E9. Sabrina Verjee

This episode of The Checkpoint podcast is sponsored by The North Face®️.

In episode 9 we speak with Sabrina Verjee, who is a 40-year old small animal vet by day and a top 10 race ranking, FKT smashing, mountain loving ultrarunner the rest of the time.

In 2020 alone, she was the first woman in The Spine Race Winter Edition (268 miles). She completed the Wainwright Round (326 miles and 118,000ft ascent) in 6 days, 17 hours, and 51 minutes and she also claimed the women’s record for running The Pennine Way (268 miles) in 3 days, 2 hours and 28 minutes and - point to note here – she was running into a headwind for 140 miles of this!

In her sporting life, Sabrina has competed in modern pentathlon, rowing and – before getting into ultrarunning - adventure racing, which she’ll tell us more about in this episode. She ventured into to ultrarunning after finding the amount of kit she needed for the adventure stuff ‘a bit of a faff’ and realised a talent for the discipline which led to her taking part in her first ultra – the Grand Tour of Skiddaw - in which she came in as 1st woman and was 5th overall.

Look up her accomplishments and you’ll see her placing top 10 in some of the most gruelling races there are, if not outright winning them. Sabs says her challenges are holidays and a ‘chance to switch off’.