Interview with Jasmin Paris
Imagine this: It’s the dead of winter in the UK and you’re toeing the starting line at Britain’s most grueling trail race—a demanding ultramarathon that winds 268 miles along the Pennine Way. This is the Montane Spine Race, and if you’ve heard of Jasmine Paris, you probably know her from her 2019 running of the race (she completed the course in 83 hours, 12 minutes and 23 seconds, 12 hours faster than the existing record). But what catapulted Paris to fame was that she accomplished the event while pumping breast milk for her then-14-month-old daughter along the way. Paris has ticked off all sorts of accomplishments since then, including a circuit of twenty-nine munros (mountains in Scotland that are 3,000+ feet) in the Cairngorms and winning the Ultra Tour Monte Rosa last year. Still, Paris is humble: “It’s always been a juggling act,” she says of managing her full-time career while being an athlete and mom. Here, she shares more of her experience, including how she’s fostering a love of the outdoors in her kids, why baked beans are her go-to running fuel and more.
Interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
On what a typical day looks like.
I start my day by running and training at 5am in the morning. I do my run, and then if I’m doing a strength class, I usually do that [from] 7:15am to 7:45am. Then kids also have to be ready to leave the house, because then it’s drop-off and nursery, then it’s work and then, when I get back at 6pm (once I’ve picked the kids up) we have tea together, and then it’s bath time and bedtime. By then, it’s almost 9pm. I often have to sit down and do another hour or two of work at that point. And then I go to bed and start all over again. It’s quite full-on, and it’s challenging. It’s challenging to find time with my husband. It’s about maximizing little moments together, like enjoying a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate in the evenings once the kids are asleep. And we enjoy the time we spend together as a family.
I usually do my longer runs on the weekends. At the moment I’m training a bit hard for something, so I’m doing long runs lasting maybe four or five hours, and I tend to go early in the morning. (If I went in the middle of the day I would basically spend my entire weekend away from the kids and I find it hard being away from them all week.)
On balancing work, running and parenthood.
The praise or the descriptions of me are too generous. (Paris has been called a superhuman, an endurance athlete and a role model for women.) I’m really not sure that I deserve them, but I’m happy if I can in some way inspire other women. I only started running once I’d left university and was already on my career track in terms of where I wanted to go with being a vet, specialist and researcher. So I just kind of ran those things alongside one another. … I do think that if you’re really passionate about things, then somehow you can kind of (to a point) juggle them and make things work. Sometimes it feels like I’m not doing anything very well but I try to balance that with the good times. And I try to tell myself that the kids hopefully will be inspired when they’re older by the things that mum managed to do.
On where she finds inspiration and energy.
My job is quite stressful … I think I would struggle with that stress on a daily basis if I didn’t have [running to help] diffuse my anxiety. Similarly, I think I would find it hard to be a good mum and go with the flow if there wasn’t something else besides work. I think running does all those things for me. So while it obviously takes up sleep time (which is currently very precious) overall, it’s a benefit for me.
Often I don’t think about anything [when I’m running], I just completely switch off and it’s almost like meditation. Other times, if I do a really hard session, it feels good to just focus on that and nothing else. It really simplifies everything, because all I have to do is run. Also, you know, it gets me out into the hills to these beautiful places, and I see the sunrise in the hills and all those little things we’re worried we don’t see as important anymore.
On fostering a love of time outside among her kids.
Being a parent makes you suddenly have a new appreciation for your parents, doesn’t it? At least it does for me. My mum looks after the children two or three days a week. The way we were brought up is that if it was nice weather, we were outside. Now, she has the same kind of approach [with my kids]. When I send them to my mum, I send them with two or three different sets of outdoor outfits and coats. … They get in rivers and ponds and whatever else!
We’ve also walked with our kids from the beginning. First they were in a baby sling, then they were in a backpack and then they walked. By the time [my oldest child Rowan] turned three this summer, she was climbing munros and, I think, for her, it’s a massive incentive—this idea that we’re climbing this mountain.
You have to accept that it’s a totally different pace [when hiking with kids]. You go much slower, you tell lots of stories, you have lots of picnics on the way. On your own, you might run up a munro and down again in a couple of hours … Now, one mountain is the focus of a whole day trip, and it has to be planned with lots of picnics. But it’s so enjoyable. It’s made me enjoy the mountains in a whole new way. The idea of them—I’ve not done all the munros—but now it’s really exciting, the idea of ticking them off with my daughter.
On her favorite running fuel.
Even when I’m running ultraraces I prefer to eat normal food as much as possible. So I still eat porridge the morning before races—porridge, raisins and flaked almonds. My kids both eat porridge for breakfast as well. … But running food tends to be normal food. Later on in races I find it easier to get down things that are quite soft like rice pudding, fruit salad or baked beans. They’ve worked quite well for me, actually!
On how she gets out the door at 5am.
Mornings [with the kids] are really full-on and just getting out the door is difficult, so I have everything laid out—the bags are packed and by the door, the clothes are laid out, the nappies are ready, my stuff is ready—my running stuff is ready, and the head-torch and the watch—it’s all in a pile. All I have to do is get out of bed and pull it on. I also have a dog and the dog needs walking, so that’s another motivator.
The other thing that helps is going for runs with friends … Yesterday morning, for example, I met a friend at 5:30am and we did a longer, harder run. And I know if I hadn’t made a plan to meet him at 5:30am, I probably would have just done the run on my own, slightly later, and it would have been an easier run. At the same time, I don’t beat myself up. There are occasional mornings when I’m just too exhausted and that’s OK. I’m fine with that. I have to listen to my body occasionally, but not all the time, because if I listen all the time then I would never go out.
On running through her second pregnancy.
The first time [I was pregnant], I was able to run until the day my daughter was born. I ran 8 kilometers that day and I went into labor that evening. I ran my first parkrun (a 5-kilometer run in a public park) in 23 minutes a couple of weeks before she was born. I did the same run three days before she was born, I think, in 24 minutes. And the week after, I went [to the parkrun] with the baby in the sling and someone said, Were you here running last week with that baby in utero? And I was like, Yeah!
The second time around, I did run, but I had to stop around 6 months due to a combination of pelvic pain and Braxton Hicks contractions. Even when I was walking a bit faster, I’d start to have [Braxton Hicks] and they were a bit unpleasant. I could still do hill reps, so I’d run short hill reps on the slope near our house. I found that with that I was at least getting my heart rate up and getting some exercise.
A favorite running memory.
When I finished my Ramsey’s Round, I finished it by dropping from Ben Nevis (the highest mountain in the UK at 4,413 feet) into the valley, and I was following probably the UK’s best mountain runner at the moment, Finlay Wild, who knows the mountain like the back of his hand. He led me down the best line that you could possibly take. And I knew that I was going to break the overall record for this round, in a time that was faster than I’d dreamed of. As I was dropping into the valley, it was a gorgeous summer’s evening, and I could hear the sound of bagpipes. It turned out to be one of my supporters! I could hear him from 2 kilometers away. It was pretty special. I heard the bagpipes and I thought, I can hear bagpipes! I must be imagining it.