You’ll never run alone - how Helen Ramwell ran through Nepal in memory of her dad
Ultra runner Helen’s father Richard inspired her to conquer 123-miles in the Himalayan foothills
If you enjoy this article check out the other inspirational stories on this newsletter.
Just last week, we featured Substacker and runner, Raziq Rauf, who refuses to sugarcoat the world of running - and whose writing is all the better for it.
You can read that story here:
"Running Sucks... but that's why we love it"
Don’t want to miss another Running Tale, subscribe below…
The foothills of the Himalayas are beautiful.
Sweeping vistas, cedar-covered hills, monasteries and temples. All relaxing under the gaze of their awesome mountain neighbours.
They’re also unrelenting. Especially if you’re a runner.
But as Helen Ramwell jogged her way through the undulating landscape, she was not alone.
Help and support sat on her shoulder every step of the way.
Not that any of the other six runners in the inaugural Capital to Country Multi-Day Ultra, a five day, 123-mile sweep through Nepal, were close to her.
Although those taking on the event had become close, once out on the course it was each to their own.
No, the runner on her shoulder was a familiar, if much lamented, one.
Just two years before Helen took on the 27,000ft of elevation offered by Capital to Country in November last year, her father Richard - an experienced ultra runner himself - had sadly passed away.
Helen had run many times with her dad in the past, including at well-known multi-day races such as the Marathon des Sables.
But in the years since he died, she had been kept busy with both the restraints of the coronavirus pandemic and looking after her two young children.
Nepal had offered a chance to not only dive back into the world of ultra running, but to process the loss of her father.
She told the Running Tales Podcast: “I'm not very superstitious, but I feel his presence when I'm running because I can feel him on my shoulder, willing me on.
“I decided to do Nepal partly because I felt like it would be a good opportunity to process what had happened with my dad.
“And it took a while, but certainly by the third or fourth day, I think out in the mountains, with Nepal being a very spiritual country anyway, I actually found myself talking to him for a little while and I got a bit emotional.
“Then I decided I couldn't run and cry at the same time. So that finished that!
“But I certainly got the time to absorb that information and process the whole previous couple of years. That was really useful for me personally.”
Dared to run a half-marathon:
Although Helen now ranks the time she spent running with her dad as some of the best moments of her life, she didn’t always enjoy the sport.
A childhood of being taken to running events led to her rebelling against the idea of being a runner herself.
She told Running Tales: “My parents are both runners. My dad even got involved with the very first London marathon in 1981.
“I spent my entire childhood stood at the finish line of cold and wet cross country courses.
“In fact, I've been to the London marathon nearly every year of my entire life, apart from when I messed up the dates of getting married and actually got married on the same weekend [as the marathon].”
In fact, Helen only started running seriously after being provoked to run a half-marathon at a family gathering.
“I was 21 and had gone to a New Year’s party,” she said. “There was a group of us youngsters in one room, and my parents and all their running friends were having a few drinks in another room.”
She said during a discussion about New Year’s Resolutions, she was told “I bet yours isn’t to run a half-marathon because you couldn't manage that”.
Also on Running Tales:
How one man's Parkinson's diagnosis inspired him to his greatest running achievements
Super Mario - The Ironman who always finishes with a smile on his face
Helen said the jibe was “a bit of a red rag to a bull” - and that year she successfully ran her first half-marathon.
Her story then followed the well-trodden path of many an addicted runner, with marathons soon on the agenda.
With her father as inspiration, the world of ultra marathon running soon came calling.
Keen to do a race alongside him, Helen signed up for the 2014 Marathon des Sables (MDS) - the six-day, around 250km (155-mile) jaunt through the Sahara, a race Richard had finished in 2012.
“I don't know what drove me to that, but that was when my ultra running journey started,” she said.
“I'm still a kind of unusual blend of road racing and ultra racing, and enjoying trails, but for me they serve different purposes.
“Like most runners, it's an addiction. I just like the mental headspace. I like being out in the fresh air. I like the community aspect, and I think you meet lots of very interesting and very different profiles when you're out and about running.”
Taking on the desert:
Helen said her decision to run Marathon des Sables “shocked” a lot of people, particularly those family and friends who remembered her as an ‘anti-runner’.
But despite that, and MDS’s sometime reputation as an overly-commercialised race for running tourists, “everybody was quite impressed”.
“There’s a huge amount of organisational elements for getting prepped and ready for the start and keeping yourself going all the way through,” Helen said.
“That’s evidenced by the number of people that don't make it to the end.
“I do find it [some runners’ views on MDS] a little bit sad, because I think one of the joys of running is that it allows you to get out and experience different things.
“Different things might be doing a local event or it might be travelling around the world and meeting different types of people.
“I can understand why people see it as being commercialised because it has become quite a big enterprise and it is expensive, which, of course, is prohibitive for some people. And I understand that can be inflammatory in some cases.
“But I don't think that should restrict people from wanting to do MDS, or indeed any other big run that costs a little bit of money.”
Helen and Richard were even set to be the first father and daughter duo to finish the event, but unfortunately the desert had other ideas.
“I've had great experiences of doing a lot of running with my parents, but especially my dad,” Helen said.
“You get to know people on a very different level when you're running side by side, rather than sat in front of the telly or whatever it might be that you do with your family.
“I feel very, lucky to have had that time with him. However, went we went to Morocco, he’d actually had food poisoning a few weeks previously, and he started being sick on the first day.
“The course, as you'll know, changes every year. Our first day was, unfortunately, the toughest by far.
“We were in 50 degree heat straight away with a full pack, and onto the biggest sand dunes that the course covers.
“He was sick over ten times during the time we were out in the course, so was pretty ill.
“And then the next day, we got up and again he started vomiting straight away, virtually as we hit the heat.
“And so I was starting to get quite concerned. We got to about 10 miles in on the second day, and he said, ‘I'm just going to sit here’.”
The pair were due to meet up again at the next checkpoint after Richard had taken a break in the shade, but unfortunately - despite being given anti-sickness medication - he collapsed at the top of a sand dune and woke up on a drip.
That action obviously led to Richard being disqualified, leaving Helen to tackle the rest of the race on her own.
“That was really sad,” she said. “Because it was not what we'd gone out intending to do.
“But in some respects, I think it gave me a different drive to what I was expecting. I knew that he would be willing me to get to the end.
“And it gave me a reason to complete it, in a different way to what I'd planned.”
Get 20% of mountain running champion Grayson Murphy’s training log and planner:
Click on the below article to take advantage of our collaboration with one of the world’s best trail runners…
Aeroplane arms for fun, planning for perfect performance
After finally completing the run, Helen got a welcome surprise when Richard “emerged over the sand dunes in the distance, like a mirage”.
Helen said he had been on “good form,” but added that after he later passed away she had found some of his notebooks, which included a chapter on his ‘failures’.
On the list was MDS 2014, a revelation Helen found “really sad”.
“It wasn’t a failure because it wasn't his fault that he'd been ill and he'd completed it previously, so there's no shame in that,” she told Running Tales.
The next generation:
While Helen took her time to catch the running bug, her own children, aged just three and five, are already flirting with the sport.
She said: “They both do junior parkrun on a Sunday morning. It’s 2km, and my little girl - at only three - has finished her first two parkruns in the last two weeks.
“I'm super proud of her, but more importantly from actually completing it, that she did the whole lot with a massive smile on her face.
“She absolutely loved it. I've been buggy running with her for the last few years, which is a skill in itself, but she's been present with her big brother in the buggy and I think she's felt a bit restricted by it and definitely wanting to get involved.
“parkrun don't technically let them run until they're four, but they've all been really good.
“I love the enthusiasm of all the parkrun organisers and volunteers who show up every week, and particularly for junior parkrun.
“It’s brilliant and a lovely way for kids to get involved in a safe environment, without having to at all be competitive.”
For a three-year-old, two kilometres must seem like an ultra marathon so is another generation of this ultra running family already in training?
“Hopefully she'll turn into her mummy's girl,” Helen said. “But she won't be forced down that route.
“It’s good to have a try of lots of different sports and see what suits you. I always tell people when they say to me, oh, my kids aren't sporty, well, I didn't start until I was 21, and now it's not just running, my life is full of sport.”
Thanks as ever for reading and listening to Running Tales. We couldn’t do this without your support - please back us to keep going by…