Beyond Limits

Lowri Morgan is a well known name: TV presenter, adventurer, ultra-marathon runner. But what is it that has led her to live a life of such extremes? What has enabled her to develop the strength and resilience to tackle some of the planet's toughest environments? Here, Lowri explores the mind and body she has pushed beyond pain, beyond her expectations, and beyond limits.

Review :
In Beyond Limits, Lowri Morgan recalls her career as an ultra runner which paralleled her other career as a successful presenter and producer of Welsh-language television programmes. In fact the two often overlapped, with some of her most gruelling runs being filmed for television, like Ras yn Erbyn Amser, a documentary about her part in the Jungle Marathon in Brazil in 2009. Before reading the book I had no real idea as to what ultra running entails. Now, thanks to Lowri Morgan, I do, and am quite content to be an armchair voyeur, because ultra running is not for the faint-hearted. From an early age Lowri Morgan had been keen on sport, and when she went to Cardiff University to study music she was soon persuaded to join the women’s rugby team, playing for the university until she injured her knee so badly that it might have put most of us off sporting activity for good. Not the author, however. Sheer determination gets her back on her feet and back into the game, eventually playing for Wales. Then she is offered the chance to run in the New York Marathon, an experience which changed her life. From then on, it was running which obsessed her, especially ultra running in stages. Hence the Jungle Marathon. A 150-mile-long course through the Brazilian rainforest in six stages. I have often thought that I might not like the rainforest, let alone run through it, and Beyond Limits rather confirmed me in that. Running in 30ºC temperatures with near 100 per cent humidity, surrounded by a wide variety of poisonous plants, insects and snakes, not to mention alligators, piranhas, and leeches in the numerous rivers and swamps, are only a few of the hazards on this gruelling race. Even worse, perhaps, is the physical toll. The chances are your toenails drop off and you develop trench foot, and any slight cut or sting is a potential source of infection. Lowri Morgan’s account of her careful preparation, of how she overcame fear and exhaustion, is gripping, and though this was her first race of the kind, she came in 10th. What do you do next? The 6633 Arctic Ultra, of course, and not the short version, a mere 120 miles, but the long one – 350 miles in eight days across frozen wastes where the temperature rarely rises above -20ºC, and is sometimes as low as -70ºC due to the wind-chill factor. And no cosy lodgings at the end of each section, either, just a bivouac bag out in the snow. The race is so gruelling that over the previous four races only four runners had completed it, and in 2008 nobody did. When Lowri Morgan competed there were just twelve entrants. It was her toughest race ever, the conditions pushing her well ‘beyond limits’. And amazingly, she did it. In fact she was the only runner to complete the race that year. Other races followed, other adventures, but inevitably her body and the battering it had taken began to catch up with her. She had a heart condition, a problem with one eye, and that knee was beginning to develop osteoarthritis. She nonetheless completed the demanding Dragon’s Back ultra across the mountain ranges of Wales from north to south in 2019, coming in at a respectable 44th. What next? The book leaves that open, but she is unlikely to take to an easy chair any time soon.