Testing the extremes
From almost suffering a heart attack jogging 100m, Daz Carre has gone on to complete some of the world’s toughest ultras. Having faced raging heat in the desert, this time things are getting arctic…
SOME people live for the extremes.
Daz Carre is one of them.
So when word reached us that his next race would be an ultra in the Artic where the temperatures can drop to -40C, it seemed as normal as someone popping to the shop.
In reality it is anything but normal.
The Ice Ultra is a five stage race covering 230km in Swedish Lapland, billed as Europe’s last remaining wilderness.
It will cross snow fields, ice forests and frozen lakes.
The days will be short and the course long, meaning significant periods running in the dark navigating with a head torch through terrain and conditions that could not be further from the comforts of Guernsey.
It is one thing tackling an extreme challenge, it is another when the closest you can get to simulating the temperatures in training is standing in an industrial freezer.
Daz’s journey into ultra running really began when fellow musician Mike Meinke came back from completing the Marathon des Sables.
It had been 15 years since he had run at all, he was three stone overweight and didn’t have anything to aim for.
‘I thought I’d put myself on the waiting list for two year’s time. I thought two years should be enough to shed all this weight and learn how to run again.’
He began running ‘Forest Gump’ style.
‘My first run, I went out, I was like, wow, it’s amazing how easy this is. And about 100 meters down the road, I almost had a heart attack. I just built it up and always tried to beat the point that I went to before I came back. And before I knew it, I was doing three miles, then five miles.’
To scare himself he entered the 2013 Guernsey Half, finishing in two hours and eight minutes.
Then out of the blue in October that year he got an invite to do the 2014 MdS, which was to be held in April. The two years had turned instead to a few months.
‘I went, right, OK, I’ve got to start training now. Like really big style training and I started doing 50/60 mile weeks and loads of time on the beach. I did five laps of Herm every Saturday because all the different terrains and Shell Beach is good for the sand.’
He watched as many YouTube videos about the race as he could and spoke to Mike a lot about it.
Part of his preparation to build up a tolerance for the heat was sitting in a sauna listening to music four times a week, sometimes for an hour and a quarter at a time,
‘I just pictured myself being under the sun in the heat and just keeping calm, keeping my heart rate down and it seemed to do the trick. I never felt in danger when I was out there even though we had 52C on two different days.’
He was at the peak of his fitness for the race.
He went well over the first three stages, holding a place in the top 500.
Then came the long day – it was 52 miles.
Just four kilometres in he tore his patellar tendon, the main knee ligament, and couldn’t run.
At the 10KM checkpoint it was strapped up and he was given a healthy dose of painkillers.
‘I basically just dragged my leg,’ he said.
Aiming for 16 hours, he completed it in 22.5 in some of the highest temperatures.
‘It was a very miserable time. That sent me to some pretty dark places that night. It was like I was walking through jungles at some point, and I could hear whispering, all sorts. And because of the head torch, you get tunnel vision. And it just seems like you’re walking up Val des Terres where you’re just covered in trees. But actually, I’m in the middle of nowhere and might as well have been on Mars.’
‘I was done with everything. I couldn’t speak to any of my teammates, I couldn’t do anything. I was an emotional wreck’
Daz Carre
He got to his communal tent at 7am.
‘I was done with everything. I couldn’t speak to any of my teammates, I couldn’t do anything. I was an emotional wreck. I’d been through the night, just head down and just kept walking. It hurt so much. Just didn’t stop.’
Some sleep and food lifted his mood and he walked the last marathon distance in seven-and-a-half hours.
When he got back home it was with the realisation that if he put his mind to something, even if it was sprung on him, he could get through and crack it.
‘It really boosted my mind with with everyday things, you know, with music, with learning songs, or writing songs, with work. It just just helped in day to day life really.’
He had caught the running bug too.
Soon he was doing 50-mile races and fell in love with the South Downs.
He found out Centurian did a 100-mile race and it became something of an obsession.
In three attempts he twice made it to around 61 miles.
‘The fourth time I went back and I was like I’m not stopping. I’m completing this race no matter what. I did it in 28 hours and three minutes. And so that’s the longest I’ve ever run in one go. It was a big day out.’
There was a 30 hour time limit. Some would say he got value for money. The winner finished in 15 hours.
Covid has meant no racing away for the last couple of years.
Daz said he has gone back to the basics with his training.
It includes a session he calls the ‘Castle of Pain’ at Vale Castle.
It starts with a sprint up the hill, then 10 press ups, then running up the steps and around the ramparts, back down the steps, then 10 sit ups, and back down to the bottom of the hill.
This is how he spends his lunch hour, doing 10 laps two or three times a week.
It helps with the strength, but it is now time to step up the training as he contemplates his next challenge.
‘We’ve done the hottest race, we’re now going for the coldest. So to the Arctic Circle we go.’
The idea was formulated with a good friend from the UK who was one of the people Daz shared a tent with in the desert.
His friend is 60, Daz is 40.
It’s obviously those milestones years that make for doing milestone events.
Similar to the MdS, you have to be self-sufficient on the course, with check points along the way.
Each night is spent in a teepee or wooden lodge.
The organisers transport the night kit between the stages.
‘You are still carrying five days worth of food, all of our survival gear and, and like extra, layers of clothing in case you stopped somewhere for an amount of time. So the idea was we’ve done a hot one, now it’s time to face our fears and go for a cold one. ‘
Training will include testing out snowshoes on the beach, while Ferryspeed have kindly let him use their freezer so he can check his clothing.
He has begun slimming down and running in a fasted state to encourage the efficient use of fat for fuel.
He is hoping for a cold winter.
Daz likes training in the winter anyway.
‘I prefer the feeling of when it’s absolutely horrific weather. Being out there, running in it, knowing that everybody else is just sat in doors,’ he said.
‘I love that. I was like, well, I can sit indoors later and feel like I deserve it. But I also love that you feel even more alone in the winter and I train best when I’m just in my own headspace with heavy metal blaring on my iPod and then on the cliffs for hours at a time.’
He rarely runs without music, although will save it until maybe 20 miles into a ultra when things have spread out.
It acts as pain medication too, taking his mind off the blaring knee and foot pain that comes with covering such big distances.
There will only be 30 competitors in the Ice Ultra, it means strong bonds will be formed.
‘The camaraderie of these things is amazing,’ said Daz.
‘On the MDS in the desert, you’re making friends with people and they’re like your brothers and sisters by the end of it. You run 190 miles across the desert, nobody can really know what that’s like or share with you what mental torment you’ve been through, the pain, then the exhilaration of finishing it, nobody apart from somebody else that’s there doing it can really know what that’s like. And I think that’s why you form these bonds with people because you’ve got that in common with them. The hardest point you’ve ever been in your life, they were there next to you doing the same thing.’
The shared experience of running happens at different distances and different events.
Daz cites the All Terrain Challenge or the cliff races as a local examples.
‘It just brings people of different running abilities all together, to run together, which is brilliant, because you can share some of these stories.’
There is always an element of danger in ultra running, although the organisers of the arctic challenge have created a checklist of items the athletes need and can airlift anyone out within half an hour.
The Sami people are also there.
Daz has seen it go wrong in the desert.
‘The first stage, I saw people lying down on drips, firing the flare off, you know. I don’t quite understand what people thought they were going into. It was brutal seeing that and you’re left questioning yourself, do I feel all right?’
One UK competitor crossed the finish line of stage two and collapsed. He was in a coma for a week before recovering.
‘You always accept the dangers. And I know sometimes it’s quite easy to gloss over that, thinking that’ll never happen. But you’ve got to have it in the back of your mind that if things do go wrong, what are you going to do? It’s just being prepared.’
He does not have any fears at the moment.
‘It might be different when I’m standing there at the start line at six o’clock in the morning, it’s still dark and it’s minus 30 and all of a sudden they say go and I’m in the middle of Arctic tundra wasteland.’
The one certainty is that he won’t let the challenge get the better of him.
‘I really don’t like being beaten by races and challenges because once I set my mind on doing it, I want to complete it. Any race I’ve ever done, any I’ve DNFed, I’ve gone back and completed. I don’t care how many attempts it takes me or how deep I have to dig. I’m not going to let it go.’
Wendover Woods, a 50 mile race of five 10-mile loops, is one of those.
Daz is at one-all with it.
‘The first time I went out there, I completed it. And it was horrific. I mean, for me, I don’t like out and backs and I don’t like looped races if it’s long. I really love a point to point. Doing 10 mile laps is soul destroying. 10 Miles is hard when it’s 2000 feet of elevation per lap.
‘When you get in, you know you have to do it again, and then again, and then again. And then one more time just after that.
‘And the problem is on a lapped race, the elites are just so quick and you’re on your third lap and they’re running around on their last. It was a pretty miserable time for me.’
The second attempt he had a coughing fit on the third lap and his whole body started cramping so he called it a day.
‘I’ve been to some dark places, but you know that you can lift yourself out of it. And we all know that the body doesn’t remember pain. So after all these things, the only thing you remember is how amazing it was and that you completed it.’
It means a revenge mission is on.
Ultra running pushes those who take part to places they never knew existed, it also teaches resilience.
‘I’ve been to some dark places, but you know that you can lift yourself out of it. And we all know that the body doesn’t remember pain. So after all these things, the only thing you remember is how amazing it was and that you completed it.’
There is one quote that spins around in Daz’s head when he is out by himself in the wilderness: ‘Do not follow where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail’.
Daz’s attempt at the Ice Ultra is raising money for the Priaulx Premature Baby Foundation, you can donate at https://donorbox.org/darren-ice-ultra.
Garenne Construction Group has sponsored his race entry deposit.
This story will appear in the winter issue of ActiveGsy, out soon.
