Business of Endurance

I met Leon Chevalier when sat next to him on the flight back from Kona, Hawaii, after he had finished 7th in the Ironman World Championships (in a year where he had also completed his Masters in Chemical Engineering). Leon has been racing long distance triathlons across the world since 2021, and has already won Ironman Mallorca and Embrunman, came 3rd at Ironman UK and rose from 420th to 22nd in t...

Sabrina Pace-Humphreys is an award-winning businesswoman, an ultra-runner, a social justice activist, a mother of four and grandmother of three. She is co-founder and trustee of the fast-growing community and campaigning charity, Black Trail Runners, and is also a well-known ultra-marathon runner. Sabrina took up running in 2009 as a tool to manage her post-natal depression and, nine years later,...

Mark Allen is the arguably the most successful triathlete of all time having won the IRONMAN World Championships® 6 times, the Nice International Triathlon 10 times, and the first recognized Olympic Distance Triathlon Championship. He went undefeated in 21 races for an astounding two-year winning streak from late 1988 thru 1990. He has been inducted into the Halls of Fame for IRONMAN, USA Triathlo...

Sam Bewley is a racing cyclist from New Zealand who, until recently, rode for UCI World Team BikeExchange–Jayco. Bewley also competed for UCI ProTeam Team RadioShack with Lance Armstrong and twice won an Olympic bronze medal on the track. He has raced in nine Grand Tours, including five starts at the Vuelta a España, three starts at the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in its 2020 edition...

Ryan Stramrood is one of South Africa's top extreme adventurers and ice swimmers. He quietly travels to the planet's most inhospitable waterscapes where he seeks out extreme cold water swimming experiences. He swam the first official “Ice Mile” in -1°C water in Antarctica, completed a swim in the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon in Iceland and is the only person to have swam west to east acros...

Sharron Davies MBE is an English former competitive swimmer who has represented Great Britain in the Olympics and European championships and England in the Commonwealth Games.   Sharron has attended 12 consecutive Olympic Games, competing in three and then working in the media for the BBC Sport, and she has earned a silver Olympic medal, 2 gold and 2 bronze medals at Commonwealth Games and 2 bronz...

Charlie and Claire end season 3 of the TRIBEathlon Podcast by recapping their favourite moments of the season with excerpts of their interviews with guests Wanda Summers, Keri-anne Payne, Dr Nicky Keay, Charlie Spedding, Mimi Anderson, Jodie Stimpson, Elisabet Barnes and Morgan Pearson  TRIBEathlon Podcast will return for Season 4 in September! If you enjoyed the TRIBEathlon Podcast, please share,...

Jodie Stimpson did her first triathlon at age 8, and went on to a massively successful career on the short course, winning 2 commonwealth gold medals and was a 4 x World Triathlon Series winner. She has now moved up to the 70.3 middle distance triathlon, and has already notched up wins and iconic races. Claire and I got to chat to Jodie about the challenge of moving up to the longer distances, the...

Having won races like Marathon Des Sables, the Oman Desert Marathon and the Big Red Run in Australia and setting multiple course records, Elisabet Barnes was an accomplished ultra-runner by anyone's standards; but why, having grown up in Scandinavia, has she achieved her success in the desert? Elisabet retired from ultra-running during the pandemic and is an ultra-coach, but she has added a n...

Jan Sibbersen broke the Kona swim record in 2018, recording an incredible 46.29 at age 43, many years after being first out of the water at his first race there. With German national swim team experience, he embraced triathlon initially in the off season, but it soon became his passion.  After multiple Kona appearances, he went on to manage a young promising Ironman athlete by the name of Patrick...

Dr Nicky Keay is a leading expert in endocrinology, having gained extensive clinical and research experience in hormones and their impact on the human body. She has focused much of her research on both athletes and dancers and has done a lot of research on how what we eat affects our hormone balance, and how this not only impacts our performance in sport, but also our long-term health.   So, Clair...

Mimi Anderson is one of the world’s most inspirational female distance runners, having made an incredible journey from stay-at-home mother of three to multiple Guinness World Record Holder.  Mimi has taken part in extreme races around the world, running across deserts, mountains, enduring the freezing temperatures of the Arctic, the heat and humidity of the Peruvian jungle and the extreme heat of...

Wanda Summers has an incredible story that demonstrates the power of the mind; she got into running by signing up to Marathon Des Sables (MDS), billed as one of the toughest races on earth…certainly not an easy start, but life was about to get much harder.   Soon after MDS she was paralysed in a paragliding accident back in Cornwall and was told that without surgery she had 0% chance of walking ag...

Keri-anne Payne is a South African-born British swimmer, specialising in marathon open-water swimming, and long-distance freestyle swimming in the pool. She is a two-time 10-kilometre open water world champion, and an Olympic silver medallist. Since retiring from competition, she has been involved in several businesses in the world of swimming, most recently training open water swimming coaches at...

Morgan Pearson is an American professional triathlete who is really going places - after having a disappointing individual race, he went on to win a silver medal in the mixed relay event at the Tokyo Olympics. He comes from a swimming and running background, so he has had to work hard to master the cycling element of triathlon, but has achieved a lot in a short time, including his recent lightning...

Former elite cyclist and mentor to gold medal winning Olympians and Tour cyclists, Ricci Pascoe founded the Saint Piran professional cycling team 6 years ago. St Piran being the patron saint of Cornwall, their roots and heart is very much themed around Cornwall, but they now have a Continental team that allows them to compete with the big boys in races like The Tour of Britain.  I wanted to chat t...

Rudy Von Berg is a professional triathlete rising rapidly to prominence. Currently ranked 10th in the world, he has won several 70.3 triathlon races, but now wants to follow his father’s footsteps into the long course of Ironman racing. Coming to the sport at an early age was triggered by his trip to Hawaii in 1998 where his father, one of the pioneers of triathlon in Belgium, went on to win his 4...

The Arc50 is a 50-mile Ultra Marathon around the brutal Cornish Coastline that happens in tandem with the even more brutal 100-mile Arc of Attrition. My co-host Claire Fudge of 4th Discipline and I ran the Arc50 last month with 2 former guests of the podcast and very experienced ultra runners, Kerry Sutton of Perpetual Motion Coaching and Warren Pole of 33Fuel, as our crew. This episode was an opp...

After success on the track, Charlie Spedding switched to marathons in 1984, winning both the London Marathon and a bronze medal in the LA Olympics - which was the first British Olympic marathon medal for 20 years, and the last won by Team GB, so the performance certainly did not get the recognition it deserved. He tells the story of his running success in his brilliant book 'From Last to Firs...

Victoria Thornley competed in rowing at the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Olympics, winning a silver medal for GB with Katherine Grainger in the women's double sculls in Rio while she narrowly missed out on a medal in Tokyo in 2021, finishing fourth in the single sculls. She also won bronze and silver at the World Championships and gold, silver and bronze medals at the European Championships during her...

Jackie Hering is a professional triathlete, mom of two, coach and race director living in Wisconsin.  She grew up swimming competitively and worked up to focusing on Ironman but after having children she has focused on the 70.3 distance and has risen to the top of it. Winning her match in the Collins Cup, winning Clash Daytona and being a 5-time 70.3 champion, she appears to be going from strength...

According to her website, Carla Molinaro is a record breaking ultra runner, adventurer and running coach who seeks out events that are slightly harder than the average... and she isn't wrong. Among other insane runs, she set the ladies world record for running from Lands End to John O'Groats (otherwise known as LEJOG) in an astonishing 12 days and 30 minutes. Having grown up in South Afr...

Over the last 20 years, most of us have been waking up to Louise Minchin's bubbly enthusiasm delivered from the BBC Breakfast red sofa a few mornings every week, but as well as being one of the show's key anchors prior to her stepping down, latterly with Dan Walker, she is also a triathlon fanatic. Rediscovering her love of sport whilst on a BBC challenge in the Velodrome, she has gone o...

Mark Bryant is a terminal cancer survivor who uses his healing journey to help inspire, educate and empower cancer patients on their own paths to recovery. Since his terminal diagnosis 6 years ago, when he claimed on his own life insurance, Mark has been on an incredible journey of learning, recovery and, more recently, endurance sport when he completed a 1/2 Ironman distance triathlon that involv...

Ultra runner, Anna Troup, overcame hideous weather, injury and sickness to set a new female record time on the iconic 268-mile Pennine Way this year, only weeks after triumphing as the fastest female in the Lakeland 100 and less than two months since she won and set a new women’s course record for the Summer Spine Race 2021 in 80 hours and 28 minutes.  2021 has been an incredible year for a woman...