© Matthew Hoffman

Eight years ago, Favia Dubyk was halfway through medical school and making great strides in her side passion of bouldering when she developed problems breathing when lifting her arms. After investigative surgery and an initial misdiagnosis, she was told she had Hodgkin lymphoma and subsequently spent six months bedbound during chemotherapy, which left her so weak that even opening the refrigerator door was a struggle.

A passionate climber, Favia used her return to bouldering as a goal during her recovery. Seven years after her last surgery, she is a kickass climber and qualified pathologist, and on the side, runs the blog Traverse Girl, a guide to the best bouldering traverses in the US, from her home in New Mexico. A two-time Ninja Warrior contestant, Favia also has insane upper body strength – check out her weighted pull-up and one-arm pull-up videos on Instagram after you’ve read our Q&A!

© Colin Clarke

In 2017, Jacqui Bell hit rock bottom after enduring a downward spiral that included breaking multiple bones and becoming addicted to prescription pain killers. Struggling to find a reason to get out of bed, she signed up for a crazy challenge that would change the direction of her life – to complete four multi-day ultramarathons across the world’s most inhospitable deserts, from the Namibian Desert to Antarctica, the Atacama Desert and the Gobi Desert.

With just eight months to train, Jacqui threw herself into the world of ultrarunning and at the age of 23, became the youngest woman to finish Racing the Planet’s Four Deserts Grand Slam. Since then, Jacqui, who is an Ultra X pro athlete, has become the youngest person in the world to run an ultramarathon on all seven continents. I caught up with her via email to find out more about how it all came about.

© Suguru Saito/Red Bull Content Pool

Twenty-year-old BMX star Saya Sakakibara is no stranger to hard work. The half-British, half-Japanese athlete, who grew-up between Japan and Australia, has been competing since she was four, after joining her successful older brother, Kai, on the BMX circuit. A six-time Australian national champion, Saya was sixth in the world in her rookie year and is currently ranked 7th in the world.

In this Q&A we chat about Saya’s Olympic dream being put back a year, the strength training she does for that all-important explosive power on the bike, plus the Red Bull athlete shares an update on the condition of her brother, Kai, who suffered a serious brain injury whilst racing earlier this year.

Two years ago, I ran an interview with amateur ultrarunner and ski mountaineering enthusiast Francesca Eyre, owner of Morzine’s in-demand Chilly Powder hotel in the French Alps. Francesca shared the story behind her journey to ultrarunner and how running helped her in the aftermath of grief and loss. It led her to run the Himalayas’ multi-day Manaslu trail race and, following that, live a life packed full of endurance sports adventures – from cycling the Etape du Tour to competing in the revered skimo race, Patrouille des Glaciers.

However, last year, Francesca suffered a devastating head injury during a 300km cycling event in the UK, where she was unconscious for an estimated 20 minutes. The fall-out from severe concussion has been traumatic and life-changing. I caught up over the phone with Francesca to chat about life following her accident and how, with the help of her family’s new property in Provence, she got through a tumultuous 13 months.

Specifically, I can do better. When I started this blog, my mission was to share stories of women doing epic and inspiring things in the world of sport, fitness and adventure because all too often their stories were being overlooked. But the ‘if you can see it, you can be it’ mantra doesn’t work if most of these stories are white women’s stories.

I live in a world where the balance is tipped heavily in my favour because of my skin colour. This is wrong. I thought of myself as an ally because I find racism abhorrent, but that too is wrong because being passively ‘not racist’ is inadequate. So I have been reaching out and reflecting.

It doesn’t feel appropriate to share a new interview this week, so in the meantime, please read these past interviews with strong, inspiring women of colour. And, as always, if you know a woman who is breaking records, pushing the boundaries of endurance or doing something remarkable in the world of adventure, please email me at katie@lessonsinbadassery.com.

Katie x

Jo Jones fell in love with open water swimming when she was a child. By the age of 16, she’d set her mind on swimming the English Channel. At the age of 24, she achieved her goal, ticking the epic endurance feat off her bucket list.

So what does it feel like to achieve your lifelong dream in your early twenties? Joanne, now 27, shares her journey to Channel swimmer with me below and also chats about her recent and successful foray into ice swimming, which saw her take gold in the International Ice Swimming Association 500m freestyle earlier this year.

© Ryan Sosna Bowd

What’s it like to plan your racing comeback, take fourth at your first race in three years and then see your race plans crumble around you? Olympian and former triathlon world champion Helen Jenkins gives me the lowdown, as we discuss her fourth-place finish at Ironman Dubai in February, and the subsequent worldwide race cancellations that followed.

Helen, who is mum to one-year-old Max and 2.5-year-old Mali with husband and coach, Marc, is now juggling the demands of being a fulltime ‘lockdown’ parent alongside her elite athlete training. We caught up over the phone to discuss Dubai, future racing, lockdown training challenges and the realities of parenting two small kids while working.

In August 2019, 25-year-old Rosie Watson set off on a two-year journey to run from her home in the Lake District across Europe and Asia to Mongolia. The self-supported journey had a purpose beyond adventure alone: to find people tackling the ecological and climate crisis and share their stories of positive, healthy alternatives for how we live.

Living out of her tent or staying with strangers, Rosie was eight months into her run when the borders of Kosovo, where she was staying, closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, leaving her to wait it out in the country until the world gets moving again. During that time, Rosie answered some of my questions about her New Story Run via email about her adventure and experiences so far.

© Callum Jolliffe/Montane Yukon Arctic Ultra

Montane Yukon Arctic Ultra racer Shelley Gellatly is one tough cookie. The 56-year-old Canadian has finished the race – billed as the ‘World’s toughest and coldest ultra’ – multiple times across several of the ultra distances, including second-place finishes overall at both the 100-mile and 300-mile races more than a decade ago.

The non-stop race is self-supported and runs through Canada’s snowy Yukon wilderness, sometimes reaching temperatures as low as -50C. Having undergone chemotherapy for Stage 3 breast cancer, Shelley has to be especially careful not to develop frostbite as she no longer feels the cold in her extremities like she used to. Last year, she was forced to retire when she developed mild frostbite in her fingers. This year, she attempted the 300-mile distance on skis for the first time (racers may compete on foot, skis or bike) but sensibly withdrew after being unable to warm her feet up.

Shelley rocks and I’m very happy to bring you this Q&A with her which covers her many Montane Yukon Arctic Ultra (MYAU) race experiences, including a handful of DNFs which don’t bother her one bit.

Last year, American ultrarunner Maggie Guterl made headlines when she won Big’s Backyard Ultra, a ‘last man standing’-style event run by Lazarus Lake (organiser of the infamous Barkley Marathons) which sees runners cover a 4.16-mile loop on repeat. Each lap must be completed within an hour and starts again on the hour and after that, it’s a battle to see which competitor outlasts the rest. Last year, Maggie completed 60 laps to cover a mind-boggling 250-miles and win it outright – the first woman to do so.

Maggie has also competed for Team USA at the IAU 24-Hour World Championships, she’s won the Brazos Bend 100-miler outright, come second at the Georgia Death Race and 8th at Western States, amongst other things. However, in this email Q&A, we take a deeper dive into last year’s Backyard Ultra win.

I also chatted with Maggie over the phone earlier this week for separate feature, coming soon…