Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff
Tackling the toughest races in the world is all part of the day job for ultramarathoner Sabrina Pace-Humphreys. But where the hard work really begins is confronting racism. Here, she reveals what inspired her to set up the charity Black Trail RunnersWe are at the beginning of a 5km trail run, passing through a sun-dappled woodland, when the ultramarathon runner Sabrina Pace-Humphreys says something that almost stops me in my tracks. “The outdoors was a place that, for so many years, I didn’t feel safe in, for fear of being targeted and, as a kid, people jumping out and tying me to a tree and threatening to burn my hair,” she says. Wait, I say, did that happen to you? “Yes,” says Pace-Humphreys. “There’s a lot that I didn’t put in the book, but I do talk about my fear of being in the outdoors. The bullies would just want to get to me, so I was never left alone, therefore I didn’t go out.”
Pace-Humphreys is talking about her memoir, Black Sheep, which documents her experiences of growing up in Stroud, Gloucestershire, in the 1980s and 90s. Though this incident of being attacked doesn’t appear in it, many other instances of what she labels “rural racism” do. They dovetail into a short but punchy memoir that covers pregnancy in her teens, postpartum depression, alcoholism, ultramarathon running and, eventually, her decision to launch the campaigning charity Black Trail Runners.
At 45, Pace-Humphreys has lived, by most people’s standards, a remarkable life. She’s still based in Stroud, where she lives with her husband and the youngest of her children. On the day we meet, she is straight down to business, a whirlwind of contained energy and bright smiles, blonde and auburn curls pulled back from her face. She’s dressed in running gear and excited to show me a little of her world. Alongside her charity and activism work, and leading running groups, she has recently become a personal trainer.
It’s an unseasonably warm day and she’s taken me to one of her favourite spots, the Randwick Wood trail on the outskirts of Stroud. It’s a path lined with beech and yew trees, at points opening out on to glorious views of the Gloucestershire countryside, the River Severn shimmering in the distance. Being interviewed while running might be a breathless experience, but Pace-Humphreys takes it in her stride, slowing when she can see I’m struggling but in such a way that it doesn’t make me feel guilty for not sustaining the pace.
The outdoors has become a place of joy and excitement for her, as well as a refuge. “Finally, to feel that somewhere in the outdoors is safe just to be yourself, I think for me, and many others, is healing,” she says. “I have been on these trails when things have been particularly challenging. I just cry, scream.”
She didn’t always feel this way about running. “When I was younger, it was something I saw as a punishment,” she says. But after suffering severe postpartum depression in 2009 and seeking advice from her doctor, she decided to give it a go. Her thoughts were so dark, she says, that she was willing to try anything. Out she went on a trail run (by definition, a run on an unpaved path in the outdoors), overweight and wearing a pair of unsuitable Dunlop shoes, baggy pants and a T-shirt. She shuffled along for 15 minutes before turning back, but even though the conditions were less than ideal, something clicked.
“During the run, I didn’t have a single thought about taking my own life and it was so freeing,” she says. She would go on to lead running groups for other women like her and compete in some of the world’s toughest races across vast distances and terrifying terrain, including the epic, exhausting Marathon des Sables, often billed as the toughest footrace in the world, a 250km ultramarathon in the Sahara Desert.
Pace-Humphreys was born in 1977 to a white Scottish mother and a Black father. They met in Manchester, fell in love, moved to Taunton and had two babies in quick succession – Pace-Humphreys and her younger sister. When her parents separated, Pace-Humphreys’s mother moved with her children to Stroud to be closer to family. But her mother struggled with heartbreak and mental health issues, and Pace-Humphreys and her sister grew up in poverty, receiving food parcels from the Samaritans. Her father, dealing with his own demons, wasn’t in the picture much, though he has come back into her life in recent years.
She was an isolated, shy child, contending with the experience of being visibly mixed heritage in a predominately white, often hostile environment. “I couldn’t share it with anyone. My sister is white presenting. And she never ever faced any form of racism,” she says. “There was a time when I hated being mixed-race and being seen as different. I just wanted to be white like everyone else.”
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, the racism she experienced growing up was compounded by the assumption that Stroud was a progressive place (in fact, it is the home of Extinction Rebellion). Though Pace-Humphreys loves her life there, she has also felt the obstinance and wrath of people unwilling to acknowledge their ignorance and prejudice.
Even so, she says, “I will use my voice as much as I can to amplify the pain points and have conversations around racism, around diversifying the outdoors, around alcoholism, around mental health, because so many people have said to me that I have voiced what they couldn’t. And if what I’ve been through allows me to do that, then that’s my gift.”
Back on the trail, we’re midway through our run now, which has turned into more of a walk. When I ask Pace-Humphreys if this feels like light work in comparison to her ultramarathons she diverts the question. “This is such a nice pace,” she smiles, gesturing at the hill in front of us. “This is our significant little hill. Because I coach a lot of women, I really try to get rid of that fear around inclines and hills. I’m like, a hill’s a friend.” Even so, she later admits, she knows she has a deep well of resilience that allows her to take on physical challenges in a unique way.
“People will say to me, ‘Where do you get your resilience, your energy?’ For example, with running, ‘How can you run 200 miles? How do you not stop?’” she says. “I have this deep well. I can go really deep to get what I need. Because I’ve always had to do that. I’ve always had to be able to survive.” In a mountain race in the French Alps in 2019, this resilience was in full force. Pace-Humphreys was left dangling off the edge of a snowy mountain, screaming for help, inches from falling to her death. Her plight, she says, was ignored by five white, male runners who didn’t stop to help her up. The sixth man, thankfully, did.
She puts her mistreatment down to racism, to the fact that those men couldn’t see her as vulnerable, as needing assistance. “It brings it back to the fact that there is this lack of diversity in many of these events. When you’re not treated with the same kind of welfare response, or like any human would treat another human because of bias, then that’s a problem,” she says, adding that although she tried to raise the issue, the organisers didn’t engage with her.
She was further radicalised in 2020 after the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, who was murdered by two white men while out running in the US. Black Trail Runners was born out of the righteous anger and frustration she felt about the safety of Black people in the outdoors, and ended up becoming a space where she found her people – those who could relate to her on a level that her family never could.
“I grew up around white people,” she says. “But I have created this community of the most wonderful humans from around the world and honestly, when we do trail runs together, it is just the most beautiful thing.” Alongside organising meet-ups and fighting for the representation of Black runners, the charity addresses key barriers to access, providing transportation, navigation and kit. According to Pace-Humphreys, while 4.5% of the UK population identifies as Black and Black-mixed, less than 0.7% of participants at UK trail-running events are people of colour.
“People think there’s more diversity because they see the likes of Eliud Kipchoge and Mo Farah winning marathons, but the idea that running is one of the most inclusive sports is a myth. There is a massive lack of diversity,” she adds. Earlier this year, in an effort to start to counteract that reality, she organised Black to the Trails, which she believes was the UK’s first trail-running event designed, directed and run by Black runners. With more than 400 attenders, it was a huge success and she is already planning for the 2024 event.
This year she also appeared on the new British version of the long-running reality TV show Survivor, one of 18 participants who had to figure out how to survive in a remote location. She was eliminated early in the competition, but found it a valuable experience to be “representing for the women of colour, the mums, the grandmums”.
We’ve finished the run and, hopping back into Pace-Humphreys’s car, we wind our way through the backroads of Stroud, past fields with cows and horses. It’s a quaint town centre, a beautiful place but, unsurprisingly, I don’t spot any other Black people. Because of this, and her experiences of racism, Pace-Humphreys says, people often ask her why she hasn’t left Stroud and moved somewhere with more diversity. She hates that question. “Why should I have to be the one to leave?” she says. “This is my home.”
Black Sheep by Sabrina Pace-Humphreys (Quercus, £9.99) is available from guardianbookshop.com for £9.29.
If you’ve been affected by these issues, call the Samaritans on 116 123