Former Olympic heptathlete, Louise Hazel, was an integral part of Team GB and won Commonwealth gold before retiring in 2013. Louise now lives and works in LA, training Hollywood clients through her female-focused gym, Slay, on Hollywood Boulevard. 

When she’s not training or putting high profile clients through their paces, Louise is also a podcast host, TV presenter, and racial equality advocate. This summer she published an open letter to the fitness industry, signed by 120 professional women of colour who work within it, to address racial inequality and representation within the industry. As part of this, Louise put together The Playbook, featuring guidance and solutions as to how inequality can be addressed in all areas of the industry, from working environment to hiring.

© Finisher Pix

Former military engineer Caroline Livesey was a successful age group triathlete before turning pro in 2015, and subsequently racing to a 2nd place finish at IRONMAN UK the same year. More recently, Scottish-born Caroline took a nail-biting win at XTRI’s gruelling iron-distance Canadaman/woman race last year. 

Dubbed one of the toughest extreme triathlons, the course races point-to-point across Quebec’s beautiful Mégantic region and includes a 3.8km swim followed by a 180km bike (accumulating 2500m of elevation) and, finally, a trail marathon with 1500m of vertical gain!

Rewind four years and Australian Kelli Jackson harboured a dream to one day ride a unicycle across the world. However, in her own words, Kelli was an ‘overweight, middle-aged smoker who couldn’t walk up a hill’ and had never ridden a unicycle, let alone trained on one. This didn’t stop her. Four years and many major life changes later, 52-year-old Kelli has unicycled across Taiwan, South Korea and North Korea – the first person in the world outside North Korea to do so – and has many more worldwide unicycling adventures planned.

In this Q&A, Kelli shares the impetus behind her goal to unicycle the world, plus the tricky logistics of riding a one-wheel bike without handlebars up and down hills whilst carrying luggage. Thanks for sharing your inspiring story, Kelli.

American CrossFit athlete Breona Evans Wallin is a six-time CrossFit Regionals athlete and a former contestant on The Rock’s Titan Games. A former gymnast and competitive cheerleader, Breona discovered CrossFit seven years ago and now squeezes in several hours of training each day at CrossFit Identity, the box her husband owns in Atlanta, alongside her fulltime job as an accountant.  

In between working and training, 29-year-old Breona took time out for quick-fire Q&A about her training, background and CrossFit experience to date. Thanks, Breona!

© Holmlands by Matt Grayson

Professional skier, climate change advocate, storyteller and mother, Izzy Lynch, has been skiing since she was a child and started ski racing at the age of nine. As an adult, she competed on the Freeride World Tour and since retiring from competing has focused on backcountry skiing, combining her love of powder adventures with her talent for filmmaking.

Based in the mountain town of Revelstoke in British Columbia, Canada, Izzy features in Holmlands’ latest film project, The Revelstoke Diaries (watch the trailer below), set to be released online on Sunday.  With a new winter just around the corner, we caught up with Izzy, who is mum to three-year-old Knox, ahead of the release of the project to learn more about her life in the Columbia Mountains, the work she does with Protect Our Winters Canada and her upcoming film, Motherload.

© Chris Milliman/Red Bull

If you’re a mountain bike or cyclocross fan, you’ll know Ellen Noble. The talented American CX pro is known not only for her technical skills, such as being able to ‘bunny-hop’ cyclocross barriers (lifting the front and then back wheel to allow you to ‘hop’ over obstacles), but for being an equality advocate and supporter of aspiring young riders. However, behind the scenes, Ellen, whose career has seen a staggering 21 UCI podiums and multiple national titles, has spent the last two years battling an invisible illness behind the scenes.

As the 24-year-old revealed in an Instagram post earlier this year, in 2018, after she’d enjoyed a successful start to the race season, ‘the lights went out’ on her health and she spent the next two years searching for answers. Eventually, Ellen was diagnosed as having Hashimoto’s, an incurable autoimmune disease related to thyroid function, which has turned her life and racing career on its head. Very kindly, Ellen agreed to chat about her experience in this Q&A, along with her future plans for her coveted Quest cyclocross camp for young women, and what’s making her smile right now (spoiler: it’s dogs).

© Iko PB Photographer

Last year, Norwegian CrossFit athlete Kristin Holte clocked up a career-best second-place finish at the 2019 CrossFit Games, beating some of the sport’s biggest names to earn the title of second Fittest On Earth. Since then, Kristin’s repeated her national title win, earned a second-place finish at the Filthy 150 event and taken third place in the 2020 CrossFit Open, whilst gearing up for a very different spectator-free CrossFit Games this summer.

In this Q&A, Kristin, a former national pole vault champion and a member of the Norwegian heptathlon team, shares her journey to CrossFit, her training during lockdown, how she prepared for last year’s Games and some of her favourite workouts.

*N.B Kristin answered my questions last month before the controversy surrounding CrossFit’s then CEO Greg Glassman, which is why it is not covered in this interview*

Finishing a 100-mile running event is an unfathomable feat for most of us – an epic ultrarunning milestone that even experienced runners take years to achieve. But not Texas-based runner and amateur IRONMAN triathlete Roni Garrett– Roni achieved her goal in 2017 just three years after running her first marathon!

Here, in her own words, 37-year-old Roni (who competes in marathon, ultra-trail, duathlon, triathlon and aquathlon events) documents her experience running the Brazos Bend 100 race three years ago, sharing what it took to get herself across the finish line after 27 hours of running in minus temperatures.

When an inoperable hip injury crushed Nicole Mericle’s dreams of becoming a professional runner, the talented track and steeplechase athlete was forced to change plans. Her passion for climbing led her to find obstacle course racing in 2016 and, after placing second in the world at the OCR World Championships just months later (despite being a newbie to the sport), it’s fair to say she hasn’t looked back.

Last year, Nicole racked up win after win, ending the 2019 OCR season as the Spartan Race world champion, the OCRWC 3K world champion and Spartan Trifecta world champion. However, it’s climbing that’s her true passion, so we dive into this (along with her love of OCR, the training sessions she swears by, van life, and much more!) in the Q&A chat below.

Thanks, Nicole!

© James Goldsmith

She only started running at the age of 33, but Sarah Sawyer’s journey from novice to race-winning ultrarunner has followed an impressive upwards trajectory and has featured everything from 24-hour track races to multi-stage events and 100-milers. In 2019, Sarah took on Greece’s infamous 153-mile Spartathlon race and ran her way to a brilliant fourth woman finish.

In this Q&A Sarah reveals her how her running journey began, her typical training schedule (when the world isn’t experiencing a pandemic), how her race calendar has changed due to coronavirus, and lots more.

Thanks, Sarah!