Beatrice Lessi

I never ran a step until I was forty.

Then I signed up for the Marathon des Sables. No training plan. No athletic background. Just curiosity and a stubborn refusal to accept the story I’d been told about myself. That decision took me across the Sahara, to the start line of the Everest Marathon, and to Antarctica for the world’s most remote race.

Thirty marathons and ultras later, I’ve completed all six Abbott World Marathon Majors and I’m currently training for Sydney to claim my 7 Continents Medal. Only around 450 women in the world have done it.

I’m Italian and Swiss, based in Zurich, mother of three daughters, and I’ve visited 75 countries. I studied literature in Pisa, spent nine years as a bond broker in London, lived in New York, and somehow ended up running ultramarathons in deserts. None of this was the plan. And it was one hell of a ride!