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ForEliteAtheletes toFunRunners
34
RACE : INTERVIEW
by Paul Rutland...
continued...
rib boat that was carrying school children away from
the rocks. He then had to get the kids off the boat
having lost his leg, and carry his leg up the cliff.
“So I fall over, my arms are a little bit sore and then
I see him. This man with one leg is about to do it, at
least mine are both attached. So I carried on.”
But it’s not at every race you get a cult hero to motivate
you through the pain barrier, so what else is it that
pushes Ruckley on?
“I really enjoy suffering. I don’t know why I like that but
I do. I like that when I go and run a marathon or an
Iron Man, I know I’m going to suffer, I have to face that.
Maybe it’s a sadistic side, maybe it’s a bad trait, but I
enjoy the suffering. Get my head down, get it done.”
This attitude isn’t just for your run of the treadmill
training though, it’s also how Ruckley likes to
celebrate a birthday:
“I put it out there for people to pick 24 exercises in
the gym, and I would do 365 repetitions of each of
them. With a few extra reps for leap years, it worked
out that I’d been alive for that many days, so I sat
there for 8 hours and 15 minutes and just did those
reps. And it sucked.
“There were dizzy spells, falling over, wobbly legs,
but I came out of it and felt fine.” The only issue for
Ruckley now will be getting people to RSVP to his next
birthday party.
With races often completed over 15-25km distances,
and with numerous physically and mentally
challenging obstacles, from simple monkey bars
to platinum rigs (a variety of hanging holds which
you must swing between) and salmon ladders (an
explosive pull up where competitors must rack a metal
bar into the next rung up), you would expect nutrition
and organised training to be important factors.
“My diet is really just based on what I want at the
time. If I wake up and want some granola, I’ll have it.
If I want jam on toast, I’ll have jam on toast. If I want a
cake, I’ll have a Battenburg.”
As for training, Ruckley is something of a self-
diagnosing trainer, “I just walk in to the gym and ask
myself what feels tired. I think, if your body is kept
moving it doesn’t get sore, it doesn’t get injured. It’s
just about being sensible and knowing your own body.”
Being a part-time chiropractic student at the Anglo-
European College of Chiropractic in his hometown of
Bournemouth, knowing his own body and what it can
achieve is key, “it’s not hard, all you’ve got to do is run
and hang off stuff – you’ll be fine. Sorted.”
Wearing shorts which bely the bitterly cold, dark and
damp of the Bournemouth seafront which we overlook
from the library in which we talk, Ruckley bemoans
the lack of coverage afforded to OCR:
“I’m not one to sit there, watch TV and say, ‘oh that
man playing football, who earns £300k a week is
inspirational.’ He’s not, he’s doing his job. But when
I see a man who has no legs and one arm, doing a
rope climb on his own, that is inspirational.”
As miraculous as it seems, this sort of feat actually
happens; be it Shaun Gash, a British wheelchair-bound
man who became the first paraplegic to complete
two OCR championship races alongside his team, No
Fear On Wheels, or the men and women of Operation
Enduring Warrior, an organisation of wounded
American soldiers who compete at OCR meets.
“Attitude is the thing,” Ruckley says, “you have
people who are overweight and say they can’t do this,
but if you took their ability to do it away from them,
they certainly would want to.”
No longer a member of a team himself, Ruckley finds
the freedom of competing individually allows him to
be Ruckley, “I felt I had to watch what I say. It’s just
that, if I see something, I’ll call it as I see it.”
“In a team, I wasn’t enjoying the fact that I’d get a
message saying ‘you can’t say that, it represents the
team’s views’. Now I can be completely honest.”
Through all of this; the pain, the suffering, the team
orders, the numerous Battenburg cakes, one ideal
endures within James Ruckley, and it is that of being
good enough.
“It’s you versus that. If you’re not good enough, then
sorry, you’re not good enough. It’s not that the race or
the conditions were too hard, it’s that you weren’t good
enough. And I like being good enough.”
