Not ready. Not alone.

My father has always treated his body as something worth protecting. He trained. He ate carefully. He slept early. He always questioned what everyone else accepted as normal.

His rule was simple: you get one body. Take care of it.

In 2020, my brother, my sister and I climbed Ben Nevis together. It was not planned. Hours climbing. At some point, we stopped talking. We kept moving because the others were still moving. At the top, I remember one thing: I had done something I wasn’t sure I could do.

Being healthy. Being able to move. Feeling your body carry you somewhere difficult. None of it is guaranteed. I took that feeling into endurance sport. I trained harder. Raced further. Became a mother. Came back. And I kept training.

The sport that made me feel capable had also taught me to override the body my father had taught me to protect. I had believed that exercise, even at high intensity, would always be good for me. It took me years to understand that strength also requires knowing when, how and why to push.

Then I started seeing the same gap everywhere. So much advice about training. So little understanding of the female body doing the training.

THE WOM came from that gap. At our events, I have watched women arrive afraid of what is ahead and finish saying: