Running with the legends

A weekend in the sun (and rain) with an ultra running icon

Jasmin Paris leads the way on day one.

It’s after 4pm on Monday and I still haven’t even started my Monday Musings. How do you write about a wonderful weekend on Dartmoor, hosting a running retreat with bonafide ultra running legend Jasmin Paris, without it coming across as some sort of advertorial for The Way of the Runner?

Honestly, it was a total delight. We got perfect weather all weekend - mostly blue skies, not too warm to make running unpleasant, but warm enough to allow for a wild dip in a beautiful pool we discovered by accident when Joe Kelly took us on a detour from our planned route. (I personally didn’t find it quite warm enough to tempt me in to the water, but I have to say I regretted it afterwards.)

I say it was perfect weather, because we did get one run in mist and freezing rain, where everything starts to look the same and you lose all sense of direction, and all sense of anything existing beyond the immediate patch of ground around you; that type of weather than makes you want to whoop out loud as you race along at full pelt. A weekend on Dartmoor is never quite complete without a bit of that bone-chilling wildness, and I felt more energised after that run than after any of the others.

Jasmin Paris is so famous these days, after becoming the first woman EVER to finish the Barkley Marathons, and doing it in such dramatic, nail-biting fashion, that it felt like having a superstar in our midsts - one of those people whose faces you’ve seen so many times in pictures and films that it seems strange to be standing there next to them in real, 3D life. You know, just casually shooting the breeze. No biggy.