Getting to the end of 2014 was like finishing an epic ultra. My ears are ringing and my mind is dancing from one fleeting memory to the next, unsure of where to land. Amnesia has set in, softening the edges of the extreme lows and dimming the glare of some of the highs, but I’m left with an overall feeling […]
Hitting The Wall. One minute you’re cruising along, legs pumping rhythmically beneath you, and the next minute you’re brought to a grinding halt. Colours dim, noises quiet, clouds roll in. Your legs start to feel heavy and disconnected from the rest of your body. Your movements become difficult and uncoordinated. Your thoughts turn inwards and your eyes droop downwards. No matter what […]
If there’s one thing that living in a tent in South Sudan will give you, it’s perspective. Oh, and the occasional bout of giardia, but that is a different story that you probably don’t want to hear.
The first time someone called me ‘sporty’ I laughed in their face. Excuse me? Stephanie Case was the opposite of sporty. I tripped over cracks in sidewalks, let out high-pitched shrieks whenever someone threw a ball my way, and refused to do any activity that turned my face red. I used to beg my gym teacher to let me be […]
*Original interview posted on MadAthlete.com. Thanks for the interview, Zandy!* INTERVIEW WITH ULTRARUNNERGIRL, STEPHANIE CASE Zandy Mangold, MA Connects It is impossible to summarize the phenomenon that is Stephanie Case. Hollywood take note – this girl’s life is already worthy of a riveting memoir or feature documentary. We are interviewing Stephanie because she is not only an ultrarunning, stage-racing, Madathlete, but she is also a champion of human rights, a writer and an artist. I met Stephanie while sharing a tent at RacingThePlanet’s 2010, 250km Australia race. A volcanic eruption resulted in many flight cancellations thus causing several runners to miss the race, but not Stephanie Case. She took a train from London to Paris, chartered a taxi from Paris to Madrid, rerouted her flights to Australia through the Middle East and somehow made the start – allbeit sans gaiters. Undeterred, she painstakingly crafted a pair of gaiters out of her buffs, safety pins and spare needles and thread, ultimately finishing as 2nd woman and 8th overall. Her racing resume includes 1st and 2nd places in five 250km multi-day events, including most recently 1st place at the ICE Ultra in Swedish Lapland, which she completed on snowshoes. She has also excelled at single stage races, placing 1st at the Vermont 100 mile endurance race in 2009, 4th at the Ultra Race of Champions in 2011, and 11th female and 163rd overall at the formidable Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc in 2013. […]
In South Sudan, I’m still trying to get used to the emotional extremes. On a good day, the sunrises hold promise, the kids laugh a little brighter, and the air feels cooler. Some mornings, I have these moments of immense gratitude when I’m running through the bush and it hits me that I’m incredibly lucky to be where I am, doing the […]
In starting my NGO, Free to Run, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the role that sports have played in my own life and what running has taught me about myself, about life, and about human nature. Here are my thoughts: We are not born athletic or un-athletic. Frankly, the idea that some people are ‘sporty’ and […]
Yesterday morning, I woke up the way I do most mornings: surrounded by mosquito netting, head pounding, and entangled in sheets. However, the difference was that I was waking up in a fancy hotel in Zanzibar instead of in my tent in Mingkaman. My mosquito netting was luxuriously hanging over my bed for decoration instead of strung up on bamboo […]
On 16 May, I was awakened at 4 am by loud gunfire. I had expected it, of course – it was SPLA day after all, South Sudan’s day for celebrating the army – but it didn’t make it any less stressful. Whether you call it celebratory gunfire or ‘happy gunfire’, as we used to say in Afghanistan, the sound of a gunshot […]
On this blog, I write about my life in the human rights and humanitarian fields just as much as I write about my running. For me, there is a clear connection – I am massively passionate about both, so it is hard for me to separate the two. However, for those of you out there who fall into one category […]
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