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Final Jungle Ultra Blog – A look back at Richard’s time in Peru

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Hi guys!  I got straight off the plane from Peru in to a busy week of Project X planning and meetings, I’m just resting up now after the Jungle Ultra.  This was the third big training event of the year and the one that I was least looking forward to.  After climbing Carstenz Pyramid in my 737 Challenge I vowed never to go back in a to a jungle again but following a conversation with the Zig Zag guys (Zig Zag are the production company filming my Channel 5 series) we chose this as my deprivation training in preparation for Project X.

I use deprivation training to make me mentally tough and more resilient and it just means training in difficult conditions or when I least want to.  To add to my nerves and not wanting to go, I had serious concerns with my achilles in the month between the Yak Attack and the Jungle Ultra.  I worked tirelessly with Nicki Phillips (my Sport Wales physio) day in, day out to strengthen my achilles and get myself ready to complete in the 230km/142m race, but the gamble we ran was that I didn’t do huge miles before the race having confidence in my aerobic capacity to get through it.  The challenge for me for this time was never getting through it, the challenge was getting through it in one piece and getting through strongly so I could build on this and move forward instead of manage injuries or take a step backwards off the back of it.

Training on the steps of Cusco, Peru pre race.

So it turns out that as with a lot of things in life and despite dreading the jungle –  the reality wasn’t quite as bad as my imagination had led me to believe!

I’ve already shared the first few days with you on my blog and as tough as they were they were just the precursor to the last two epic days of the race.

The penultimate day was named ‘The Lull’ and although one of the shorter days in distance at 36km it was the toughest day of the race in my opinion.   We really were running through the jungle.

Although the routes was really well marked, for most of the day there was no obvious path and some really really steep climbs having to scramble on hands and feet and at times just unable to run because of the mud.  It was so tough that we just had to actually walk through it – there were very muddy steep inclines, deep declines and the terrain under foot was really challenging.  To add to all of this, if this wasn’t tough enough, it was 40c with 100% humidity and everything in the jungle is alive.  You have to constantly manage where you put your hands and feet, the leaves, trees, ground, plants, everything is alive and teaming with insects, some of which would have been happy with a bit of welsh rarebit for lunch.

I spent most of the day running with my northern mate Mark and at one stage we were so shattered we stopped for a breather and within 10 seconds my entire foot and half way up my shin was covered in ants, so if that’s not an incentive to keep moving I don’t know what is!

Crossing the finish line and having this day in the bag and getting in to the hammock station that night was awesome.  In some ways this was the real working day in terms of all the things I was there to prepare.  It was a real relief in some ways knowing all I had to do was to start the final day and get to the finish line, that was a really cool feeling.  I didn’t allow myself the luxury to switch off though even if I did feel really proud of what I had achieved that day.

That particular day Mark and I had also spent the best part of 5 hours talking about what food we were going to eat when we got home!

The last day on paper would seem to be the toughest day – 92km and over 50 river crossings but I woke up feeling confident not just for having had ‘The Lull’ in the bank but I felt like this was my part of the race.

I am not an ultra runner but I am also not new to endurance, each day that my body didn’t break down and the work I had done was paying off, psychologically I got more confidence, which of course related to physically staying strong so I set off for the last day not too worried about my toes or my chaffing because the finish line was in sight.

For the first 4 hours I was running with Mark and we had got in to a nice rhythm but nevertheless we had a lot of miles in our legs so were pretty tired.  We had 2 big river crossings on a boat and zip wire and at about 4 hours in at the beginning of the river crossing Mark was having a lot of trouble with his feet so we separated and from that point on I ran all the race on my own and the field got spread out.  The race was over different types of terrain: from 4×4 tracks to open road, from river to jungle and then tracks again.  I got to 60km just as the sun was setting and on the outskirts of the jungle section.  The route was marked with red flags but at night they were really hard to see so when I knew what I was in for I had a break, had an couple of energy bars, had a big drink of water and put my shell top on and did it up really tight, so no bugs could get in to my jacket and headed back in to the jungle.  I had flying things all over my face because of the headtorch attracting them to the light, it was pretty grosse!

It was tough navigating, after an hour I got to checkpoint 4 and Mark the cameraman realised that they were still looking for runners behind me and I had about 5km to go to checkpoint 5.  By this point I had been going non stop for about 12-13 hours and just as I got through the jungle section, which was a real relief – an epic Amazon thunderstorm started!  It was like the hits just kept coming!  At first it started raining, then thunder and lightening.  By this time it was hard to see the flags and snap glow lights marking the route and the surest way of navigating the course was to follow the river down.   At one point I found myself in the middle of the Amazon jungle wading thigh deep down a river in torrential rain not being able to see further than a few metres in the most epic thunder and lightening and I thought to myself “this is pretty insane!” but after I composed myself I had confidence that physically I was strong, mentally I was good and although the jungle isn’t my forte, being solo is what I enjoy so I just pulled my socks up and cracked on with it and after that it was genuinely an awesome experience and something that will live with me forever.  Navigating through the Amazon using the river during a thunderstorm was a real privileged moment.

When I got to checkpoint 5 the situation was getting more serious and the river was continuing to rise with all the rainfall.  The racers behind me had been found and were on their way back to the safety of base camp – the racers in front of me were all accounted for and it turns out I was the last man in the field.  We got to checkpoint 5 but we were unable to move because the river was too high and rising so we decided to move the tents from checkpoint 5 to slightly higher ground and sit the storm out that night in the Amazon.

Everything was soaking wet, our gear, the tent, me and by the time morning came the river was still high but myself and Kerry, one of the other racers were at 65km at this point so we decided to finish the last 20km or so.  Just as we were about to start after having dried all our gear on a fire that the Peruvian guys had made, it started raining again and the race organisers made the decision to abandon the stage for safety reasons.

This was absolutely the right decision but I was a little disappointed to end it like this.  We don’t often get the chance to go in to the rooms in the deepest parts of our head and this would have been a really great opportunity both psychologically and physically to dig deep and prepare for Project X.  Nevertheless all the runners that were left standing had all achieved incredible things in really challenging conditions, so I wasn’t down for too long, instead as per my news years resolutions I made in Antarctica I took the opportunity to reflect and celebrate on what I had achieved and the incredible experiences I had had.

This wasn’t just a test of my aerobic fitness – there were key developments; fitness, mental resilience and my ability to manage myself – this was a big opportunity to test my self recovery skills and protocols, to manage the cameras and get used to the cameras and another valuable step to manage my calories to weight equation.

Going in to events like this I find really difficult because not only I am entering in to a new community – this time being ultra marathon runners, I am doing so with a camera crew following my every step.  Imagine your first day at school but with your Mum and Dad with you!  I really want to say a massive thank you to the race organisers and all the racers for being super cool and friendly and sharing their world with me.

This might not be my last ultra marathon!

Thank you as well to the Zig Zag film crew, not just for their professionalism, but how they were.  It’s awesome to be part of such a cool filming team.

I still giggle every time I think of Mark one of the camera crew who somehow found himself in the shittiest part of the jungle every day covered in flies and bugs waiting for me at my grumpiest to run past!

A race like this relies on a huge amount of medical support and the exile medics were absolutely awesome, not just patching up all the runners before and after the race but also doing so with a smile every day.

As with all these things, I am very grateful for the support from many companies and brands that continue to support me.  My gear performed really well in a really challenging environment, which proved to be a valuable test in the development for Project X.

A massive thank you to Rab, New Balance, Sigvaris, Ace Feet in Motion, Torq, Fuizion, Ortlieb, Sport Wales, Sony UK and most importantly the pocket physio Nicki Phillips…Although I didn’t share this publicly, it was touch and go whether I would make the start line but thanks to her awesome work I not only made the finish line but I finished stronger than I started.

I am really excited that you’ll all get to see for yourselves just how tough and amazing this race is and all the horrible grizzly bits will be there for all to see when my Channel 5 series comes out next year.

Richard’s race results – stage by stage:

Stage               Position             Time

1                        21                        05:37:00

2                        17                        05:04:00

3                        18                        06:53:00

4                        17                        08:18:00

5                        13                        13:11:00

Overall Position: 13th

Overall Time: 39:03:00

Pictures copyright of Richard Parks & Martin Paldan.

You can find out more about the Jungle Ultra race here.


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