Who is your biggest fan? What is your earliest sporting memory? What is your greatest strength? And if you were an animal, which animal would you be?
Find out the answers to all these and more in our 70.3 Seconds series with the HOKA athletes who competed last weekend at the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Nice, France.
Photo and video credit: Activ’Images
Unique. Historique. Légendaire. HOKA ONE ONE was there every step of the way last weekend for the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship.
Fourteen years after the first-ever half IRONMAN World Championship race took place in Florida, USA, we were live in the city of Nice, France, where the event was taking place for the first time.
Did you know that the ‘70.3’ in the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship refers to the total distance, in miles, that athletes complete in a half IRONMAN event? So that’s 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike and 13.1 mile run.
The race featured a swim in the pristine waters of the Mediterranean Sea, a challenging bike course up and back down Col de Vence followed by a run course along Nice’s historic Promenade des Anglais waterfront to finish.
Athletes were cheered on by enthusiastic supporters for every mile of the 70.3 course, particularly along the HOKA ONE ONE Time To Fly Zone where bands, banners and ice cream made for a festival atmosphere.
The half IRONMAN race featured high-class fields across all professional and age-group races. HOKA athlete Manon Genêt finished eighth and posted the highest finish in the pro races for the brand.
The international endurance event provided the perfect opportunity for our elite athletes from across the world to come together as one team, one HOKA ONE ONE.
While in Nice, we took the chance to speak to HOKA athletes. We hosted a live Facebook interview on the Promenade des Anglais with US athlete Ben Kanute and IRONMAN legend Eric Gilsenan ahead of the men’s championship race.
HOKA athletes, including Emma Pallant, Ellie Salthouse and Josh Amberger, kindly took part in our 70.3 Seconds Series, where we asked them some quickfire questions and got to know them a little better.
Watch now and find out what our athletes’ greatest strengths are, their earliest sporting memories and whether they prefer their eggs poached, scrambled or fried.
Away from the racing action, fans had the chance to road-test the record-breaking Carbon X on a group run and try out all the latest HOKA products at our expo stand, including the ultra-light, uber-cushioned speedster Rincon.
Swim, bike, fly. It all comes down to the run.
Photo credit: Activ’Images | @thatcameraman
When you’ve spent the past decade travelling the globe and running in some of the biggest trail races in the world, what do you do to stay motivated?
If you’re HOKA athlete Julien Chorier, you take to the Alps and tackle the 295-kilometre challenge of the Tarentaise, of course.
“At the beginning of the year, I couldn’t really find a main aim for the season, so I made the decision to create it,” says Julien, speaking just before his appearance in the TDS race at this year’s Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) event, where he finished ninth.
“I really wanted to create something new, something that would allow me to discover new things,” he adds.
But the opportunity for Julien to share this experience with his family and closest friends was the biggest motivating factor behind his record attempt.
“Most of all, I wanted to do it in an environment that I knew well, somewhere close to home, so that my friends, family and training partners could all be a part of it too.”
Julien completed his ‘Grand Tour de la Tarentaise’ in a record 66 hours and 13 minutes.
The 38-year-old, who lives in Saint-Thibaud-de-Couz, France with his wife and two daughters, has enjoyed an elite trail-running career spanning more than a decade.
“Most of all, I wanted to do it in an environment that I knew well, somewhere close to home, so that my friends, family and training partners could all be a part of it too.” Julien Chorier
Julien won the CCC race at UTMB in 2007 and finished on the podium in the 171-kilometre event the following year.
He has won prestigious trail races around the world, and is a two-time winner of the Grand Raid de la Réunion, also known as ‘La Diagonale des Fous’.
La Diagonale des Fous translates to ‘The Madmen’s Diagonal’ in English, rather fitting given Julien’s appetite to take on the toughest of challenges.
The Tarentaise is more renowned for its beautiful ski resorts and the route Julien tackled featured 295 kilometres and up to 20,000m of elevation. It was certainly the sort of challenge he was after.
“I left Val Thorens on the Friday morning under sunny skies and just happy to be there,” recalls Julien. “I didn’t dare to consider the magnitude of the task before me at that point!”
The sunny skies didn’t last. Battling heavy rain and hailstorms, rocky paths, landslides and crippling fatigue, Julien arrived back at Val Thorens a little over 66 hours later.
Julien’s journey was documented the entire way by Aurélien Colin and his Athlete 2.0 crew for a special feature film that premiered this week at UTMB.
It will be 2019 before the film is officially released – but for now, share in the spirit of Julien’s adventure with this teaser.
“Our motto was that, alone, we go faster,” says Julien, “but with many, we go further. I think we achieved that with this challenge.”
Amandine Ferrato gave up competitive running to travel the world. She found a new outlook that led to a national team spot — and thrilling results. Her journey is the latest in our Huck x HOKA series, looking at mavericks who found a new perspective through running.
Trail running is nothing like the 100m sprint. There is no swagger at the start, no golden spikes, and no agonising wait while the judges deliberate over the outcome of a super-tight photo finish. Razor-thin wins are not the norm at all. In fact, it wouldn’t be unusual for several minutes to pass between the runner who finished first, arms aloft, and the guy, or girl, who came in second.
Except one sunny day in June this year, the opposite of that became true. And the crowds lining the route into the tiny village of Badia Prataglia in Italy were treated to a finish so dramatic, it wouldn’t have looked out of place in a packed Olympic stadium. The race, which also happened to be the World Trail Running Championships, saw Amandine Ferrato of France finish just three seconds behind her compatriot Adeline Roche.
A crazy-small margin given they’d been racing for five hours, over 50 kilometres, through the brutally steep forest mountain trails that characterise this northern Tuscan backwater. But what was even more surprising than the theatrical finish was the fact Amandine hadn’t actually wanted to win.
To understand why, we need to zoom out from the race and rewind back to the beginning. Amandine wasn’t a particularly sporty kid. She liked phys-ed at school but did nothing beyond that. Hot-housed by competitive, athletics-loving parents she was not. “Kids today do everything,” she says. “They do all kinds of sport when they’re young, but it wasn’t like that then in my village. It just wasn’t something people did.”
Still at 20, when she finished her studies and had more time, she decided to give running a go and found she liked it — a lot. She even joined up with a club and coach and entered road races and 10km events. But she soon grew tired of it all. Amandine got sick of the relentless pacing and focus on times. She did some mountain biking, but then decided to go travelling, embarking on a 10-month trip through Central America, Asia and Australia that would radically change her mindset and shape her worldview.
“It definitely changed my state of mind; my way of viewing the world,” she says. “I was living like a local, consuming less, being in touch with nature. When I came back to France, I felt stifled by consumerism. I wanted to live more simply.”
She stayed with a friend who lived near a hill, which loomed large in her imagination, so she started running up it. “I got a lot of pleasure doing that,” she says, “I liked the contact with nature; the calmness and simplicity of it. It helped me find myself and wake up to what I wanted to do next.”
Some friends entered her in a trail running event, and even though she had no kit and her “trainers were terrible,” she surprised herself by winning. She got a cash prize, which enabled her to buy some decent trail running shoes. “I kept them very preciously,” she says, “like a collector.”
“I got a lot of pleasure running up the hill. I liked the contact with nature; the calmness and simplicity of it. It helped me find myself and wake up to what I wanted to do next.” Amandine Ferrato
After that “the current kind of took me along.” She did some more races and this year, she found herself in the French team ahead of the World Championships. Amandine became good friends with her teammates, and was especially close to Adeline Roche, the runner who would finish just ahead of her in Badia Prataglia.
During the race, Adeline lead from the start with a small group of other runners, while Amandine was comfortably placed in the group behind them. Yet by the halfway-point Amandine had moved up to second position behind Adeline, who by now was two minutes ahead. Then the leader had some stomach problems so Amandine caught up, and the two of them ran the end of the race together, neck and neck.
Amandine appeared to have a chance to go ahead and win the race but she didn’t take it, then Adeline sprinted for the line and won by three seconds. “It’s very rare to have as close a finish as that,” says Amandine. “We were together the two of us. We hadn’t prepared for it to be like that. I had a conflict in my head: I couldn’t pass her, out of respect for our friendship and the race. I thought we’d cross the line hand in hand.”
“To share the podium with Adeline was special. I might not do it again in the future, but at that moment I was very much in the moment, and reacting with my heart.” Amandine Ferrato
But Amandine has no regrets about the way things turned out. In fact, in the video of the finish she looks even more elated with her second position than Adeline was coming first. “I am very much an emotional person,” she says. “I feel it in my heart, where as she is much more rational and down to earth.”
“She is from a road running culture, with times in her head, and I’m more from a culture of trail running and nature. I have no regrets about not winning. To share (the podium) with her was one of the special things about that day. I might not do it again in the future, but at that moment I was very much in the moment, and reacting with my heart.”
Huck is a youth culture channel. It celebrates and explores independent culture — people and movements that paddle against the flow. Find out more about HUCK.
Check out the FAST, TOUGH TRAIL RUNNING SPEEDGOAT SHOES Amandine wears.
No matter where you are, there are new paths to run and trails to discover. Join Anne-Laure as she takes us for a run along her favourite trail route in Bordeaux, France.
My philosophy is: it doesn’t matter what sport you’re practicing as long as you enjoy it. After finishing my first marathon, my passion for running continues to grow and grow.
I’m always pushing to discover new playgrounds off the beaten track, in the city or out in the wild. Whether it’s near my home in Bordeaux or in one of the places I’ve visited around the world, I’m always looking to share my love of exercise on my blog Bonjour Darling.
I absolutely love running. I’ve always ran from time to time, but for the last two years it has become a true passion and nothing can stop me now.
After always running on roads and paths, I have discovered a new love for trail running. I’ve been tempted since my first Spartan Race, but my new-found passion was confirmed during a race I did recently in Bilbao. I realised it was time to go and discover a trail run on my own.
I started off by getting the right pair of shoes, then I searched for a running spot close to my home in Bordeaux where I could run in the wilderness, with hill climbs, descents and a beautiful view. That’s how I discovered Ermitage Park.
A few kilometres away from Bordeaux, Ermitage Park is really easy to access. It’s located only 6km from the city centre and you can run along the banks of the Garonne to get there. Once at the park entrance, in front of an arch covered with graffiti, at first you could be a bit puzzled and wonder if you’re on the right track, but cross the arch and let the adventure begin.
Start running, discover the lake, take small paths through the woods, climb the stairs and make your way to the top of the park to appreciate a magnificent view of Bordeaux. If you want to run further into the wilderness, Palmer Park is not far either. To get back to the city centre you can follow the riverside again, but this time try the left bank. This side is wilder and will smooth your return to civilization.
The look of the Challenger ATR 3 surprised me. I tend to always run with the same type of shoes, so these were quite a change, but they intrigued me. to take up trail running, I knew that my basic running trainers would not be appropriate.
“I feel like I have a better stride and my foot now falls more on the front and not the heel, without my control.” Anne-Laure Saux
When the shoes arrived and I put them on I was surprised. The soles that looked imposing in photos are not that big, and ultimately, I really liked them. From that first step when I started running, I liked them even more. I feel like I have a better stride and my foot now falls more on the front and not the heel, without my control.
Learn more about the Challenger ATR 3 shoes Anne-Laure wears.
