© Sean Robinson/Velofocus.com

When Kiwi cyclist Ella Harris won the 2018 Zwift Academy as a 21-year-old, she also earned something most riders can only dream of: a professional cycling contract at leading women’s pro cycling team CANYON//SRAM.

The move to pro cycling saw Ella up-sticks and relocate thousands of miles away from her home in New Zealand to live in Girona, Spain with her new teammates as CANYON//SRAM’s newest rider. So what’s it like being flung into the world of pro cycling? In this two-part interview, Ella talks about the challenges of the transition, the changes in her training and how she’s adapted to life in Girona.

*Check back next Wednesday for the second part of our interview!*

© David Gonthier

Kiwi trail runner Ruth Croft has won some of the most prestigious and well-known races on the trail running circuit, from the 55km OCC by UTMB, which she’s won for the last two years, to the 42km Mont Blanc Marathon (ditto consecutive years). But she’s also got road speed too, as she proved last year when she swapped her SCOTT trail shoes for road runners and completed a brilliant 2:34:16 time at the Seoul Marathon, earning herself a Marathon World Championships qualification.

If that wasn’t impressive enough, she quickly switched back to the trail in time to take silver at the 2019 Trail World Championship just three months later. Phew! Luckily for me, I caught Ruth ahead of the race season so she had a bit of time to squeeze in answering my questions about her racing, training volume and plans for 2020.

Meet Julia Andersen, endurance sports nut and mum to a 5-year-old daughter. A former GB Masters swimming record-holder, Julia discovered swimrun after her daughter was born and competes as a mixed pair with her husband, Martin. Together they’ve been crowned Breca Swimrun Sprint champions and last year finished the notoriously tough Ötillö World Championship – a mad combination of 6 miles of swimming and 40 miles of technical trail running.

With an impressive talent for endurance, Julia has enjoyed wins in triathlon, aquathlon, open water swimming and swimrun. Below, the 36-year-old tells me where it all started.

© Mark Colon/World Marathon Challenge

In February 2019, British runner Susannah Gill became the fastest woman to complete the 777 World Marathon Challenge, running a marathon on each of the 7 continents in 7 days – in a total time of 24 hours, 19 minutes and 9 seconds. She ran in minus temperatures in snowy Antarctica and through the night in Australia. Her average marathon time was a speedy 3:28, despite running the 7 marathons back-to-back on blurred time zones.

Susannah’s written a book about her experience, Running Around the World – How I Ran 7 Marathons on 7 Continents in 7 Days, which has just launched. Between training, work and book publicity, she made time to answer my questions about this incredible endurance feat, along with what she’s been up to since.

© James Appleton

At the 2019 Spartan Ultra World Championships in snowy Åre, Sweden the temperature dipped to as low as -30° degrees, but this didn’t stop women’s champion Rea Kolbl from smashing out 70 miles across 350 obstacles and 28,000ft of elevation, during the 24-hour race.

How did she do it? I quizzed the dryrobe ambassador about her training and fuelling – after first asking her about her experience racing the 800km Eco-Challenge team adventure expedition race in Fiji last September.

Whilst most of us at the age of 21 were negotiating early adulthood, Indian twins Tashi and Nungshi Malik were summiting Everest. Just two years later, at the age of 23, they became the youngest people in the world to complete the Explorer’s Grand Slam – summiting the highest peak on each of the 7 continents and skiing to both the North and South Pole– a bucket list of achievements that many mountaineers spend decades attempting to achieve. All while doing it to encourage more women and girls to get outside.

This year, the 28-year-olds swapped mountaineering for adventure racing as they took part in the famous Eco Challenge expedition adventure race in Fiji; a non-stop, multi-day race billed as ‘the toughest in the world’, where the siblings competed in a team of four to race hundreds of miles across the jungle, mountains and ocean via various means. All teams are under strict confidentiality agreements until the TV series of the event with Bear Grylls airs in 2020, however Tashi describes it as ‘brutal’.

I caught up with the twins via email while they were in Fiji to revisit their race experience ahead of writing a book about it, and quizzed them on their extraordinary mountaineering achievements.

© Catarina Axelsson

Since Swedish athlete Fanny Kuhn completed her first swimrun event in 2014, she hasn’t looked back, winning a stack of races with her swimrun partner, Desiree Anderson – including the biggie: the ÖtillÖ World Championship, which includes 10km of swimming and 65km of trail running! (Yes, really!)

However, the former competitive swimmer isn’t content just to compete – she’s on a mission to encourage more women and girls to give swimrun a go via WILD Swimrun,the business she launched with fellow swimrunner, Maria Rohman, which offers women-only swimrun training camps, along with advice and help via an online community.

I put some questions to Fanny about training, racing and everything swimrun.

© Heather Anderson

Unless you have a keen interest in thru-hiking, you might have missed the news that last year, Heather ‘Anish’ Anderson completed America’s Triple Crown of thru-hiking within in a single calendar year. That’s hiking the 2200-mile Appalachian Trail, the 2650-mile Pacific Crest Trail and the 3100-mile Continental Divide. It’s the third time Heather has completed the Triple, and the first time it’s been done by a woman within a single calendar year.

Heather, who goes by the trail name of ‘Anish’, also holds the outright self-supported Fastest Known Time record for the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), which saw her hike an average of 44 miles a day for just over 60 days, often rising at 4am to start her hike and not finishing until gone midnight. Although known for her incredible hiking accolades, Heather has also completed six 100-mile trail races including the renowned Western States 100.

For an insight into Heather’s record-breaking PCT FKT record I’d highly recommend reading her book, Thirst – 2600 MILES TO HOME, which documents her journey, including near-death experiences and mountain lion encounters. In the meantime, here’s a quick Q&A with Heather.

© Kristian Pletten

Author and endurance cyclist, Emily Chappell, spent six years working as a cycle courier in London before realising she had a talent for riding a very long way. Her bike adventures have taken her all of the world with wins in races such as the infamous Transcontinental (3500 miles, non-stop and self-supported from Belgium to Istanbul) and the Strathpuffer 24-hour mountain bike race. She also leads the annual amateur Tour de France ride, Le Loop, each summer too.

Next month Emily launches her new book Where There’s a Will: Hope, Grief and Endurance in a Cycle Race Across a Continent, which chronicles her long-distance bike racing journey and what inspired it. She’ll be speaking about this and more at the Kendal Mountain Literature Festival on 16 November (get your tickets here). In the meantime, Emily shares her love of riding, the secrets to cycling in -40°c temperatures, and the memorable moments from her worldwide bike adventures, with me here.

© Zwift Triathlon Academy

Earlier this year, Ironman triathlete Ruth Purbrook earned a place in the prestigious Specialized Zwift Triathlon Academy. The goal: Repeat success of last year’s Ironman World Championship AG (25-29) win with a view to achieving the overall age group World Champion title – this time under the support and tutelage of Zwift Tri Academy mentors, Sarah True and Tim Don. However, 10 weeks ago, life threw a spanner in the works when Ruth was knocked off her bike, breaking her collarbone. Incredibly, she was back racing six weeks after surgery and managed a brilliant 7th AG place at last month’s 70.3 Ironman World Championship!

Ahead of this weekend’s Ironman World Championship in Kona, Ruth took time out to share how she juggles intensive Ironman training with 60-hour weeks working for the Lloyds Banking Group.