Photo Credit: Tony Jarvis

Sleep deprivation, mind games, freezing sea submersions and exhausting SAS-Style physical challenges. The Unknown is a brutal 36-hour test of fitness and mental resilience designed to push you to your limits. Here, 37-year-old Police Inspector, Georgie Newton, who has completed the Unknown twice, recalls just how deep you need to dig.

What does a day as a professional sports commentator look like? Rochelle Gilmore, Wiggle High5 Pro Cycling Team owner and former professional cyclist, runs through her fast-paced day commentating the women’s race at the recent UCI Cycling World Championship in Bergen.

Warning: it’s hectic!

Adventure athlete Emma Timmis is no stranger to endurance feats, having been the first woman to run the 1500 mile length of South Africa’s Freedom Trail – the equivalent of running 57 marathons in 57 days (!) She’s also cycled 2000km from Manchester to the Dolomites in Italy on a touring bike, and run 2452 miles across Africa. Right now, however, the 33-year-old is more than 5705km into her challenge to ride an ElliptiGO (a seat-less elliptical bike) 8000km across Australia, solo and self-supported. With only a quarter of her journey left, she’s already broken the distance record.

I caught up with Emma on the phone the day before she left for Australia to chat adventures (she’s had a few), endurance and ultra running.

Whether you’re a wannabe runner, cyclist, or swimmer the chance to chat with an expert in your sporting field is a dream come true – especially when that expert is a sport scientist with the expertise to reveal how you can improve your performance, speed and energy conservation.

Regular readers may remember that I’m taking part in a case study for Wattbike’s new Pedalling Effectiveness Score (PES) function. Thanks to this, I was fortunate to have a cycling one-to-one with Dr Barney Wainwright, applied sport scientist and Research Fellow at Leeds Metropolitan University. Because the case study will document how improving my pedalling technique affects my performance on the bike, this session with Barney was essentially a lesson in the basics of cycling efficiency.

Here’s what I learned in just a few hours.

Jenna Randall is a former professional synchronised swimmer who represented Team GB at two Olympic Games. During her pro career, Jenna won three Commonwealth Games silver medals before retiring as an athlete in 2013. Almost immediately she won a part in ‘O’, the water-themed stage production by Cirque Du Soleil, which runs permanently from the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas.

Here, Jenna gives us an insider look at what life as an aquatic performer entails…

Obstacle course racer turned endurance athlete, Laura Try, was part of a team of four who rowed 1800 miles around Great Britain in June. Here, the 35-year-old talks about her rowing experience, her training, and the logistics of living on a boat measuring 8.6m x 1.6m for 56 days.

Photo Credit: ThatCameraMan.com

After back surgery cut short her successful career as a professional triathlete and duathlete in 2008, former world champion and double Olympian, Michelle Dillon, switched to coaching. Since then, she’s worked with a host of world class triathletes (from Jodie Stimpson to Emma Pallant) as part of her coaching business, Team Dillon.

Here, Michelle talks about what a typical day in her busy life as a coach looks like.

How do you know when the lingering fatigue you feel after training is more than just the after-effect of a sensibly tough workout schedule? Here, in a post that could also be titled ‘One Girl and Her Idiotic Training Decisions’, I talk about my personal experience with overtraining/underperformance syndrome. It’s long, but read to the end for expert advice from applied sport scientist, Dr Barney Wainwright, on how to spot and treat the symptoms of overtraining.

Phoebe Schecter made headlines earlier this year when she became the first British woman to take on a coaching role in America’s NFL. To say this is a pretty big deal is an understatement; it wasn’t until two years ago that a woman first coached in the NFL.

If you love listening to (and hearing about) inspiring women within the realm of adventure and sport – and presumably you do, otherwise you’re kinda in the wrong place! – you’ll want to hotfoot it to this year’s Women’s Adventure Expo in Bristol on Saturday 7^th.