Tough Girl Podcast Nikki Love - 56, Running across Australia from Perth to Sydney 4,044kms in 76 days! Setting the women’s record! #RunAustralia
Nikki Love is an adventure runner, a sports psychology under-grad, and a motivator of dreaming big, taking action and achieving extraordinary goals.
Nikki turned 50 in 2017 and decided it was time to take her love for travel, marathon running, and cross-country running to a new level.
She is now on a mission to run across, around, or through as many countries that her feet can take her, bringing as many people as she can along for the run.
Her big adventures include running 63 marathons in 63 days through the UK to celebrate her 50th birthday, a craic of a 750 mile run around Ireland, a runcation through Malta and around Gozo, a jolly jaunt across the Netherlands, an extremely muddy and cow-pat laden run from top to bottom of Wales, a 40 day x 1,000 miles treadmill run, and on July 16, 2023 at the age of 56 Nikki set the women’s record for running across Australia from Perth to Sydney 4,044kms in 76 days, 3 hours and 43 minutes.
Driven by her curiosity to answer the question “I wonder if I can do that…”
Nikki shares her adventures – the highs, lows, fun, tears and her experience of overcoming fears, doubts and obstacles as she navigates perimenopause – through her writing, speaking and film-making.
Her goal is to help women know and own their place and space in the world and to keep believing and backing themselves.
Listen to the previous TGP episode with Nikki.
30th July 2020 - Adventure Runner, Ran 63 marathons in 63 days in 2017
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Show notes
- Who is Nikki
- Being an adventure runner
- 56 years young
- Speaking with Nikki in 2020 on the TGP
- A quick recap of Nikki’s previous challenges
- Reflecting back on 2020 and 2021
- Coming up with idea to do a ‘training run’ on a treadmill
- Running 1000 miles and tearing tendons in her toes which ended her adventure
- Learning that she could do hard things
- Setting herself up to run across Australia for real
- Dealing with multiple peri-menopausal symptoms
- 2021- deciding to run 100 marathons in 100 days
- Getting a stress fracture in her pelvis
- Starting a process to understand what was going on in her body
- Getting advice to downgrade her ambitions and dreams
- Being stubborn and wanting to figure out a way to achieve her goal at 56 of running across Australia
- Figuring out what was going on and getting advice from doctors
- Starting on different versions on HRT
- Being encouraged to stop doing her exercise
- Having bloods taken and doing MRI scans - privately
- Speaking to as many people as possible to come up with solutions
- Figuring out that her body wasn’t absorbing the hormone therapy
- Going back to basics - getting back to a good diet and doing strength training
- Taking 2 years to recover from her pelvis stress fracture
- Feeling sad and frustrated
- Not being willing to give up on her goal
- Starting to wonder if it would be possible for her to run across Australia
- Starting to do more planning and putting dates in place
- Dealing with setbacks along the way and why it wasn’t easy
- Setting the start date for 1st May 2023
- Being supported by her partner
- Hiring a camper van and driving from Jhalong to Perth and getting to see the route in reverse.
- Going after a Guinness World Record to be the fastest women to run from Perth to Sydney
- 76 days 3hrs and 43 mins * (waiting to see if it will be accepted by Guinness)
- Having to increase her running distances pretty quickly and averaging about 53km per day
- Getting into a flow with the running after 2 weeks
- Dealing with the traffic which was much more intense than she was expecting
- What a typical day looked like
- How her experiences helped her to keep on going when times got tough
- Having a mantra in the morning Start off slow and I’ll get into a flow
- Challenges with animals!
- Physically not feeling too bad, but mentally feeling very drained and tired
- Listening to binaural music to calm her body down and the importance of sleep to help with recovery
- Dealing with the adventure blues after the challenge
- Making the decision to go to university to study sports psychology
- Applying to Loughborough University
- Becoming more aware of her time line and getting older
- How you can connect with Nikki and follow along with her journeys
- Nikki is also blogging about her run on her website
- Wanting to keep her adventure passion alive
- Feeling that you can - requires that you back yourself
- Keeping telling yourself that you can.
Social Media
Website: www.nikkilove.co.uk
Instagram: @nikkiloveruns