Going To Extremes

Forget the ‘humble’ marathon, women are going ultra with their fitness goals by pushing themselves harder than ever. Katie Mulloy reports on a new thirst for challenge.

- Katie Mulloy

At some point, everything hits avocado-on-toast status – too mainstream to be impressive, and so the marathon, a mere 26.2 miles of sweat, tears and blisters, may be at such an impasse. Our lust for a long-distance challenge has moved on and going ultra is the new social currency. ‘Seeing how impressed people are when you say you’ve completed an Ironman [a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile cycle, and a marathon] makes you feel good about yourself,’ says Sarah Grant, 38, a paramedic from County Durham who first attempted the extreme triathlon in 2016.

And while extreme fitness is still male-dominated, things are changing. Around a third of Ironman World Championships competitors are women, a figure that tallies with Triathlon England’s membership – the number of British women joining has increased by 230 per cent since 2009. Davina McCall completed a gruelling 500mile triathlon in 2014 for Sport Relief and, last summer, a group of six female teenagers from London became the youngest relay team to swim the Channel. We’re being inspired to test our endurance harder than ever before.

Pushing yourself to your limits taps into a very current notion of what success looks like. Dr Rhonda Cohen, sport and exercise psychologist at Middlesex University and author of