SURVIVOR is known as the toughest reality show on TV – but if anyone looks ready to face the challenge head on, it’s contender Sabrina Pace-Humphrey.
The grandmother-of-three already happens to be a super-fit ultra-marathon runner, having completed a 156-mile dart across the Sahara desert in a five-day sporting event.
And it was all kickstarted by her battle with postnatal depression in 2009, following the birth of her fourth child, which saw her overweight and suffering from alcoholism.
Sabrina said: “I had my first baby at 18 – and I've always suffered with anxiety and depression, but with every pregnancy there was my deeply dark moods, and I would experience it a bit.
"But with my fourth, I was in a situation where I was the main breadwinner, I worked right up until I had her and went back to work two weeks later.
"I didn't feel as though I could do anything right. I couldn't find joy in any part of my life, I didn't want it. I felt so incredibly dark.
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"I'm a recovering alcoholic – I didn't drink when I was pregnant but before and after, I was using alcohol as a means to cope with the stress of life and to numb myself not to deal with childhood trauma around my colour and the racism I experienced.
"It was the perfect storm. I was overweight, I was severely depressed, I had four children and so I took up running because my GP said to me, ‘Try to do something for yourself’.
"I went out, I was five stone overweight – I walk shuffled for 40 minutes and it was transforming, but all I could concentrate on was the act of running.
"I trained myself in 5Ks, 10Ks, half-marathons and then ultimately a marathon – and then in 2016 I did something about my addiction to alocohol.
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“Early in my recovery a show came on the telly about a crazy race in the Sahara Desert, Marathon Des Sables, and James Cracknell, the Olympian, he did it.
"He was being sick and hooked up to IVs and hallucinating and I was thinking, ‘Why would anyone do that?’
“But I did wonder if I could do it, something inside me wondered if I could and so that was it. I trained for 18 months in the UK.
"One of the race days, it was 55 miles, and I couldn't get my camp stove to light so I ran the distance on a couple of packs of mini cheddars.
"But I did it, I finished the whole race. It was an amazing moment."
Following her success, it was a later near-death experience, which Sabrina says saw “five white men run past as if she wasn’t there, screaming for help” during a running accident in the Alps, that pushed her to take her sport, and push her fitness and endurance, further than ever.
She set up her own organisation, Black Trail Runners, and wrote a book, Black Sheep: A Story of Rural Racism, Identity and Hope.
And now, the author is one of the 18 contestants marooned on a tropical island for the BBC’s long-awaited reboot, hosted by Joel Dommett.
She added: "I was at a stage when I was thinking about 2023 and all the things I wanted to do and how I was going to do those, and then the email about Survivor came in.
"I watched episodes of the show, the Australian episodes, and when I watched it I thought, 'You know what? If I was ever going to say yes to an opportunity, this appeals to me'.
"I'm 45, I've got four children, three grandchildren, I'm very much in my life, I'm menopausal and all that stuff – so I watched and thought, 'Why not at least try and see what it's like?'
"I was under no illusion that I was going to be up against lots of different people. But I'm that kind of woman that is very much when you feel it in your gut, have a go, I'm going to have a go.
“No other shows really intrigued me before. But this was really an opportunity to say to people, especially women, if I’m there, anyone can do something like this.
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“I just like to defy expectations of myself, for myself, but if I can inspire someone, then job done.”
Survivor begins on Saturday at 8.25pm on BBC One.
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