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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.

Changing mindset

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.”

Finding calm and simplicity

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.

Friendship comes first

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.

Triathlete Shirin Gerami’s persistence in pushing Iran to allow her, as a woman, to compete led to a win that transcends sport. Her journey is the latest in our Huck x HOKA series, looking at mavericks who found a new perspective through running.

The night before racing in a triathlon most people keep things fairly relaxed. They’ll pack their bags, perhaps eat a giant plate of pasta, piled up high like a pyramid, and have an early night. But before her first World Championships Shirin Gerami was doing none of those things.

Instead, she was rushing around trying to get government permission just to compete in the event. To represent Iran, she needed the okay from the Ministry of Sports there and for the past six months the answer had been a consistent and resounding “No.”

Then suddenly, hours before the race, she got an email confirming she was allowed to compete and Shirin Gerami became the first-ever woman to represent Iran in a world triathlon competition. A mould-breaking moment.

Breaking the mould

Her journey to that point was as improbable as it is inspiring. Starting with the fact she had zero interest in sport as a child, which isn’t surprising because in Iran, where she was born and lived from the ages of 10 to 15, girls aren’t encouraged to play sport. “In the schools I went to, phys-ed was quite weak,” she says. “It was never a seriously sporty session. It was more girls sitting around a courtyard reading books.”

She did however love nature and hiking. “I was around 13 when my mum’s cousin, who always loved hiking and the outdoors, told me I should go hiking with her in the [Alborz] mountains, which Tehran [where she lived] is at the foot of. She seemed to know every single person there and she introduced me and said, ‘If you ever see her, take care of her.’”

After that, Shirin would go hiking in the mountains before school most days, leaving at 4 or 5 a.m. in her school uniform. “I’d come down smelly and sweaty and go to school,” she laughs.

When she was 18, she and two friends spontaneously took a hiking trip from Tehran to the Caspian Sea. They were having an amazing time until the fifth night when they got attacked in their tent by a group of men with “large daggers and knives fit to cut off the carcass of sheep.”

The experience was transformative for Shirin, causing her to be diagnosed with a mental illness, but also helping her realise that sport was her way back. “Anytime I’ve gone through a down or hard times,” she says, “it’s always been sports and the outdoors that helped me come back up again from the depths of downness.”

Starting out in triathlon

She went to university at Durham in England, and in her final year found the courage to try triathlon. “I didn’t consider myself sporty in anyway. Triathlon seemed totally impossible and out of my reach but I like an adventure…”

Still, she was completely intimidated at the start. “I was the last person in the slowest lane in the pool, I had to walk my bike up the hill and I was the one who was getting lapped on the track,” she says.

But she kept going and made progress. The thought of racing terrified Shirin but she’d made good friends in the sport and they persuaded her to try. At each stage of her first race, she expected to be stopped for going too slowly. But she never was.

Was she euphoric at the finish line? “It was more the realisation that we underestimate ourselves daily. We don’t show up to the start line; we give up before having even tried.”

She moved to London for work and joined a triathlon club “for the fun and love of it.” Then ahead of the ITU World Championships, which in 2013 were taking place in London, she was chatting with some triathlon friends about the various nationalities that would be represented in the race. “We all laughed and joked and said, ‘Iran, haha well that’s not going to be possible.’ But that night I thought, ‘Hang on. You dismissed something, without actually exploring it.’”

Making the grade

The next morning she called up the triathlon federation in Iran and asked why exactly women couldn’t race. After many questions, the first tangible thing she found was it had to do with clothing and Iran’s non-negotiable stance on women covering up. Shirin thought this would be a simple thing to solve, but it took her six months of sourcing various outfits, and pictures and emails and flights to Iran before the Ministry of Sports delivered that magical “Yes.”

Race day was the first time she’d worn her sanctioned outfit, which included a hijab. The kit was not the easiest thing to compete in, but in that first race, Shirin wasn’t worrying about that. “The relief of getting the permission was beyond anything, I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh it feels a little heavy.’”

Four years on from that ground-breaking race, she has many more triathlons under her belt including the iconic Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, which she did last year. Thirteen hours of hardcore exercise over 140.6 miles, all in a hijab, covered to her wrists and toes.

She still feels there’s room for improvement in terms of kit that women can compete in fairly and safely while adhering to strict Islamic codes. “Some people find arts therapy, some people find sports therapy… I dream of a world where everyone could access sports — should they want to. And if clothing really is the area that is stopping you from accessing sport, then I think that’s something that needs to be looked at.”

But Shirin’s legacy is already in full effect. She’s inspired women all over the world, and in 2017, Iran sent a team of female triathletes to the Central Asian Championships for the first time, which was “very uplifting” for her.

“I hope these opportunities will continue growing,” she says. “In the UK, I rock up to whatever club I want to join and start training. It’s as a simple as that. Whereas if I’d been a girl living in Iran, I would not for one second have known what a triathlon was. And I’d have missed out on the confidence, empowerment and joy it’s brought to my life.”

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.

Learn more about the innovative Clifton trainers Shirin wears.

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Running away from the rat race and ending up in a photo-finish