© Sean Robinson/Velofocus.com

Last week, 2018 Zwift Academy winner Ella Harris chatted about her pro training schedule and the highs and lows of her transition to life as a pro rider within leading women’s pro cycling team, CANYON//SRAM. This week, we’re back to chat about Ella’s racing experience with the team, a typical day in her life, and the races she’s looking forward to this year.

N.B Ella answered my questions in early February before much of the world went into lockdown.

*You can read part one of Ella’s interview here*

© 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.

Markella Mildenberger was fit and active before a routine surgery went wrong in 2011, affecting her ability to walk and leaving her with chronic pain. Life, as she knew it, changed forever and for the next five years, she watched her world unravel. The turning point came in 2016 when Markella learned that her pain was permanent, and she made the decision to start ‘living life again’.

Three years later, whilst looking for a new challenge, and with no mountain bike experience (but a huge amount of pain just sitting on the saddle), Markella, a mountain bike newbie, signed up for one of the world’s most gruelling multi-day MTB events, the BC Bike Race in British Columbia – 7 days, 300km and 10,000m of elevation along some of the sport’s most technical trails – and made a film of her experience: “It’s Just Like Riding A Bike”.

Ahead of the UK premiere on Monday 16 March, which kicks off a week of adventure, wildlife and environmental films at the annual Four Seasons Film Festival, I caught up Markella via email to hear more about her experience.

© Friction Collective

When Mel Nicholls suffered a series of strokes in her twenties, she ended up losing full use of her left side and her ability to walk. She didn’t lose her thirst for adventure or endurance sport, however, and followed her passion for both, becoming a two-time Paralympian and world record holder in track wheelchair racing before moving into marathon racing and handcycling for Great Britain.

Last June, Mel set off on her biggest challenge yet: Handcycle Britain, a world record attempt to break the 10-day female handcycle record for riding 874 miles from Lands End to John O’Groats. She smashed it in an incredible 6 days, 22 hours and 18 minutes, riding a monumental last day of more than 300km!

Mel’s LEJOG achievement is documented in the film “Dream Big” which follows her handcycle record attempt last year. I spoke with Mel ahead of the London Premiere of her film, taking place on Monday 16th March at The Charlotte Street Hotel as part of Four Seasons Film Festival– a boutique festival celebrating storytelling inspired by adventure.

Marathons, ultras, multi-stage races, FKTs – ultrarunner Kristina Madsen has a diverse race CV and the records to prove it. In 2018, the Danish runner set a fastest known time record (FKT) for her ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro, completing it in 6 hours 52 minutes despite living in the relative flatlands of Denmark. And despite being a trail runner first and foremost, a few weeks ago she won the World Marathon Challenge outright, setting a new world record for running 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days.

How does she do it? From training for her Kilimanjaro FKT and last year’s 66-mile Bob Graham Round to her meticulous approach to race prep, we cover it all below.

Adventurer Paula Reid has made it her mission to live life to the full. Since her teens, she’s been working through what she calls her ‘Living Life To the Full’ list; challenges and experiences she wants to complete before she dies. So far, she’s completed 118 of them, including mammoth challenges such as skiing 1000km from Messner to the South Pole and sailing 35,000 miles around the world.

Paula is part-way into her latest challenge, ‘50 Good Turns’, which includes cycling across 50 countries and doing a good deed in each. With a Masters in positive psychology, she’s also recently launched a new genre of psychology, adventure psychology, which we cover below.

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.

© Callum Jolliffe

This week the 300-mile Montane Yukon Arctic Ultra is nearing its 8-day cut-off point. Come tomorrow, the few racers who haven’t scratched will have been on the go for 7 days, and Canadian ultrarunner Jessie Gladish knows just what they’re experiencing. Jessie has completed the 300-miler once and is a three-time finisher of the 430-mile distance which runs every other year – last year becoming the first woman to finish it on cross-country skis. It took her almost 12 days.

Set in the frozen, snowy Yukon wilderness in Canada, the race is utterly brutal with temperatures sometimes reaching -50c. Competitors are self-sufficient and the clock never stops as they pull their gear, food, survival kit, bivvy and water behind them in a heavy pulk, sleeping by the trail in bitterly cold temperatures. Days are relentless and dark for up to 14 hours. Frostbite is a real danger. Fascinated by this race, I put some questions to Jessie, who has also completed the 300-mile Iditarod winter ultra in Alaska, on what draws her to the ‘world’s coldest and toughest ultra’.

© Joe O’Connell-Danes

Given Lou Gibson’s lengthy list of cycling achievements (which include riding the entire Tour de France one day ahead of the pros with the InternationElles, and representing Great Britain at Grand Fondo racing) you’d be forgiven for assuming that she’d been attached to a bike from a very early age. But in actual fact, the events manager got to the age of 31 without having owned one.

Here, Lou tells me how a running injury and the breakdown of her marriage inadvertently kicked off her cycling journey, plus she shares the highs and lows of riding 3460km during last year’s InternationElle’s Tour de France ride for equality.