This Saturday some of the world’s best obstacle course racers will line up in Tahoe for the Spartan Race World Championship. Gunning for the win will be pro OCR athlete, Faye Stenning, who, in addition to taking third place in last year’s Spartan World Championship, raced herself into the number one spot in the 2016 global Spartan Race world rankings.

While tapering for Tahoe, Faye took time out to answer my questions on training, racing and crazy weighted pull-ups…

Photo Credit: Rebecca Westcott

30-year-old Anoushé Husain gives an honest account of the challenges she has faced and overcome as a paraclimber with both a limb difference and the ‘invisible’ disability of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

I’m Anoushé and I was born with my right arm missing below the elbow, I am a cancer survivor, a Muslim who wears a headscarf, and I live with invisible conditions. When I’m not in the office, I train as a paraclimber and use my voice to talk about and challenge barriers and self-limiting beliefs.

Taking a world champion title at elite level triathlon is an incredible, career-defining achievement. But winning the title of World Champion across three triathlon disciplines? Now that’s extraordinary. Enter Flora Duffy, freshly crowned two-time ITU World Champion, ITU Cross triathlon World Champion, XTERRA World Champion, and last year the first woman to achieve the trio of world titles in one racing year.

Here, the almost-30-year-old Bermudan, who splits her time between Boulder, Colorado and Stellenboch, South Africa, talks about training, 2018 goals and the challenge of fitting XTERRA triathlon training into an already jam-packed ITU schedule.

Inspired by her mountain-loving grandfather’s dream of having his grandchildren scale a serious mountain, Dr Alex Davidson was 35 when she set herself the challenge of climbing Africa’s highest peak, Mount Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania. Here, she recounts the highs and lows of reaching the 5895m summit.

Photo Credit: Liv cycling

Three-time triathlon World Champion and coach, Lesley Paterson, isn’t just a force to be reckoned on the race course, she’s also a badass when it comes to mental strength strategies that work. Not just for elite athletes, but for us endurance amateurs too. And if standard sport psychology makes you zone out or fall asleep on your turbo, you’re in luck – this is the women who, together with her leading sport psychologist husband, recently penned the tome The Brave Athlete – How to calm the f*ck down and rise to the occasion. So you get the gist.

Photo Credit: Chris Scadden

Kickboxing, wrestling, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu… when it comes to MMA fighting (mixed martial arts), the breadth of disciplines is intense. And that’s on top of the killer fitness required. 30-year-old Polly Beauchamp, amateur MMA fighter and professional K1 fighter, talks about what it takes to be a cage fighter.

Photo Credit: Larry Maurer

A four-time Ironman World Champion, Chrissie Wellington did the unimaginable in 2007 when she won the Ironman World Championship in her rookie professional year. Unbeaten in every one of her 13 Ironman races (!), she took triathlon by storm and broke her own course records numerous times before retiring from professional triathlon in 2012.

Photo Credit: Mark Hoey

26-year-old Australian, Stephanie Langridge (aka Polar Steph) upped sticks from sunny Australia and moved her life to Iceland to be a Glacier Guide. Despite never having been to the country before the move, she’s never looked back. Here, she explains what a typical day in her life looks like.

29-year-old Emma Clayton won a team gold in the Mountain Running World Championships in 2015 and took bronze in the individual event. From mountain running tips to a typical week’s training, the Leeds-based runner chats about she went from hating the fells to winning on them.

Ever wondered what a typical training day for an elite triathlete looks like? 37-year-old Lucy Gossage, pro triathlete, 6-time Ironman triathlon winner, part-time oncologist and Wattbike ambassador, gives us a glimpse into a typical non-working day. Spoiler: it’s busy.