Lucy Bartholomew: Ultra Running, Mental Strength & Exploring New Pelotons

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Happy New Year! Life In The Peloton is back, and I’m really excited to kick off 2025 with one of the brightest stars in the Ultrarunning world; Lucy Bartholomew.

A Melbourne native, Lucy’s been competitively trail running since she was 16, when she lined up at a 100km race along the South Coast of Victoria with her old man. Since then, she’s gone on to win Ultra Trail Race Australia in 2022, set the FKT on the truly epic 231km Larapinta Trail up in Northern Territory, and competed over in Europe at Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc. As if she wasn’t already hardcore enough, in 2024 just a few weeks after finishing UTMB, she jetted off to Nice to tackle IronMan World Champs…just for fun!

Ultrarunners are known for their resilience and determination, and Lucy completely epitomises that. I loved chatting to her about how she trains for 100km+ races, what it takes to make it in the ultrarunning world, some of her wild experiences out on the trail, how her parents - her dad, Ash, in particular - have helped drive her ultrarunning journey, and how she finds the mental strength to push through the tough moments. It was a really inspiring conversation that I think you’re going to love.

I was super excited to record with Lucy in person back home around my old area. We actually kicked off the pod by heading for a bike ride up Kinglake, before ripping back down for a quick brew. Then, we laced up the runners and headed out for a little 10ker, and chatted along the way. Needless to say, I kept the questions short to save my breath for running next to one of the most experienced ultrarunners in the world.

I want to continue to explore even more new Pelotons in 2025, and the Trail Running space feels like the perfect place to start. It’s a sport that’s fascinated me for a while, having dabbled in a few ultra runs myself, so I wanted to bring you all inside a discipline that may not be so familiar to the cycling fans amongst you but shares a deep sense of challenge, performance, and adventure. I was fascinated to learn more about the psychology of ultrarunning and find out how similar it is to cycling. Lucy’s been at the top of her game in the running space for the best part of a decade now, and it’s so cool that she’s now crossing over into our world and giving cycling a go.

I hope you love listening to Lucy as much as I loved chatting with her. She’s an all round legend, and might just inspire you to give trail running, or even an ultrarun, a go if you haven’t before. We even recorded a cheeky ep of Talking Luft, so keep your ears peeled for that later this week!

Chapters

• 00:00:00 - Introduction
• 00:08:08 - Part 1: Ride up Kinglake
• 00:34:15 - Part 2: Coffee shop chat
• 00:57:27 - Part 3: Running the trails
• 01:10:23 - Outro

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