Alice Segre - Bikepacking, Badlands and the Power of Support

Italian cyclist and bikepacker Alice Segre joins Clare on the EBR Women Podcast to talk about bikepacking, ultra cycling, representation and the power of support.

Alice shares the story of her first improvised bikepacking trip across Korea, riding from Seoul to Busan on second-hand bikes with friends, backpacks and no tools. That experience opened up a love of travelling by bike, seeing places slowly, and connecting with people along the way.

Clare and Alice also discuss solo travel, women’s cycling, Brava Cycling Club in Lisbon, the mental challenge of ultra racing, upcoming events including The GOATS and Badlands, and Alice’s documentary project Desert Lilies, which explores female perspectives in endurance sport.

A thoughtful conversation about big rides, community, representation and why you do not have to do hard things alone.

Find out more about Endurance Bike and Run:
https://endurancebikeandrun.com

You can find Brava Cycling Club on Instagram as @bravacyclingclub

and the Desert Lilies trailer link is here: https://youtu.be/GzUn5wOOgJc?si=PZ-b63DRyZbN7jMT

#EBRWomen #Bikepacking #UltraCycling

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Women have always been powerful. Throughout history, we've been peddling, running, and climbing our way to that unique freedom that only movement outdoors can bring. Let's keep inspiring each other. Join me each month as I talk to inspiring women who quietly get on with their everyday lives whilst doing amazing things in nature. So, Alice, thank you. Thank you for taking the time to um chat with me and talk about your cycling. Um before we get started asking some questions, I thought it'd be a good idea for you to introduce yourself because I guess some people listening will know you, some people maybe won't know you.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Yeah, I would imagine probably most people won't know me, so it's good to do an introduction. Uh well, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. Um, my name is Alice, uh, I am an Italian living in Lisbon, uh, been moving quite a bit in the last uh yeah, 10 years, oh 11 years. I left Italy, 11 years. Um, I'm now in Portugal, but I was in Germany before, in the nether in the Netherlands before that. And well, I guess we are here because we're gonna be talking about cycling as a topic. I am a keen uh cyclist. I started my cycling journey in the Netherlands, I would say, more as commuting, and then really got into road cycling uh for my first Olympic triathlon when I was in Berlin. And eventually during COVID times, I got my first gravel bike, and then I discovered bikepacking, and that was it. That was the love, and I started bikepacking a lot. I did some big trips with my bike. And since I moved to Portugal, I started exploring more endurance cycling, and that's uh and that's what I'm focusing on. Still doing bikepacking, of course, but uh at the same time training for some ultras.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

And um, you said you loved the bikepacking, you kind of fell in love with that over and above, maybe triathlon, which is quite different, especially Olympic distance, very different. Uh, so what is it that you love about bikepacking?

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Well, I guess uh for those that do it, it's pretty obvious, but uh for me the the very so the very first trip I did bikepacking actually was um was completely unexpected, completely unplanned. We really improvised our trip, and it was in Korea. I was doing my uh semester abroad from university uh in Seoul, and during that semester, our one of our teachers uh mentioned oh, there's gonna be a fall break. Um, so we had like a week off, and he highly recommended to the whole class a bike, a bike, um a bike path that goes from Seoul to Busan. So basically crosses the country uh from the north to the south. And I thought, oh, that's a great idea because I'm here as an exchange student, so I guess maybe it's a good way of getting to know the country. And and so with a couple of friends, we literally went to the market, found second-hand bikes, agreed with the guy at the market that after a week would be we would be back to sell them again to him. So that he agreed to buy them again for half price the week a week later, and we're like, okay, then we have bikes, and yeah, we just got backpacks, like normal, normal clothes. We had nothing, we had no tools, we had no idea how to fix a bike, and we left for a week. And then eventually, of course, I got a gravel bike, and I got uh I got more understanding of how everything worked. But the feeling is still the same from that very first time, right? That we left directly from our door, and slowly the landscape changed, and it felt very freeing to be able to see how far the bike can take you, but also see all the transition between places, which is not the usual, well, especially not when you're flying, but even when you're taking the car, it's very rare that you see all these little villages, and it really gives you such an insight of places because uh we're so at least my experience was so connected to big cities, and getting to know Korea from the villages and seeing like the old ladies in the countryside really gave you much a much bigger understanding of the country, and I yeah, and I had then this in all the other trips of how much you can experience a country, and so this I would say this is the very first point, but then the the second one is maybe more uh how good it is for my head. So when when you're out on the bike, it can get very meditative, you have a lot of time for introspection, but also not if you don't want, you can also listen to music, you can listen to podcasts, but still, like it's a repetitive movement, the bike, and you see things with I find a quite right pace to be able to experience the change, but also have time to take it in. Um, so I find it's a very, yeah, very relaxing space, and then the longer doing during my longer bikepacking trips, when I really have the time to get into it, I find that I really change my mood and the way I relate to people as well, because it really calms me down, and then I can open up more to people.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, it's I think it's that meditative aspect of it, isn't it? That um and the simplicity. Because if all if all you have to do is push your bike, you know, push on the pedals, not push, sometimes we push, but push on the pedals, uh all the sort of first world worries kind of uh go to one side because the only thing you need to do is push your bike and get to get to the next place or see if you can get to the next place.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Exactly. It just changes the day to I need to cycle, where will I sleep, what will I eat, and then it's just a repeat, it's very simple.

SPEAKER_03 6:12

Yeah, yeah. And I think there's definitely something that's very good for our mind, our um, I guess some people might say our soul, but something something that um is very fulfilling in that finding a bit of space. Um, and you talk you talked about seeing the country of Korea, um, which I guess you would because you were cycling the length of it. But did you interact much with the people when you were doing your bike packing?

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Well, in this specific case, I would say there were um yeah, some barrier to really being able to do that. First one that we only had that specific that week, so we did not have a lot of time to take breaks and interact a whole lot. And the second one, of course, was the language uh obstacle. Uh so unfortunately not so much. Uh we tried connecting, and I guess people were surprised to see this bunch of foreigners in in restaurants in the middle of the country, uh, in places where there's not a lot of people traveling, but unfortunately, not as much as in other trips that I did in Europe, where then I really have the time. Also, being alone makes a huge difference, right? During this trip, we were with a couple of friends, and the mood is very different versus the longer bikepacking trips I've done were solo, and then you really have the time to get to know people.

SPEAKER_03 7:33

Um, so were you all girls going to Korea? Or was it a mixed trip?

SPEAKER_01 7:38

We were three girls and one guy for that trip.

SPEAKER_03 7:41

Oh, okay. Okay. And do you think that changed it a bit, having a guy in the group as well as the women? Do you think that changed how people viewed you or how the trip went?

SPEAKER_00 7:55

No.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Uh no, I well, I don't know, to be honest, because I don't know. I it's hard to tell how people viewed us as well, uh, just because the interaction were not so deep with people. Um, I think probably people would have been more surprised, and that's the perception I've had. Like when I'm traveling solo as a woman, but that's a combination of solo as a woman. Uh, people are usually quite surprised that I'm doing that. Uh, and people were not as surprised to see us around, but we were a group, and I don't know if we were just girls, if it would have been any different versus having one guy. I guess people are just usually very surprised to see people alone and to see women traveling alone.

SPEAKER_03 8:43

Yeah, I think that's often the response that women get is all that way. Uh on your own.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Or usually they ask you, what about your boyfriend? Are they okay? Is it okay leaving you uh on your way?

unknown 8:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

It doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_03 9:01

No, but um it's it's very um inbuilt, I think, in a lot of cultures that um women should be cared for, that they shouldn't be going out doing these things on their own. Um, and it's always great when we meet women who are doing those things, who are sort of flying in the face of that culture and saying, No, I can do this, it's fun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Um I think what what it's it's very nice is to see sometimes also the impact of yeah, like the impact that it can have to pursue such things. Like an example uh that comes to mind for this is um I have like one of my solo bikepacking trip was uh along the whole coast of Italy. So I'm Italian and I really I never really explore the south, so I thought it's good to take the bike and and get to know the country. And so it was the first time for me really exploring the whole southern part of the peninsula, and in so I had gotten to Basilicata, so quite in the south, and I stopped in uh camping. And I see all the people next to me at the camping. I was in my slot, just I did not, I had not even built a tent. I was just with a bike and I was starting to cook some pasta. And all the people around me are just like looking at me. There is like a family, there is another older lady, and they're all what is happening, and then all of a sudden, like a girl from one uh other's camping spot and the lady they run to me and they're like, No, you cannot cook like this. Uh, we will invite you, and they're kind of fighting over who can invite me to eat at their at their spot. Uh so eventually the agreement is okay, I will have dinner with the lady, and then we will all join the other family for the cert because they all wanted to hear the stories. And in this family, it was uh a mom with three daughters, and one of the daughters had two daughters. So it was a whole family of women. There was no men. And it was very interesting to spend the evening with them, getting the cert, and telling them, okay, I've I cycled already here since north of Italy, and then I'm gonna continue my cycling back to the north of Italy. And they were, yeah, I guess uh a more traditional family, quite local, uh, from a smaller village. And the reaction I got were initially very surprised, but then also quite quite curious about oh, how can this work? Yeah, this is very different. They all asked me, Oh, can we follow you on Instagram? And then they kept messaging every story I posted along the trip. They were like, Oh, it was so good to meet you. Oh, yes, it's good to see you're continuing. So it was very good to see. Oh, you're also bringing a different perspective, and um yeah, and like maybe something remains. Of course, this does not mean they change, they completely change their life, but it's very interesting to see, uh, or yeah, cool to see that it brings some impact and maybe some reflection on it as well.

SPEAKER_03 12:04

What a window, what a window you gave that family and the young girls in that family about what is possible. Um, and that's a gift, isn't it? That's a real gift to be able to do that for people. Fantastic. So you said that you came to triathlon. So have you always been sporty?

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Uh yes, I would say definitely. Always done a lot of sports growing up, uh, different sports, like gymnastics, swimming, basketball, judo. I've really like moved from one sport to the other one. My my dad is quite sporty, so uh they always with me and my brother, they always just I guess signed us up for things and to explore. Oh, let's see what they really like. Um, yeah, and it I guess it's always been something important for my dad, especially things that have to do with the outdoors. Um, so a whole lot of hiking in the summer, skiing in the winter. We live near near the Alps in Italy. So it it's it's something my dad loves and definitely that he shares as a passion, and it's something that he cared about. Uh so doing multi-day hike uh in the Alps. It was a classic of the summers. So, yes, a lot of um movement. I guess it went a little bit down in high school, as for many, and then slowly picked up again with university, thinking, Oh, I don't want to pay for a gym, I guess I'll go running, and then slowly it evolves into other things.

SPEAKER_03 13:35

It is true that, isn't it? That quite often in high school girls get less sporty. Um, I mean, I think some of it is possibly to do with puberty, and everything starts to change, and suddenly your body's not working quite the way it was last year, and it can be a bit of a shock. Um, but I think for a lot of girls, that's the end of it, they never come back.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Yeah, for sure. And I see definitely the difference depending on the culture and depending on the country, right? Like, I think is especially true from what I've seen in countries like Italy, or I guess more southern Europe, where once you enter poverty, and like of course, we are generalizing, it's not valid for everybody, but like you see what you see in a lot of families as uh normal conversation is that you start entering the the age where you diet, right? You don't do sports, but you diet, and that's very different from what I've seen in Germany or Netherlands, where there tends to stay more physical activities. Um yeah, I guess culturally it was not as typical for Italy, and now it is definitely changing, but it's not the example that we would get from our mothers as much.

SPEAKER_03 14:51

No, no, possibly not. I think um there's definitely some sort of um imposed role, maybe about oh well, you know, you're a woman now, and women women do this. They don't they don't run around in fields anymore and they don't get out on their bike and go off to places. Um and I think from from a personal experience as well, I think sometimes certainly when I was growing up, the coaches didn't really know what to do with the girls once they hit puberty because they were they didn't know about this change in performance and how to motivate girls with that and say, well, that's okay, you know, most people are gonna be in the same boat, and you know, you're still performing well, it's just you're performing differently. Um so I think I think the kind of the message it was certainly for me growing up coming from two sides, like the cultural side, but also like a a side of just confused, often male coaches who just were like, oh, I don't I don't know what to do with you now.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Definitely, I I can see that it's true. Yeah, but it it's cool that there is also now however difficult, right? Because there's still a lot that is unknown, I guess, in in how to time things with hormones, etc. There is a whole lot more information, right? So if one wants to now be able to track things and adjust training, there is already a lot of possibilities to do that now.

SPEAKER_03 16:24

Yeah, and I think social media has its ups and its downs, but I think that is one advantage of social media is people have access to other people who are sharing their story and saying, hey, this is this is how I experienced this, and this is what I do, and that's definitely helpful. That brings us nicely into the Brava Club in Lisbon. So tell us a bit about how that started and what that's about.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Yeah, yeah, so uh Brava is uh a cycling club. I started with a friend last summer, and the goal is to have we have, I guess we are yet to find a perfect definition of how we want to frame it. At the moment, we have been framing it as Flinta inclusive female club, but we also do not want to exclude men, so we are still trying to find the perfect combination. But the the goal of the club is to try and find create a space where women can feel comfortable and a space that is less intimidating so that more women can get into cycling at different levels, so from social ride, from very entry level, and for all the women that want to train and they want to find partners to go for training rides during the week. Um so the way we have structured it right now is that the WhatsApp group is only women, of course, open to anybody who um uh that feel like they are represented by the term woman, so it's quite open, is identifies as a woman. And um and for the rights, we are open to men that join us plus one. So trying to also ensure that men that come uh are never more than women, so to keep the gender balance in the group and to ensure that it's quite supportive men, knowing that it's a female club and they're joining as plus one. So that's a little bit the the middle ground that we found because we do not want to become exclusive of something else again and create the same problem that has been uh the whole time. So this is just to give the premises. But the the group itself is um well, it's it's a cycling club. We try to do weekly rides. We we have weekly rides on Thursday for short rides, and then um every other weekend we do longer rides. And the goal looking at the longer term and future is to start organizing more adventures as well. So to try and expose women's cycle also to the concept of bikepacking, potentially ultra cycling. So, well, it's it's the club is still quite recent and really grew over the last winter. So we are now finally finding our routine for the weekly rides. But hopefully, end of summer, beginning of autumn, the idea is to start planning also some weekends away, uh, either finding an Airbnb and then doing cycles in gravel or properly doing backpacking weekends together. So that's a little bit the plan. And the club is now over 100 people in our WhatsApp group. Uh of course, it's always fewer people showing up for rides, but for women's uh for women's days on the 8th of March, we organized um yeah, uh a ride that we've been promoting a bit more, and we had over 40 women participating, which was very, very cool and exciting.

SPEAKER_03 19:49

Yeah, yeah. Um and what a great, great idea to make a club that's inclusive, um, where people can feel comfortable to come along for the first time and not worry, um, which I think often puts women off from well, often puts people off from clubs actually, who maybe are not as confident for whatever reason. Um, oh I'm gonna be too slow, I'm gonna be holding people up. Um, and I mean that there are some clubs where they're right. Though, you know, I've I've um I've certainly got some experience of that where they're off, and if you're off the back, well that's tough, you find your own way. Um so I can understand the worry, but it sounds like Brava is not like that. That's a perfect club for people who maybe want to try riding in a group for the first time, um, or just wonder whether it's for them. So, how if somebody's listening from Lisbon, how would how would they join? How would they how would they join the club?

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Yeah, that's that's easy. They just need to send a direct uh DM to our Instagram. So we're trying to be careful with who is able to join the WhatsApp group because we had some places of spam before. So right now, people just have to write to us on Instagram, we send them a form to sign up so that then they're also able to see the profiles of all the members that are part of the community and find potentially other people if they don't feel comfortable with a group. They can also then find a one-on-one partner to go for a ride and then we'll add them to our WhatsApp group.

SPEAKER_03 21:18

Perfect, perfect. And the um the Instagram, the handle on Instagram is at Brava Cycling.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:26

At Brava Cycling Club. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

I believe. I'll yeah, we'll we'll I guess we'll leave the link uh in the in the description, right? Just to be sure. Perfect.

SPEAKER_03 21:36

We'll do that. I'm pretty sure it's at Brava Cycling Club, but yeah, we'll we'll confirm that for sure. Um great, and I mean the these uh Flinter welcoming groups, these sort of inclusive groups are popping up more and more now, and I think that is a a great way forward. And I I love the idea of um extending that so that people have got the opportunity to try a bit of a longer adventure, um, which often people Wouldn't try on their own. Not everybody's as bonkers as you who in a in a foreign country on a different continent where you don't speak the language. Hey, we'll just buy some bikes and cycle along this country. It'll be fine.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:16

But the reality is, is it was fine, and often it is fine, even if you even if things go wrong, you kind of learn along the way, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Yeah, for sure. And I thought I always have when I'm here stressing about how many grams I'm carrying on an ultra. And oh my god, do I have enough CO2 cartridges? And I always think back of the fact that we cycled for a week with backpacks and we had zero tools. And uh when the so the holder of the seat of my friend uh it kind of broke to pieces and the seat went completely down. So it was cycling basically on a bicycle that looked like a Harley. Uh and it was it was tall, it was like one meter 90, and the bike was already small, and we had no we had no tools, we had nothing. We just filled the whole frame with sand so that the seat would stay up, and then we taped it. We only carried tape, so we managed to tape that, but the bike was so heavy, and yet we sold it back to the market like that. So I always think back, I'm like, if that worked, I'm sure everything else will work. We'll find other solutions. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

Nothing like a bit of sand. Um, oh, I love that story. That's great, and a great example, though, isn't it? If you're like you're out there, you've just got to find a way to solve the problem, and so you solve it, and you know, it's not it's not a perfect way, but if it gets you, if it keeps you going, then that's fine. The other thing I thought would be good to talk about is tracker, because you have just finished Tracker Adventure, um, and it was a right epic.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

It was tough. It was definitely tough.

SPEAKER_03 24:01

Yeah, yeah. I think well, it's designed to be tough, I think, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 24:07

I guess I'm not prepared uh um well enough on checking the routes, so I really yeah, it was mentally very tough.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

And what got you through mentally?

SPEAKER_01 24:21

So um the first day, I guess both days, a lot of um messages from friends. I actually reached out to two friends, uh, I guess mid midway through the first midway through the first day, and I wrote to both, it's so tough. I'm really struggling, I'm I'm I'm feeling pooped, I I don't know if I will finish. And I I knew I was triggering my two best friends on this support area. Uh and one sent me a four or five minutes audio message describing all the reasons why I would make it, and I really sent to the message three or four times in a row, so that was great. And the other one started doing almost like uh live uh live reporting on my race, and she was following, she was following my my tracker, and she was like, You're almost at the top, you're almost at the top of the hill. Like the worst part is almost gone. And so I was just like receiving messages and I was looking at them. We could not really call because the connection was on and off, but this really, really helped. Um and on the second day, and this was uh this was incredible luck. Like I got some people, they just saw me on the road. It was people I didn't know, so I always go by the rule like if it's people I don't know and they offer some help, I think that's okay because anybody can receive this help doing an ultra. It's like commercial, it's like a commercial business, but it's a person I don't know that is offering help. And some people offered some food and offered uh to host me, like to give me some space to sleep for the night, which was a game changer because yeah, I didn't want to pay I don't know how much money to stay in a hotel. Um so it was amazing, and yeah, and when I left in the morning, the girl just looked at me, she told me, I know you can do it. And the whole second day I was just looking, I was just thinking, I was like, I have to do it for her, I need to arrive. And when I crossed the line, it was the first person that I wrote to. So it wasn't my mom, it wasn't my friend. I was like, I have to let her know I managed, and because the whole time I was thinking about her, so that made a huge difference for sure.

SPEAKER_03 26:40

Yeah, yeah, what an amazing person. Um, how lucky, how lucky to have found her. Um, such a motivational person. Great. Um, I mean, you did awesome. I think you were in some doubt um from the start, weren't you? I think you were worried maybe that you'd not done the miles. I I was confident that you had the miles in your legs. Um, but I I'm not sure you were that confident because your training had been um you've done this amazing winter block with the great threshold and then the you know the stuff above threshold after that. Um, and then you you'd want you'd done some travelling, and I think that travelling occurred in sort of was probably just at a time where traditionally you would have been doing a lot of miles. Um but I think in some ways that probably played in your favour because you didn't go into it too tired, which is the other problem, is that you can you can really over if you've got the time, you can really overdo the miles and then you just come to the race too tired. Um but yeah, huge congratulations on finishing that and getting across the finishing line. Um was amazing. But it's good to watch.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Yeah, I really I think I really explored some dark places, like besides cycling in the nights, like really dark like states of just constantly debating. Will I stop in one kilometer? Will I stop in one kilometer and like looping around this and looping around yeah, not being enough, and we'll never make it, why am I even here? So it really takes a lot of effort to pull yourself out of that, um, and to enter the zone, and like at some point during the second day, I was finally in the state of okay, now I'm not thinking about anything anymore. Now I'm just going. Of course, like at some point with the tireness, like during the last night, just because I was really not able to eat, then it became very hard again because I was just feeling completely empty, and then I was again in that state of ah, this is never ending, it's never ending, and then finally at like 10 kilometers to go. I stopped, I laid, I laid on the tarmac of the road, like on the side of the road. I laid there, had a little sandwich, and then I was like, okay, it's 10 kilometers, get it together, you can get to the end, and then I finished.

SPEAKER_03 29:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, what I really um find interesting about that is that often when people talk about overcoming difficulty, um they kind of they don't make it sound so hard, but it is it's really hard, as you say. Sometimes it's every every pedal stroke you're thinking, oh, when can I stop? I just want to stop. My body just wants to stop. Why am I doing this? This is awful. Um and the reality is is that's that side of us comes with us all the time, it comes to every race, that side that has doubts, and of course at night it's worse when we're tired or when we're tired, it's worse. Um, but sort of being fully aware that that part of us is in there and is cycling too, but also being aware that actually I can I can talk myself round from this. This is I've been here, we know this story, but most of the time I can talk myself round um from I don't know, whatever you call your that side of yourself, Mrs. Negativity or whatever it is. Um and but to do that once I think gives you a great skill to be able to do that again as well.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

Yes, it's exactly what I thought. Well, not right away when I finished, because when I finished, I was like, never doing this again. And now after a couple of days and actually sleeping and thinking about it. I I I have a race now in mid-June, so it's in a month, and I I was just thinking, wow, I'm so happy it was so difficult. This this event, because I feel so confident about the upcoming event. I'm like, it doesn't matter how hard it's gonna be, I am gonna be mentally so much better. Like I'm feeling so confident about it, so much better.

SPEAKER_03 31:10

Yeah, yeah, that's great. While we're talking about future races, what have you got planned for the rest of the season then?

SPEAKER_01 31:19

I have this race mid-June that is called the GOATs. That is a race here in Portugal in the north, in Serra de Estrela, which is virtually like the highest area of uh of Portugal by Torre, which is a mountain there, and it's a 720 kilometers uh race with uh 50-50 uh gravel and road. And then in August I'm participating in Badlands, which I guess does not need a lot of explanations for those that follow Ultra, but it's 750 kilometers. Uh I guess with a lot of off-road. I don't know what's the percentage of off-road, but it's a race uh taking place in um south of Spain, so around Andalusia.

SPEAKER_03 32:08

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think there's a lot of off-road. Um I think about awesome, awesome cycling, exciting stuff. Great. Well, we'll look forward to to following you in those races, and it's great that you've you've come come out of Tracker feeling confident and ready to tackle the next thing. It's interesting, I think, doing a race early season, which was kind of not planned first off, was it? And then you kind of got the place, and we were like, yeah, just go for it. It's fine. Exactly right. Yeah, and it's it's very different from maybe having like a lot of time to plan and get your head around it and stuff. But you get I think you learn a lot and get a lot of fitness um from during a race early season, even if you feel like you're not performing absolutely at your best. I think still it can still be worth doing. The next thing I wanted to talk about was a film because you have a film coming out soon, so tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

Yes, um, indeed. So uh on yeah, for the last it has been a very long project, but with uh a friend, we made a docu film, it's called Desert Lilies. Uh Desert Lilies mainly because well, so the movie is about uh female perspectives in endurance sports. So the the main focus is actually uh the story of my first ultra cycle race, which was Desertus Baikus. So it was uh ultra starting from south of France and going all the way to near Lisbon, so in Portugal, and crossing some of the deserted areas of Spain. And I guess creating some parallelism on the first part, uh doing interviews with Anna Comet, who is a professional uh ultra trail runner who won Marathon de Sable. So yeah, when trying to find a like a common ground between the two, because of course we do different sports, but we're both in in the endurance world. The term desert lilies came up because that first race was through quite deserted areas, and she won Marathon de Sable, which is of course is in the is uh it's an ultra running in the desert, and so it kind of felt like these lilies, these flowers, these few women in the desert, and that's why desert lilies, the women in the endurance sports, which are few and resisting strong to everything that happens. But yeah, so this was a little bit about the name, but so the docu film uh is it's it's something that that kind of started forming an idea way before we I actually decided to make a docu film. So, like during during some of my backpacking trip, I reported uh making YouTube videos, and I always thought I it would be so good to try and show a perspective that is female because I can find so little uh inspiration online that is that is where I feel represented because for so many backpacking trips and so many ultras, at least at the time, so 10 years ago, it was mainly male. And and so for a while I thought I would like to do something a little bit better, better done because I don't have filmography or editing skills myself. So everything was very authentic but not very professional in the content that I was making. And so I reached out to a friend who was a very good YouTuber, he makes a lot of content, and I told him I really want to do something together, and that's a little bit how it started. And I signed up right away for the Ultra, and we and we said, okay, that's gonna be great. We're gonna try and get many different women, many different perspectives, many different sports. And then at the end, we were confronted with the reality of you also need a budget to do all of this. So yeah, so yeah, we started with a well, I had grand plans of showing all the different sports, and then eventually we went through crowdfunding, we raised quite a bit with crowdfunding, we managed to find a couple of sponsors from nutrition, from cycling, that also gave us some financial support. And so we had an okay budget, so around 10k plus some material support for the movie, but 10k is still quite a small budget if you need to pay for the cinematographer, for the editors, for the music. So eventually we settled down on this idea of okay, let's just stick to the main storyline, which is the race, and then we try and combine it with another sport to just bring somebody who comes from a more professional background instead of being amateur like me. And that's why we then managed to find a way of combining Anna in the story and having these two sports that I think work quite well together. Um, we finished the movie last year, June, and since then we we have been doing a couple of yeah screens, screenings for friends and family in Lisbon, in Italy, in Berlin, like also a little bit uh yeah, uh improvised in like cycling cycling shops, black bike shops that hosted us, which was quite cool. Um, and now recently um I guess things picked up a little bit more. We screened in a film festival in Sicily, and we're screening next week uh at the Lisbon Sports Film Festival uh here in Lisbon next Saturday, and we are in conversation with a platform, it's a it's a streaming platform that is focused on sports and adventure. So I guess yeah, it's a niche, it's it's a niche platform, but we want the movie to be somewhere that it can be seen, and um, and we're probably gonna try and put it on a platform like this so that everybody can see it.

SPEAKER_03 38:02

That would be amazing. Let us know. Let us know if you if you get that.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

And I guess I can I can share with you, and then we can add in description the trailer of the Docu film so that they can also have a sense of uh what the movie is about.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:16

Yeah, yeah, the trailer's worth worth a watch. I think we've shared that um um at least once on our uh site at insurance bike and run uh doc. Tell us a bit more about Desert Lilies then and the the way the story unfolds and what it means to you.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

The yeah, so the the objective of of the movie it was to show a different perspective to what can always be found, which is often the more competitive perspective, like I have this big competition and I need to achieve it, and then the audience is just following this grand thing, and of course, it still it's perceived as a grand thing because it's an ultra, and the audience empathizes with oh my god, how many kilometers, but the goal was to really show maybe also the softer side to it, like getting to know the character and seeing yeah, it's seeing a perspective that is often not shown when the it's male characters in in the documentaries or in the content you can find, and we wanted to ensure that to to make it actually less intimidating. Like we are showing, we are showing this big thing, uh, so it's uh a thousand four hundred kilometers, and the goal is that at the end you don't think, oh wow, this is a super athlete, and she has done this big thing. I'm just wow, but it's so far away from me. The goal was oh, this is a person that decided that they will train for this, but it's a person that I can empathize with. And we did some legal interviews also to other women at the beginning of the race and at the end, and you can see that it's it's all yeah, like if my hope would be, and uh luckily and happily, I've heard a little bit after uh the last screenings that people come to me and they say at the end, oh I now I I think I also want to do a big thing. Like I also can do it. Doesn't matter if it doesn't matter if it's cycling, it doesn't matter if it's sports, it can be anything, um, to just yeah, be able to empathize a little bit more, which is what I was lacking from the content that was out there. Of course, in the last four or five years, there has been a huge change, and now one can argue there is a lot of content, not maybe enough, but there is more content. And the goal is that it just becomes more and more because more people are engaging with whatever they want to do and sharing it, and that other feels inspired. So that was a little bit the goal uh yeah behind desert to to ensure that everybody feels more represented and that they feel more empowered to do what whatever they want to do.

SPEAKER_03 40:57

I think that's really important, um, for sure, that um people look at something and think that's something I can do too. Um, I'm just I'm just thinking about um somebody John coached um for a long time, Karen Dark, and she watched the Paralympics, I think in 2008, and thought, I want to go to that, I want to do that. Um and and she did do that. Um she got she got some help and she got some support, and she did do that. Um, but it's having that mindset, isn't it? And for some people that's really hard because there's all the things that we talked about earlier about culture, about what's expected, um, but also just because I think sometimes people doubt themselves to think, oh that's that's not for me, that's too much, that's that's not something I could do. So having you know having those messages there that are and you can do this too, um, are really important, especially for for women, but for everybody.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

To to be completely honest, like sometimes for for myself as well. Like sometimes when I re-watch parts of the movie, and there was a specific moment, and you're not able to be at all times the same person, and sometimes because I have so many doubts, that I look back and I'm like, okay, like oh, maybe I can do that again, but like I I it's not a constant, like I I alternate, and then I also get a huge doubts, and then I have to motivate myself again. So I'm very happy to have this piece of content that I can look again and like okay, yeah, I guess I did it that time, I could do it again, and then I try to push again.

SPEAKER_03 42:39

Yeah, um, yeah, and just the message that that is normal, you know, like what you were saying in tracker, where you're thinking, I might quit next kilometer, I might quit. Am I going to quit the next kilometer? Um, it's a very normal part of um ultra racing. Um, and sometimes not the part that we see. We see them everybody smiling, don't we, at the end, because they've been amazing. So, yeah, it's really, it's really, it's really important that people kind of feel like they can do it, but also know that doing it doesn't mean that it's going to be this amazing journey where everything just works smoothly and you feel on top of the world all the time. Because she says, sometimes you feel really, really awful. Um, but it's the coming through that that I think we enjoy. We enjoy looking back and thinking, yeah, that was really hard, but I did that, and I think that that builds confidence um in a way that nothing else can. This is probably quite a nice time to ask this question, then, which is just about um if you have one message that you could give to girls and women watching or listening to this podcast who are maybe thinking about an adventure or thinking about starting something, what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_01 43:54

Yeah, well, besides they go for it and try it. Which is the most obvious. I would say maybe to remember that they don't have to do it alone. Like that it takes a village, and in a lot of moments to get through it, you need that those people around you. So like, well, of course, it's like go for it, and like you should be the hero of your story and try to make sure that that happens. Make sure to lean on the people around you that will be empowering you. And as you will be supporting your friends in other moments, like the support can come back, and there's a lot of yeah. If you I think if you if you are or have the right attitude, there's a lot of good karma out there of um of support that can come and can empower you in their way. Um if it feels intimidating and you don't feel comfortable doing it alone, don't do it alone. Find find a club, find a friend, find somebody else that wants to create accountability. I think uh we always have this big vision, I don't know why, of people reaching success alone and this individualism. And I think it doesn't have to be like we can achieve things together and it makes it so much easier. And there's no, I don't know, there I don't I don't think there's necessarily so much extra value in like, oh my god, you did it alone. I think it doesn't matter as long as you do it, just if you want to achieve it, find the people to do it with.

SPEAKER_03 45:28

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really good point, actually, that sometimes we feel like we've it's got to be hours and hours alone. Um, and the journey is still yours, whether you're sharing that and getting help from other people or not, the journey is still yours. Um asking for some help along the way is is often a very good idea and and can make it better.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

Yeah, and yeah, this shared experience will be more fun, right?

SPEAKER_03 45:53

Yeah, yeah. And it's a gift as well. Um, it's a gift to receive help, but it's also a gift to allow people to help you. Um because we all know how nice it is to be able to help people, don't we? Yeah. So being the person that's given that gift is a good thing too. Yeah. Well, Alice, thank you so much. Thanks so much for taking the time today and for all your insights into ultra racing and cycling. Um, and for your encouragement and support of women, not just here, but in everything you do, in the way you post on Instagram, and people see that. And I think people are affected by that. I think it does motivate people. And of course, the the Brava, the Brava Cycling Club and the film will will all just add to that. So thanks so much.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was very fun. Uh good.

SPEAKER_03 46:46

Good. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

Hope to see more people on Brava from this podcast. Yeah, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_03 46:53

Having someone who's in it with you can make a real big difference to how consistent you are with your training and also to how you complete your event. Endurance bike and run, we've got years of experience of working with women, helping them to achieve that big idea. So if you'd like some help and support, you can contact me at Claire at EnduranceBikeandrun.com. That's C-L-A-R-E at endurancebike and run.com, or you can check out our coaching services at endurancebike and run dot com. We have group training programmes as well as one-to-one coaching options. We look forward to hearing from you soon.