Adventure Magazine

Mair with Emily Wilson while competing in reality-TV show Tracked. The pair were runners-up.
"My caregiver was a runner and a cyclist himself, and he basically got me
back into running and cycling. He built me a mountain bike. I would say that
was probably the beginning of my new life."
She had compartmentalised what had happened to her as a
child, but it came creeping back when she was 14 and playing
basketball. Her boyfriend at the time - her first - reached over
from behind her to try and stop her from getting the ball. The
movement was a trigger. Images of an old man in a similar pose
started to leak into her mind.
"It started like a little crack and it just kept on cracking. I was so
upset about these flashbacks. I thought I was going insane, like
I'd watched too many crazy horror movies," she says.
"I had severe issues at school because I started freaking out.
Every time a guy came close to me, I started having these
anxiety attacks. It really changed me from this happy, active
teenager to being severely depressed, just not going out
anymore. It was like a switch."
She even tried to kill herself, but failed in what she now says
was a cry for help rather than a wish to die.
When she eventually opened up to her parents about the
flashbacks, her mother said that she'd actually told her about
"the weird things the neighbour was doing" a decade earlier. But
her parents hadn't known what to do, so they did nothing except
ensure she didn't go next door anymore.
"When your mum tells you you're not actually crazy and these
things actually happened, I was like, 'What?!' I felt like I got
stabbed in my heart."
At age 15, she dropped out of school and started working in a
bakery, but her struggles were far from over. First came selfharm,
cutting herself with glass. "It sounds like a paradox, but
somehow creating pain can numb you from pain."
Then came anorexia, which she now says was a coping
mechanism: seizing control of something in the face of
something she couldn't control - her past.
She eventually began throwing up so much that her kidneys
started failing and she had to be hospitalised. After collapsing in
a nightclub on New Year's Eve in 1997, Maier went into rehab
for several months.
When she came out, she was encouraged to live in a home
associated with the rehab clinic where caregivers were assigned
to each patient. For Maier, this was the turning point.
"My caregiver was a runner and a cyclist himself, and he
basically got me back into running and cycling. He built me a
mountain bike. I would say that was probably the beginning of
my new life."
She still remembers the first time they went running together,
barely covering a single kilometre. "But I was so happy, just
being out there, and having someone to get me out running
again - so much joy."
Maier had had a precocious appetite for sports when she was
young - competitive athletics, gymnastics, soccer, basketball,
volleyball. Being active again rekindled something, like a
reclaiming of what she'd always loved. By the time she turned
26, she'd started competing in triathlons and had done her first
ironman event.
"Sport just always made me feel so alive. I always biked the long
way to work. One year, I biked 50km every day. And when you
have a bad day, you can just go out for a run and you feel so
much better."
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