Himalayan 100 Mile Stage Race

Ordinary people doing extraordinary things

Anne-Marie Dunhill / 09.11.2012

Tristan Heywood is a thirty-three year old head hunter based in the UK. He is here raising money for two charities, one of which is a tiny hospice which is ex-girlfriends mother runs in the UK. He didn’t tell her that he was raising money for the hospice as he didn’t want her to feel that it was a ploy to win her back so he will be donating the money anonymously. It was touching to hear a high powered business man speak eloquently of the work that they do in the hospice.

Shane James from Australia suffers from SPS (Stiff Person Syndrome); an extremely rare neurological disorder that affects one person in a million. Hovered around the propane heater in the dining tent in Sandakphu, he spoke to a group of us about the difficulty he had had in getting a diagnosis and the way that the disease has impacted his life. Simply explained, a person with SPS means that the wrong signals are sent through the spinal cord, causing involuntary spasms to the voluntary and involuntary muscle groups. These spasms have broken his back; he explained it as feeling that his muscles where constantly twitching.

He is running with Richard Hope from Australia who lost his left arm in a motorbike accident and with his off the wall sense of humor, calls Richard "Leftie" while Richard has nicknamed him "Stiffy". Upon hearing these terms of endearment on the first day before we got to know them, the journalists exchanged glances, hoping that these two knew each other!

He has used running as a therapy to combat the crippling effects of the disease, refusing to become the invalid that the doctors had predicted he would become. He created his own physical therapy program, pushing himself to the extreme, which he says saved his life. The endorphins created by running counter act the misdirected signals and through distance running he achieves several pain-free hours.  Shane is in the process of writing a book called “Running through Hell” and while he maintains an upbeat attitude to the upheaval the disease caused in his life, one senses an underlying current of sadness as it wreaked havoc in his private life.