© Esben Zøllner Olesen/Red Bull Content Pool

If you follow the sharp end of obstacle course racing, you’ll be familiar with the name Ida Mathilde Steensgaard. A formidable force in OCR for the last decade, Danish athlete Ida is the current OCR World Champion (3K) and holds the title of OCR European Champion for both the 15K and 3K events. World and European Championship titles aside, Ida has more than 100 OCR podiums to her name!

Specialising in short-course OCR, the 32-year-old Red Bull athlete is known for her technical skills and impressive grip strength, making light work of even the hardest rigs and obstacles. And in 2022, Ida used this covetable skill set to take on an immense rope climbing challenge with Red Bull. Climbing a 28m rope from being fully submerged in the water, she set two new world records: the longest rope climb by a female and the longest rope climb from water. She’s also dipped her toe in the world of hybrid sports, competing in two Hyrox events – more of which later!

In this Q&A, we cover Ida’s training, race day prep, 2023 goals and more. Thanks, Ida!

Avid runner Mandy Williams always wondered why she found the social aspect of athletics club training more challenging than the training itself, so when she was finally diagnosed with autism at the age of 45, suddenly, a lifetime of symptoms made sense. After finding endurance sport late in life, running became a constant in Mandy’s life, and despite the challenges of race day overstimulation and anxiety, she has competed in everything from ultra-distance races to vertical kilometre events, even representing Great Britain as part of the GB Masters Mountain Running Team at the 2022 Masters Mountain Running World Championships. 

More recently, the 47-year-old took on her first Hyrox event as a pair with her partner and, in doing so, qualified for the upcoming Hyrox World Championship in Manchester. In this Q&A, we chat about Mandy’s diagnosis, how coordination issues affect her running, the challenges of competing as a neurodiverse athlete, and how Mandy’s training has stepped up in preparation for the Hyrox World Championship in May. 

Where to start with the incredible Junko Kazukawa? This two-time breast cancer survivor is an ultrarunning legend with twenty-one 100-mile ultras in the bank, multiple 50-mile finishes and a road marathon PB of 3:20 – and at 59 years old, she’s not stopping yet!

In 2015, at the age of 52, Japanese-born Junko was the first person to complete both America’s ultrarunning Grand Slam and the full Leadville race Series in one season. To break this incredible achievement down, within a four-month period, Junko completed the Western States 100 Run, Vermont 100 Run, Wasatch Front 100 Run, and the Leadville 100, alongside the Leadville Marathon, 50-mile run, 10K run and the Leadville 50-mile and 100-mile Mountain Bike events. Amazing. 

Junko’s running CV is vast, but notable mentions include her finishes at the UTMB, Ultra Trail Mount Fuji, and the Ultra Fiord Patagonia, where she was the second woman to cross the line. Thankfully for the American ultrarunning community, Junko shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. In fact, check out her 2023/24 plans in our interview below. Junko also shares how her second breast cancer diagnosis led her to take on her first 100-mile event, and we cover her training, race strategies, and her endurance running coaching business, which she runs from her home in Denver, Colorado.

Dede Griesbauer is a force to be reckoned with in the world of endurance sports. The former Team USA swimmer switched to triathlon almost two decades ago and has earned an impressive list of accolades since – from setting an IRONMAN UK course record in 2006 to becoming a 12-hour Time Trial World Champion in 2016, where she rode further than every male athlete. Four years later, at the age of 49, she won Ultraman Florida and set a new world record in the process. And last year, at 52, she won the Ultraman World Championships in Hawaii, again setting a new course record.

If Ultraman hasn’t been on your radar, here’s a recap: the 3-day event starts with a 10K swim and 90-mile bike. On day two, it’s a 171.4-mile bike, and on day three, a 52.4-mile run. Even more impressively, Dede won the World Championship race by almost 2 hours. Below, the multi-time Ironman champion gives me the lowdown on how her career in endurance sport led her to sign up for Ultraman and what it took to win the title.

When Tunisian swimmer Leila Dachraoui was just 15 years old, she became the youngest gold medallist at the 1987 African Games when she swam in the winning 4 x 100m medley team. More medals followed, and she became the national champion in her age category in the 100m and 200m backstroke. Her future in swimming looked bright, but by the time she reached law college at the age of 18, without the support of her Federation, juggling her study schedule with swim training proved too challenging, and she was forced to quit swimming and focus on her education.

Twenty-seven years later, having carved out a successful career as a lawyer and university professor and after raising two grown-up daughters, Leila returned to the pool and was inspired to compete again. Proving it’s never too late to follow your passion, she became a double bronze medallist at the European Masters Championship and now, at the age of 50, continues to compete internationally.

Since we could all do with some inspiration, I dropped Leila a line to learn more about her swimming background and her Masters swimming success story.

Last year was filled with epic triumphs for hybrid athlete Terra Jackson. After enjoying an eight-year stint in obstacle course racing, which included more than 20 Spartan podium finishes, the American discovered hybrid strength/speed events such as DEKA FIT and HYROX, where competitors alternate between running and completing functional fitness stations for time. Within a year, Terra had set world record times in DEKA FIT and DEKA STRONG, notched up World Champion titles for both events, sealed a sixth-place finish at the Go Ruck Games, won HYROX Madrid and came 6th at the HYROX World Championships (with a few other podiums in between).

To find out more, Terra kindly let me quiz her on everything from her athletic background and training to why rest days are non-negotiable and how her move into hybrid events helped heal her relationship with food and over-training.

[TW: disordered eating is discussed]

Hello! Christmas is almost upon us, so I thought I’d combine my usual Crimbo message with a posting update. Regular readers might have spotted that a new interview is overdue (sorry, peeps!). Unfortunately, five of my athlete interviews agreed before summer haven’t materialised, so I’ve been left with a gap in posting.

I usually like to work around 6 weeks in advance, so I know I’m nice and organised with my interviews (as they often involve going back and forth for weeks and require images etc.), which I do around my day job and family. However, the reality of running a non-monetised blog is that sometimes interviews are agreed and questions sent, only to fall through up to a year later.

Thankfully, I have two new athlete interviews in the pipeline now with two incredible women, so I hope to be back up and running in February if you can bear with me that long 😉

In the meantime, a big thank you for your support in 2022 and a huge thanks to the brilliant athletes who have taken time out of their busy schedules to let me pester them with questions this year. You rock!

Muchos love and festive happiness to you,

Katiex

Sarah Gardner (left) and Katherine Ross (right) ride the infamous Cape to Cape MTB race

Last month amateur endurance enthusiasts Katherine Ross and Sarah Gardner teamed up to ride Western Australia’s epic Cape to Cape mountain bike race. In addition to testing their limits and having type 2 fun, their aim was to raise awareness and funds for multiple sclerosis (MS), a condition both women have, where the immune system attacks the brain and nerves.

Racing as the team MSisters, Kat and Sarah took on the four-day, multi-stage mountain bike event, which includes an accumulated distance of 169km and a total elevation gain of 3167m. I grabbed the women (virtually!) for a Q&A about their epic achievements and how the Cape to Cape went down. And if you need further inspiration, check out this piece Kat wrote for me a few years ago about training and competing in multisport after a multiple sclerosis diagnosis.

Today we’re diving into the mental side of training and racing with performance psychologist Adelaide Goodeve. Not only is Adelaide a successful coach, but she’s an endurance athlete and multiple Ironman triathlon finisher. Rewind to 2009, however, and it was a totally different story. Adelaide was bedridden with debilitating Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which doctors told her she would never recover from. Incredibly, after years of searching for a solution, she transformed her health within days using a brain training method, which later inspired her to pursue a career in performance psychology.

These days Adelaide helps amateur and elite athletes achieve their goals (she has coached clients to world champion and world record holder status.) In this Q&A, we dive into the strategies Adelaide uses with her clients, plus the importance of language, including the do’s and don’ts of self-talk and mantras.

FYI, Adelaide offers a complimentary 15-minute performance audit call, so hop on it!

In July this year, 43-year-old Canadian Amy Robitaille took the overall win at Ultraman Canada, finishing in a stunning 24 hours, 47-minutes and 16 seconds. The three-day event included a 10K swim and 145K bike on day one, a further 275K bike on day two, and an 84.4K run on day three. Amy finished an impressive 50 minutes ahead of second-place finisher, former triathlon world champ Leanda Cave. In fact, four of the top 5 finishers were women – high-five!

An experienced marathon runner and an Ironman finisher, Amy is no stranger to sufferfests and last year set a new overall fastest known time (FKT) record running Ontario’s 70K Caledon Trailway. She’s also completed a virtual Everest on Zwift, which saw her ascend Alpe du Zwift repeatedly in a single ride to match the 8849m elevation of Everest.