© Cary Johnson

I am so excited to bring you my interview with American ultrarunning legend Pam Reed! Pam was the first woman to win Badwater 135 outright in 2002 before repeating her outright win a second time the following year. Pam will be 60 in February and is still crushing (and winning) 100-milers – she has finished a mind-blowing 98 100-mile events. Her goal is to have one hundred 100-milers under her belt before her 60^th birthday!

Pam, who lives in Jackson, Wyoming, was the first person on record to run 300 miles without any sleep and has broken American records in 24-hour, 48-hour and six-day running events. She really is incredible. I hope you enjoy our chat in which Pam recalls her Badwater days and shares more about her ultrarunning approach and achievements.

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!

Last month I ran an interview with former UTMB winner and all-round ultrarunning badass, Francesca Canepa, where she admitted she runs ‘as little as possible’ in training because – shock! –she doesn’t actually like running that much.

This intrigued a lot of people (myself included) so today I’m back with more details about what Francesca’s training involves after she kindly offered to dive a bit deeper into it with me.

Thanks, Francesca!

N.B You can read our interview from last month here: Francesca Canepa: The UTMB winner who doesn’t like running.

© 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.

© James Poole

After lining up for her first ultra less than two years ago, UK-based Malaysian ultrarunner Alison Walker leapt straight into 100+ mile distances with events such as the Samphire 100 and Tooting 24 – her first 24-hour race, in which she ran 185.9km and broke six Malaysian national records.

Having completed a 108-mile ‘quarantine’ backyard ultra this summer and several Fastest Known Time achievements, Alison eyed up a new challenge and just over a week ago, she became the first person to complete London’s continuous ‘Smog Graham’ round. An urban nod to the Lake District’s legendary Bob Graham Round, the challenge saw Alison bag every ‘peak’ in all 32 London boroughs – no mean feat at 302km and 3211m of elevation. Despite some navigational issues, she finished in 54 hours and 33 minutes.

From McDonald’s meltdowns and non-existent naps to borrowed shoes and blisters, the 32-year-old inov-8 ambassador shares the ups and downs of her ‘Smog’ with me in this Q&A, where we also chat about her 100-mile training weeks and the steps she takes to stay injury-free.

© www.inov-8.com/ James Appleton

Rewind to 2009 and Sabrina Pace-Humphreys was looking for a way to get fit after her fourth child. Despite hating the idea of running, she gave it a go anyway, running for a minute then walking for a minute. Eleven years later, the British 42-year old mum of four and grandma of two is a Marathon des Sables finisher and has just completed her first 102-mile run on the Cotswold Way!

Sabrina is also co-founder of Black Trail Runners which was launched in July to create a safe, open community for black trail runners and campaign for greater access, skills and representation within trail running. We dive into this further in the Q&A below, where Sabrina also recalls her experience and preparation for the multi-day desert ultra, the Marathon des Sables (MdS), and her recent, epic Cotswold Way 100-miler (extreme nausea included).

Italian ultrarunner Francesca Canepa was a podium-bagging professional snowboarder before switching to running at the age of 38. Despite not having run before, she came tenth overall in her first race. Incredibly, just two years later, in 2012, Francesca came second at the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB). And if that wasn’t crazy enough, one week after UTMB she won the notoriously gruelling Tor des Geants, an unimaginably tough race covering 330km with 24,000m of vertical elevation.

Since then the mum of two has gone on to win more of trail running’s most revered and challenging races, including Laveredo Ultra Trail and, in 2018 at the age of 46, UTMB – six years after she ran it for the first time.

Incredibly, for an ultrarunner, Francesca avoids running as much as possible in training – yes, you read that right. In this Q&A, Francesca, who is a trained psychologist, shares what her training actually involves, how she fuels her ultras and what’s got her through the toughest moments she’s faced in her racing career so far.