Endurance athlete Sophie Power might have come to running later than most, but she’s more than making up for it.
After leaving behind a career in investment banking, the British athlete jumped into the world of ultrarunning and now has two world records to her name.
She recently broke the record for the most distance covered by a woman on a treadmill in 48 hours. It follows an equally impressive feat last year, in which she became the fastest female to cross Ireland on foot.
In her latest challenge, Power covered more than 365 km (226.8 miles) across two days in January, running and hiking on a treadmill at the National Running Show in Birmingham, England.
Her achievement – which is still subject to usual ratification from Guinness World Records – was driven in part by her burning passion to improve access for women in sport.
“You need to set something slightly outside your comfort zone because, if I said I was going to do something I knew I could do, you don’t get that achievement at the finish,” she tells CNN Sport when asked how she chooses her challenges.
“Also, it’s got to be really personal, it’s got to mean something to you.”
Despite her endurance feats, Power is cautious about being a role model to others. She says inspiration can sometimes be dangerous if people do not see it in a more realistic context.
As a mother of three, who has faced barriers to entry throughout her endurance career, the 42-year-old wants to provide a more realistic picture of what sacrifices she makes in order to achieve.
“I think we put lots of pictures up of women achieving things without saying how they do things, and that only gives us that desire to do something but doesn’t say how we do it,” she says.
“It’s important to say, ‘This is my training, this is my childcare, this is my multitasking, this is what I don’t do.’ Like my house is always a mess, I don’t put makeup on in the morning, I don’t care about what I wear, I don’t watch TV, I don’t go out all the time, so there’s all stuff I don’t do, so I can do things.”