he must have been hit by a vehicle and is now in a coma. Worse still, he’s not sure what the people following behind him are up to. Sitting on his wheel in a large silver people carrier, they seem familiar but somehow different, as if friends he once knew have been replaced by imposters. Increasingly, he’s convinced that their intentions might not be entirely benevolent. Until he can figure out what’s going on, he decides it’s best not to accept their offers of food or water. Ascending into the remote mountains on the eastern side of the river, he’s overcome by the sensation of having climbed the same corner over and over again, only to emerge in the same spot without ever getting closer to the summit.

We spend around a third of our lives asleep and if we don’t get enough very strange things start to happen, just as it had with Jason Lane. Our immune system suffers, we can become depressed and in the short term frequently leads to disorientation, hallucinations and bouts of paranoia. Having set off on his bike next to the Pacific in Ocean side, California, eight days before, Jason had managed just seven hours sleep in the course of the 4,000 or so kilometres he’d covered on his way east across America.