E82. SPINE RACE SPECIAL | Montane Winter Spine Races 2023

Everything Endurance

The Montane Winter Spine Races 2023 begin on Saturday 15th Jan, and in honour of this EPIC event, we thought we better make an EPIC podcast.

Welcome to our Spine Race Special.

Over the festive period, whilst many people were packing in mince pies and wrapping presents, the runners about to take part in #BritainsMostBrutal race were busy thinking about the 268-miles of non-stop racing waiting for them in the new year. And that's just those on the full-length edition. Across all 5 race classes, there were over 500 runners passing a nervous New Year thinking about the Pennine Way. This seemed like the perfect time to call them up and try and distill a little of that pre-race tension into a special edition of Everything Endurance.

In this episode, you'll find past podiumers, record holders, and Spine legends. There are short interviews with Anna Troup, Damian Hall, Ellie Eccles, Eoin Keith, Elaine Bisson, James Leavesley, Sharon Gayter, and the legendary Bobby Cullen. We talk through their motivations, their approach to preparing, their tips for first-time Spiners and more.

Obviously, we couldn't cover all the runners we wanted to across all the races. Check out the Ultrarunning Sam podcast though as Sam has also been interviewing Spiners recently and picked up a couple of people we weren't able to: https://www.youtube.com/@ultrarunningsam

For ease, here are the time-stamps of each interview:

06:15 Anna Troup

28:50 Damian Hall

46:10 Ellie Eccles

01:03:09 Eoin Keith

01:19:33 Elaine Bisson

01:34:25 James Leavesley

01:42:12 Sharon Gayter

02:07:08 Bobby Cullen - Apologies for the slightly lower sound quality during this interview.