Run Young 50 | A blog about women runners over 50

Nikki Love – ultrarunning and the menopause

Posted on Oct 18, 2020 in Blog, Running and the menopause

Earlier this year I interviewed ultrarunning adventurer Nikki Love about how the perimenopause has affected her running.

Since 2016, Nikki has been undertaking ultra distance adventures, starting with the JungleUltra, a 5-day race through the Amazon jungle in Peru.

In 2017, I met Nikki and interviewed her shortly before she started her 63 marathons in 63 days challenge. She ran a marathon distance on 63 consecutive days in various locations around the UK. I ran part of the distance with her on a couple of the 63 days and was impressed not just by her sheer determination but also by the very clear narrative she had about her motivation. It was all about her “why”. She had thought carefully about her reasons for doing the challenge and when she was finding it hard she would go back to the “why” and remind herself of these reasons.

Since 2017, Nikki has completed other challenges and she mentions some of these in the interview:

2018 – run round Ireland – 730 miles over 32 days
2019 – run the length of Wales – 177 miles over 7 days
2019 – run across the Netherlands (unsupported) – 155 miles over 5 days

These are all partly in preparation for her big challenge to run across Australia, the country where she grew up.

In the interview, Nikki talks about how she first started experiencing symptoms of the perimenopause at the time of her 63 marathons challenge. Her unsupported run across the Netherlands was particularly difficult and Nikki talks about the mental strategies she used to turn things around after that experience.

We talk about the lack of information available for female ultra endurance athletes who are going through the perimenopause and how this is still something of a taboo subject, meaning women may not feel comfortable to share their stories.