608. Susie Chan, Ultra Runner & Peloton Instructor

Ali on the Run Show

Ali Feller

Run, Health & Fitness, Women, Inspiration, Runner, Entrepreneur, Sports, Fitness, Health, Running

4.9 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2023

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Never forget where you started. Nobody is born running a mile. We all have to work for it. So never forget those first few steps. Keep up the faith. And then one day, you’ll go out and you’ll feel like you’re flying."

In her mid-thirties, Susie Chan was a cigarette-smoking single mom working as an exhibitions coordinator for art galleries and museums. The word "running" was definitely not a part of her vocabulary. But then, when her brother convinced her to run a half marathon with him, everything changed. Susie ran her first half marathon at 35, and she was hooked. Now, at 47, Susie is one of the best-known runners (and ultra runners!) in the UK. She has run some of the most grueling races in the world, including the 230K Jungle Ultra through the Amazon Rainforest, and the six-day Marathon Des Sables in the Sahara Desert. She's an Abbott World Marathon Majors six-star finisher, and in 2016, she broke the world record for most miles run on a treadmill in a 12-hour period (68.54 miles!). Today, Susie is most widely known for being a Peloton Tread instructor. In this conversation, we talk about all those highs — and the lows, including Susie's cancer diagnosis in 2017, and her ongoing experience with perimenopause. Next up for Susie: Badwater Salton Sea in April.

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What you’ll get on this episode:

What’s making Susie happy today, and what she’s training for right now (4:05)
Susie’s take on the running community (8:35)
How Susie became a runner (10:15)
How Susie deals with the dark times during races (21:50)
What Susie’s training is like, and how she balances her own training and her Peloton classes (27:00)
All about that treadmill world record (29:00)
What Susie is proudest of (37:00)
Susie’s thyroid cancer diagnosis (39:00)
How Susie got the Peloton job (48:00)
How Susie prepared to interview Dina Asher-Smith, Eilish McColgan, Sally McRae, and more at the National Running Show (52:00)
Susie’s experience with perimenopause (57:00)
On motivation (1:00:25)
Susie’s best mid-ultra hallucination stories, and her advice for the “ultra-curious” (1:03:50)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Alley on the Run Show.
0:06.7	I'm your host Allie Feller, and every week I talk with people who are doing exciting
0:11.4	things on the run and beyond.
0:14.2	We all share that love for running, and that's the thing that brings us all together.
0:17.9	But we all know there is so much more to life than what happens on the run itself.
0:22.8	And this show is about those in-between.
0:25.2	We're talking about the moments and decisions that have shaped who we are today, and the
0:29.8	wise.
0:30.8	Why do we do what we do?
0:32.5	And how does getting sweaty factor in?
0:35.6	My guess today is UK-based UltraRunner Suzy Chan.
0:40.8	Now Suzy has a lot of really cool, really impressive claims to fame.
0:45.2	In 2016, she broke the world record for most miles run on a treadmill in a 12-hour period.
0:51.6	She ran 68.54 miles on a treadmill in 12 hours.
0:58.4	She has run some of the coolest, most intense, most grueling ultras in the world, including
1:03.9	the Jungle Ultra, and the six-day marathon dissobble in the Sahara Desert.
1:09.8	She has completed all six world marathon majors, and many of you probably know Suzy as a
1:15.7	peloton instructor.
1:17.4	But Suzy has not always been a runner.
1:19.9	She was not a runner growing up.
1:21.4	In fact, she was an avid smoker.
1:24.8	Then, at 35 years old, Suzy totally changed her life.
	...

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