After two failed attempts, Jasmin Paris finally defeated the Barkley Marathons, becoming the first woman to ever complete the race. She looks back on the achievement and the journey that turned an obsession into a sporting landmark.
With 99 seconds to spare, Jasmin Paris collapsed over the infamous yellow gate at the finish line of the 2024 Barkley Marathons. 100 miles down. First and only woman in history to complete the race.
Known for its unpredictable course, quirks, and gruelling elevation, the Barkley Marathons in Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee has seen only 20 victorious runners since its creation in 1995.
Participants must navigate using their own notes and find up to 15 books hidden on the course, removing the correct page from each; if a page is lost, the runner is disqualified. No exceptions.
To complete it is something that most runners can only dream of, but not Paris. It hadn’t come easy, though. In 2022 she first attempted the race – failed. Tried again in 2023 – failed.
This year was different. The clock was ticking. She was going to make it.
“Most people thought I wouldn’t finish it in time. I still believed I could, but I was under no illusions – I knew it was going to be really close, even from hours out,” Paris says. “The fact that it was possible really kept me going. There was still this window of opportunity.”
“The minute you stop believing, the minute that, in your mind, it becomes an impossibility I would have slowed down massively.”
Founder of the race Gary Cantrell, best known as ‘Lazarus Lake’, had long since shared his views that women ‘are simply not tough enough’ to finish his course.
Coming in just under the 60-hour mark, Paris had finally done it.
“The first few minutes I was just trying to breathe. I could hardly think about the fact that I’d even finished it,” she says.
“Once I had some sugar on board and got my oxygen deficit sorted out, then it felt amazing.”
For Paris, it wasn’t just about conquering the legendary race, it was the ability to close this chapter, knowing she had well and truly beaten Barkley.
“Subconsciously I knew that I couldn’t keep going back and dedicating six months of my year to this race. It had to, at some point, stop being the obsession that it was.
“I needed to get this done and then move on with my life.”
History was already made, even before Barkley
Paris is well-acquainted with breaking boundaries in fell running. In 2019 she won the Spine Race, shattered the course record by over 12 hours, and beat every male participant, all while expressing breastmilk at each rest station.
The 268-mile race across the Pennine Way in winter is a brutal test of endurance, but Paris was a force to be reckoned with.
“It was the first time I’d run a multi-day, non-stop race. I’ve had a one-year-old baby. I was still breast feeding. It was a complete unknown, really. But, I did go into it wanting to try and challenge for the podium, for the top spot,” she says.
All eyes in the media honed in on this. A female winner, breastfeeding, with a one year old baby. It was almost unbelievable.
“I know some people seem to think maybe the focus should have been on me running and not the fact that I was breastfeeding,” Paris says.
“I think it was a really positive thing because it opens up the conversation around breastfeeding and about women in sport, and the fact that you can be a mother and do sport. To me, it was all positive conversation.”
During the race though, Paris seemed unphased by all of this; locked in on her race strategy, proving why she wins time and time again.
“I ran the first 200 miles with a guy called Eugeni Roselló, who had won the race before. I was sort of doing the navigation for both of us, really. He was hanging on to me a bit. Then, when we got to the fourth checkpoint about 200 miles in, he fell asleep and I used the opportunity to get away.
“There was a gap of about an hour and a half, and I knew that if I stopped for longer at the next checkpoint, then he would just catch me up and latch onto me again.
“So I couldn’t slow down. I couldn’t rest because I didn’t want him to attach himself to me again. I was pretty sure that if that happened, then I would end up essentially dragging him to the end and then he would probably outsprint me on the final bit. I wanted to run my own race,” she says.
And she did exactly that.
Increasingly, female ultra-runners are outperforming men over extreme distances. Paris believes some of it could easily be down to attitude and preparation.
“Generally I would say that women are better prepared than men. I think some of it’s to do with the fact that women are a bit less confident, on average, so therefore if they enter a race, they’re generally better prepared for it than a man might be. He’s a bit more confident about himself and ‘how hard can it really be’, that sort of attitude.”
“When you start going into these long races that are multi-day, there’s lots of other things apart from the physical act of running that start to play a role,” she says.
“You need to be able to make decisions, adjust to the situation, and deal with setbacks. All those things, the multitasking, the mental mindset, those are not physical. All of these women might well be better at – they don’t fall into that direct physiological comparison. That might be a big reason why there’s lots of examples of women in these very long events out performing men.”
What was different the third time around?
From her first try to completion of Barkley in 2024, Paris says a multitude of factors came together to make that attempt the golden one.
“It’s not like you can sit down and say I’m going to change this specific aspect with my mindset and then I’m going to finish it,” she says.
“I did definitely feel different when I came to it the third time, but I think that was more of a cumulative thing in terms of it being my third attempt at the race. I knew I was much more familiar with what it would involve.
“The training had been very consistent, definitely the best training block I’d had, so I felt kind of confident physically. Navigationally, I felt confident because I’d done seven loops on my own.”
Barkley in itself is a race full of personality and quirks, which can get into the minds of the participants.
Firstly, the date of the race is a guarded secret until closer to the time – all that’s known is that it will usually take place anytime between mid-March and early April.
Secondly, the start time of the race can be anywhere between 11am to 11pm, with founder ‘Lazarus Lake’ blowing a conch shell one hour before its commence to inform the runners. The race officially begins when he lights a cigarette.
The Barkley lore only gets stranger, with one runner getting lost for 32 hours in 2006 after navigating the course wrong, even entering a different county.
Recovering like a pro
It was no wonder that the media were desperate to speak to Paris after her Barkley triumph; the race is weird, wonderful, and unlike anything else.
“My life was completely turned upside down because there was so much media attention. In the first two days after I got back I did 27 interviews,” she says.
But alongside managing this, Paris was recovering physically and mentally from the epic feat.
“When we got back to the UK within a couple of days I was cycling to work. And I started running again about two weeks after the race, but just really gently.
“I didn’t start training till about two months afterwards. Mentally, I think that takes longer. That took me more like six months to feel ready to do something hard again.”
“You need to reestablish that connection with why you do it and for me, a lot of that is about being in nature and wild places and the love of running. You have to find that again before you can do something really hard,” Paris says.
Doing hard things comes naturally to Paris, having set records at the Bob Graham Round, Ramsay Round, Paddy Buckley Round, and won the British Fell Running championships in both 2015 and 2018.
A few months after Barkley, she was appointed MBE ‘for services to fell and long-distance running.’
When asked which was her proudest achievement, with no hesitation she says: “Barkley on that third attempt.”
