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May I start by congratulating<br />
you on last year’s impressive<br />
race win! How did you first<br />
get into endurance cycling?<br />
I got into endurance cycling<br />
through endurance running. I<br />
got into the running through<br />
long-distance walking. And I got<br />
into that completely by chance.<br />
I was in my late thirties and<br />
was doing pretty much nothing<br />
physical. I’d succumbed to<br />
the comfortable sloth that hits<br />
so many people at that stage<br />
in life. Then, out of the blue, I<br />
read about the Long Distance<br />
Walkers Association and got<br />
fired up with the idea of taking<br />
part in their annual 100-mile<br />
walk. Somehow the idea of<br />
walking 100 miles burrowed<br />
into my brain – it felt so utterly<br />
inconceivable to walk that far.<br />
I just had to discover what it<br />
would be like to do something<br />
so immense. It turns out that it’s<br />
really, really hard.<br />
Later that year, a friend sent me<br />
a link to a YouTube video with<br />
footage of the Transvulcania<br />
Ultramarathon – a 75 km run up<br />
and down a massive volcano in<br />
the Canary Islands. The scenery<br />
and the event looked absolutely<br />
stunning. “If you can walk 100<br />
miles,” he said, “I reckon we can<br />
do this.”<br />
I immediately became a runner.<br />
I trotted out my first 5 km<br />
run the next day, and within<br />
three months I’d run my first<br />
marathon. A few months after<br />
that I managed to finish the<br />
Transvulcania race – and despite<br />
an hour spent collapsed in the<br />
gutter a mile from the finish I<br />
still finished in the top half of the<br />
field.<br />
The next few years saw me doing<br />
more and more ultrarunning. I<br />
took part in the de facto world<br />
championship of mountain<br />
running that is the Ultra Trail du<br />
Mont Blanc, and back in the UK<br />
I became one of a small number<br />
of people to run the full 102<br />
miles of the Cotswold Way in<br />
under 24 hours.<br />
And then I learned about the<br />
Transcontinental Race and<br />
dropped running overnight.<br />
The Transcontinental Race<br />
covers distances of over 4,000<br />
km across Europe, taking a<br />
different route each year. It<br />
seemed so much bigger and<br />
more challenging than anything<br />
I’d done before. Once again, the<br />
idea of taking on such a massive<br />
challenge burrowed into my<br />
brain – I couldn’t think about<br />
anything else for days. This was<br />
so much bigger than anything<br />
I’ve ever attempted and I just had<br />
to know how that felt. I bought a<br />
bike and started training.<br />
What motivates you to<br />
compete at such a level?<br />
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