Endurance athlete Mimi Anderson talks to Annie and Louise about her love of running, her battle with anorexia, life in lockdown and her past and latest challenges

In the ninth episode of season three of the Her Spirit podcast BBC Breakfast Louise Minchin and BBC Triathlon presenter Annie Emmerson talk to Mimi Anderson.

Mimi is one of the world’s most inspirational female distance runners, having made an incredible journey from stay-at-home mother of three to multiple Guinness World Record Holder. With hard work and determination Mimi has shown that it’s never too late to fulfil your dreams and achieve the impossible.

Pushing herself to the limits has strengthened Mimi’s resilience and taught her its importance in boosting her mental and physical health, especially having suffered with the eating disorder anorexia for 15 years. Hearing Mimi speak about her amazing experiences with honesty, humility and humour, will leave you inspired to seek out personal challenges of your own and be much more aware of how to develop your own resilience and well-being.

Mimi Anderson is an endurance athlete who found her love of running at the age of 36 very quickly discovering her ability to run silly distances by taking the Marathon des Sables in 2001 a race billed as “the toughest footrace on earth” with just over a year’s running under her belt.

Mimi has taken part in extreme races around the world running across Deserts, mountains, enduring the freezing temperatures of the Arctic the heat and humidity of the Peruvian jungle and the extreme heat of Death Val- ley in America setting course records, World Records and on occasions beating the men!

As well as taking part in races Mimi enjoys organising her own adventures; in 2004 she ran from Paris to London starting with the Paris Marathon and fin- ishing the 300 plus mile run with the London Marathon. In 2014 Mimi, who was co-founder of Freedom Runners, ran 1,223 miles across South Africa to raise awareness and funds to support an initiative that addressed feminine hygiene management and education in that country, providing 400 girls with re-usable feminine hygiene products enabling them to remain in education. In September 2017 Mimi took on an epic run to try and break the female world record to run across America a distance of 2,852 miles. The run was brought to an abrupt end due to an injury after running 2, 217.2 miles in 40 days, on track to smash the record. She is well known for her “doubles” tak- ing on some of the worlds toughest endurance races and not just doing them once but running back to the start once she has finished.

Mimi talks to Annie and Louise about life in lockdown, her new challenges, learning to love swimming and her journey into triathlon in 2020.

These podcasts have been made possible through the support of Medichecks www.medichecks.com and Sport England www.sportengland.org. 

Medichecks offers an easy and affordable way to check your health from the comfort of your own home with their simple and personal at-home blood tests. From hormones and nutrition, to cholesterol and diabetes, there is something for everyone. 

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