Beginnings, mistakes, mountains and Barefoot Ben

A while back I had my usual existential crisis and, looking for inspiration, the perfect opportunity came up: the chance to travel to one of the planets least explored mountain ranges; the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan, through an inaugural self-supported 5 day, 200km foot race. This is right up there with the toughest multi-stage ultra marathons in the world with over 9000 metres of ascent in thin mountain air at up to 3,900 metres altitude.

Designed as the Beyond The Ultimate (BTU) global race series finisher, this event was crafted to punish and the prediction from the Race Director, Kris, was that as few as 5 of the 20 person field would finish. Oh dear.

With this fact in mind and it being the very first event, the selection process was stringent and the field was extremely competitive. To give you perspective on the calibre of runners, on the roster we had:

Jon - a sponsored athlete; a Brit and winner of multiple ultra marathons including the BTU Ice Ultra, BTU Jungle Ultra and Summer Spine Challenger;

Kristina - a Danish sponsored athlete; full-time runner and Kilimanjaro female FKT record holder, also female winner of the BTU Jungle, Ice and Desert ultras. In completing the mountain ultra, she aims to be the first person to complete the 4 part Beyond the Ultimate global race series covering the most extreme and hostile environments in the world;

Michael a.k.a “The Honey Badger” - a sponsored athlete; a Canadian runner and winner of UTMB Thailand and multiple podium places previously running with the likes of Killian Journet and Courtney Dauwalter;

Karl - a doctor by trade but a serious athlete with podium places in multiple ultra marathons, also on course to complete the BTU global race series by next summer;

Tim - a British engineer and talented runner with youth on his side, in his late 20’s fresh off completing the gruelling pan-American highway journey, cycling 27,000km’s from Cape Horn in Chile to Alaska with a pit-stop in Peru to complete the Jungle Ultra Marathon.

Other notable accolades from the field included a world marathon finisher and no less than 2 Everest summits as well as Russell, “Rusty” who aims to be the only athlete ever to complete all 6 BTU events, including the additional races in Scotland and Kenya.

Enviable cv’s, which was both intimidating and inspiring.

And then there’s me; a couple of mid-placed finishes at ultra marathons under my belt and a healthy dose of optimism.

I know what you are thinking. How did I get in? Well, that’s one I have pondered over and my suspicion is that I was a wild card option to answer the question; “what happens when you chuck in a plucky novice?”

So to kick things off, due to the altitude and need to adapt to the hostile environment we embarked on a “warm up” in the form of a 3 day acclimatisation trek - at just shy of 50km, whilst not to be sniffed at, this was going to be a walk in the park compared to the upcoming onslaught.

A quick 45 minute drive in an ex-USSR military truck later and we arrive at our destination; with fresh legs and nervous excitement I jump off the truck and begin readying my pack for the hike. I glance down at my feet and realise my mistake - flip-flops. No running shoes. You utter moron.

I tap Kris on the shoulder, and point to my feet sheepishly; he quickly understands my predicament, laughs and shrugs his shoulders. So that’s that, 3 days hiking in the mountains in flip-flops! Moments later the whole crew is in the loop and with laughs, claps, whoops and cheers I am the centre of attention; from that moment on, “barefoot Ben” a.k.a “Jesus” was born.

Now, I will be fully open; this is not my first running faux pas and, unfortunately, this was the last in a long line of errors that have been both entertaining and moronic in equal measures.

For my first foray into long-distance running participating in the 2009 London marathon, with too much time and nervous energy I did an entirely unnecessary 45 minute warm up, pulled a calf muscle and tied my shoe laces extremely tight for a fear of my running shoes flying off mid-stride. This resulted in an intensely painful experience with the loss of 8 toe nails, 2 hours in the medical tent and an inability to climb or walk down stairs for a week.

With my first ultra marathon, the 2019 BTU Namib Desert race, I decided to buddy up with an experienced runner on day one with the goal of learning from a wise head and being guided into a safe position in the race. Unfortunately, my pick for this roles’ words were more impressive than his actions and with the longest, slowest “run” of my life, suffering 50 degree heat for a full 15 hours, we lurched over the day 1 finish line in last place a full 3 hours after the rest of the field. Bless his heart, this guy was a lovely fella but my god he was slow. Needless to say that I politely declined his offer to support me on day 2.

Whilst on the subject of this race and perhaps my favourite newbie running story - rather than carrying electrolytes to replace essential salts from sweat in the sweltering desert heat, another naive competitor brought a full bottle of sacla table salt for his “salts”. 6 hours later, he had chronic cramp and had lost the ability to bend either of his legs so he was comically marching his starched pins across the desert.

In 2022 at the Ice Ultra in the Arctic circle, I had a couple of major kit errors that almost ended my race. I will never forget that moment of realisation at seeing 25 sets of identical, lightweight, shiny-white, snow-shoes lined up and the sight of my bargain-basement monstrosities; black in colour and a full kilo heavier than the 300 gram TSL racers the rest of the field were using. This mistake resulted in 3 days of pain and slow-motion movement and me struggling at the back of the pack. Fortuitously for me, a very kind athlete who had to bow out with light-hypothermia from the minus 30 cold lent me his racing snow shoes for the final 2 days and things went on the upturn from there with a reasonable finish.

I also seriously underestimated the cold - quite difficult to do with temperatures dropping to minus 40 at their lowest - and my decision to wear lightweight cycling trousers nearly cost me more than my race culminating in a frozen appendage due to an urgent need for the loo in a blizzard somewhere over Mount Kabla.

So I have previous and have made multiple errors over the years with ever interesting consequences.

One thing I will say to my advantage is that I have my father’s spirit and my easy going persona belies a steely determination and underlying resilience that has always given me a chance of success. I am a trier and you can be damn sure I will give it my best shot.

Back to the current day and Spoiler alert: with some fairly significant sun-burn, my feet survived the trek and I readied myself for the toughest event of my life.

The scene is set. The hardest race. A field of seasoned athletes. And me, “Barefoot Ben” - plucky, always the optimist but vastly underprepared and under-qualified.

Will I survive? Will I finish? Whatever the case, I am in for an adventure.