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The burlesque dancer who became a marathon runner

Dancing in the spotlight of a burlesque stage taught Inga Poste that she could push limits elsewhere in her life too. Her journey is the latest in our Huck x HOKA series, looking at mavericks who found a new perspective through running.

A tiny stage in an intimate venue in Berlin. So tiny, in fact, the audience is within touching distance. The light is pink, not too white, not too red, exactly as Inga Poste told the technician it should be. Her act is about to start and she doesn’t know what she’ll get. If people are used to burlesque, or if they are first-timers who have no idea what to do and need to be encouraged.

“I love the first minute when you’re up on stage and you’re trying to see how people react, trying to engage them. It’s a very cool moment, because you need to open up completely but at the same time you’re playing a role. It’s a lot of fun to let go and be in that moment.”

Building up the courage

It also takes a lot of courage. Looking gracious, cool and mysterious on stage is one – pretty hard – thing, being brave enough to take your clothes off in front of an audience while still looking graceful is a special skill. But a very transferable one, according to Inga, whose second great passion is running. “Burlesque made me a lot more self confident, which transfers to running. You have to believe in yourself to be able to run a marathon. And the confidence that burlesque gave me made it possible for me to believe in myself.”

Inga, who has been running for a decade, has been focusing not so much on time, recently, but distance. She now runs marathons. Numerous medals dot her West Berlin apartment. They even adorn the dressmaking doll she uses to design her burlesque costumes. But she’s still reluctant to describe herself as a natural athlete.

In fact Inga hated phys-ed and always got picked last for schoolyard teams. But unlike other sporting Cinderellas, she didn’t use this common experience of childhood humiliation to push herself to be the hardest, the strongest and fastest. The opposite is true.

“I run for myself and I work very hard to keep it that way. When you train with other people you start comparing yourself very quickly, you see other times improving and want to improve your own time, all the time. I try to stop when I have pushed my body as far as it can go.”

Running as therapy

Running is therapy for Inga, a healthy outlet for feelings she used to suppress. She is a high achiever – she just finished her studies and works as a literary agent specialising in memoirs and in cinema. Growing up, she was always keen to meet the high expectations of others. Expressing her own desires and accepting things as they are was something she had to learn. “Through running and dancing I learnt that it can’t all be about perfection. That always makes you unhappy. After running 42 km you need to be able to be proud and say you did something amazing, even if you are somewhere near the bottom of the table.”

Inga doesn’t run to look good for others either. “I’m training my body to be fit, not for other people to like my body. It’s not about being thin, but about being strong for myself.”

A bit of extra strength obviously comes in handy for the highly athletic pole dancing she incorporates in her routines. But for Inga, dancing isn’t only about physical strength. It’s empowering for her to reclaim the rhinestones and the glitter; to take traditional notions of femininity and turn it all into something powerful by really owning it. “Burlesque taught me to be upfront with myself, when I’m on stage I’m in charge of everything.”

Powerful women

It doesn’t come as a massive surprise that a lot of Inga’s friends from the burlesque scene are also powerful women. They are strong “because they all went through something in their lives that they had to be strong for.” But there’s also a party side to burlesque, a “little girl side with sparkly things and makeup and hair.”

There is also a transgressive, challenging side to the scene. But Inga doesn’t get involved in blood, guts or gore — as do some of the more extreme artists out there. Her latest performance was all about chains. “I emerged from these chains as my act went on. I was freeing myself from something, becoming more myself. It’s like when you hit the wall in a marathon or longer run. You’re in pain; you feel trapped and as if you can’t go on. But you do go on and the feeling you get next is everything.”

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 responsive and lightweight Hupana trainers Inga wears.

How running helped Lucy Campbell surf like a pro

With an eye on the 2020 Olympics, surfer Lucy Campbell is hoping her athletic instincts will pay off on a quest for gold. Lucy’s story is the latest in our Huck x HOKA series, looking at mavericks who found a new perspective through running.

When most people go surfing, they don’t have a plan. They’re out there to ride whatever waves come their way; they’re happy go with the flow. Lucy Campbell, however, has a different approach. When she goes surfing, she likes to set challenges for herself.

The 22-year-old pro surfer from Devon, who hopes to qualify for the Olympics in 2020, often tells herself: “I’m not getting out of the water until I’ve done three turns on a wave, or until I’ve done a proper carve where I’ve remembered to put my hand here, or looked back at the whitewater, or whatever.”

Measuring progression

Such a habit is a legacy from Lucy’s days as a competitive runner. She was one of the best young middle distance athletes in the UK until foot injuries forced her to quit. She still runs for fun, but one of the things she misses most about her athletics training was how easy it was to measure progression.

“I miss racing against the clock,” she says. “That feeling of improvement, of pushing yourself, and knowing next time you’re going to be better. With surfing it’s tricky to know if you’re improving.”

Her biggest frustrations with the sport are the vagaries of quantifying good surfing – the way one judge might score a wave as a 10, while another might say it’s an eight – as well as relying on the ever-shifting sea conditions. “There are so many different variables in surfing that are so far from your control,” she says, “With athletics, it was just me, my trainers and the track. Just go for it. I liked that.”

Competitive spirit

Lucy has been running for as long as she can remember. As a child, she used to race her older brothers along the beach after school. “I was always really competitive with them,” she says. “They were quite a bit older, but I still tried as hard as I could to keep up with them. I don’t think I ever really thought about the fact they were boys, I just thought I should be as fast as them.”

“I miss racing against the clock. That feeling of improvement, of pushing yourself, and knowing next time you’re going to be better.” Lucy Campbell

It’s a mentality she’s also brought to her surfing. She joined the local lifesaving club at a young age and when she was around 10, her dad took her out surfing. “I had a swimming hat and goggles on,” she says with a laugh. “He pushed me into waves and I loved it from the start.” But she’s never thought of herself as a female surfer — she just happens to be a woman who surfs.

“Growing up, there weren’t many girls who surfed on the same beach as me. So naturally, I surfed with a lot of boys; my brothers, or the locals boys that surfed. I think that helped push me as well. I just saw them doing things and thought, ‘I want to do that.’ It never occurred to me that I couldn’t.”

Headstrong and determined

Lucy’s self-belief has been key to both her running and surfing success. She once raced in the English Schools’ Athletics Championships with a searing pain in her foot – one so strong that she almost passed out. But she kept running to the end, telling herself it was only a few minutes to get through. After the race, she found out she’d been racing with a broken foot.

“Thank goodness there was something really wrong and it wasn’t just me!” she says now, adding: “But even if they’d said I couldn’t race, I probably would have done anyway.”

Being headstrong has helped with her surfing many times too. Like the time in Bryon Bay when she got stuck in a narrow channel while a big set rolled in. As the waves smashed her into some rocks, she had to stay calm and keep paddling. Eventually, she made her way to safety.

“I tried as hard as I could to keep up with them. I don’t think I ever really thought about the fact they were boys, I just thought I should be as fast as them.” Lucy Campbell

That dogged determination is an essential trait when you’re trying to be a professional surfer and you hail from Devon, rather than Hawaii, California or Australia. Instead of perfecting your moves in consistent warm-water waves under sunny skies, you’re faced with a frigid-cold wind-blown mess and trying to manoeuvre in a thick wetsuit and hood rather than a bikini or board shorts.

“It’s definitely a lot harder here as we haven’t got the same wave quality as a lot of other countries,” she says. “If the waves are good, I’ll be in for five or six hours a day. But even if they’re not good, I’ll still get in and give it a go.”

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 FLY MACH TRAINERS Lucy wears.

From skateboarding prankster to extreme endurance athlete

What did Matthew Pritchard, Welsh pro skateboarder and all-round daredevil do next after leaving the Dirty Sanchez crew? We find out in the first profile in our Huck x HOKA series, looking at mavericks who found a new perspective through running.

Matt Pritchard was used to seeing himself look wrecked on TV. As a creator and co-star of Dirty Sanchez, MTV’s notorious noughties prank show, being filmed doing stupid stuff while drunk and high was essentially his job description.

Nostrils were super-glued together, tongues were stapled. One week he was whacked with a meat tenderiser until his skin bled, another he was slapped in the face with a cactus. He always felt fine about it. Found it funny even. Until one day he didn’t.

From carnage to Cardiff

“I saw some footage of myself on TV and I thought, ‘Christ what’s happened to me? I looked an absolute wreck and I thought that’s not the person I used to be,’” he says. “I have wicked memories of those Dirty Sanchez days, but I wanted to change. So I thought, ‘I wonder if I can do the Cardiff Half Marathon?’”

This was in 2007. It wouldn’t be the first time Pritchard had entered the event. He’d also done it at 15, when his Mum bribed him with the promise of a pair of Hi-Tec Silver Shadows if he completed the course, which he did. But it would be the first time in almost 20 years, with zero running and an insane amount of partying, or as he puts it “all out carnage” in between.

“I have wicked memories of those Dirty Sanchez days, but I wanted to change. So I thought, ‘I wonder if I can do the Cardiff Half Marathon?’” Matthew Pritchard

How did it go? “It was amazing. I got such a big buzz off it. So then I did a full marathon and then a half Ironman [a swimming, cycling and running race that ends with a half marathon], then a full Ironman …” He’s since become a full-time endurance athlete, albeit one with an incongruous amount of tattoos, who doesn’t take himself too seriously. He once ran the London Marathon in a mankini.

Shifting passions

Last year, Pritchard did a triple Ironman, that’s 54 hours of continuous and mega-intense exercise. This year, he did another double Ironman, though he’s had to temporarily shelve his other running plans for 2017 while he recovers from a foot injury, much to his annoyance.

It seems an unlikely passion shift for a former pro skateboarder. But Pritchard sees a lot of parallels between hardcore running and skateboarding. “Skateboarding takes a lot of patience,” he says. “When you learn a new trick, it doesn’t take a day, it takes week or months. But if you focus and keep going, eventually it clicks. That’s similar to training month in, month out, for a race. You have to put the hard work in to get to that point.”

“Skateboarding takes a lot of patience. When you learn a new trick, it doesn’t take a day, it takes week or months. But if you focus and keep going, eventually it clicks. That’s similar to training month in, month out, for a race. You have to put the hard work in to get to that point.” Matthew Pritchard

He also credits skateboarding with stoking his interest in endurance challenges. In 2006, he skateboarded the 192 miles from Cardiff to Newquay with his friend and Dirty Sanchez show-nemesis Dainton. “Looking back, I think it did spark a lot of other future stuff in my head. Like running from John O’Groats to Land’s End.” Which he did in 2010 — in just 30 days.

Keeping things together

Why does Pritchard think he got so extreme about running, rather than just say hitting the park a couple of times a week? “Whenever I get into something, I go all out. It was the same with partying and skateboarding. When I found this fitness buzz, I thought, ‘Where can I take this?’”

“The longer races are a massive fight [with myself], but when it gets to the pain part that’s when it gets interesting. Of course, you say to yourself, ‘What the fuck am I doing?’ But once you cross that line you’re like, ‘I’ve just been through hell, but I’ve done it and I’m fucking buzzing’.”

On a day-to-day basis, Pritchard admits he also uses running to keep his head together and regulate his mood. “I do get quite down and running gives me a high,” he says. “I get such happiness from it. If I’m feeling depressed and go for run, I come back a different person. With this injury I hadn’t trained for four weeks. I’d been partying in Ibiza and I went to a pretty dark place. I’m dangerous in my own head. But then I went out on my bike and I feel like I’m back on track again.”

“I do a lot of training and partying used to be a reward for that, but now I’ve got to the stage where I don’t even want the partying stuff. I’ve got to the point in my life that I’m having words with myself and the next step is to become teetotal.”

Positive change

What do Pritchard’s old skate buddies make of this new sporty him? “My mates think it’s great. They can see I’m doing something positive. You can’t have a problem with that without being a dickhead. And in terms of giving up the booze, the ones who’ve seen me partying over the years probably think it’s a good idea,” he laughs.

But the most pleasing part for Pritchard has been the number of Dirty Sanchez fans who’ve gotten in touch with him through email or Facebook to say they’re inspired by what he’s doing. “They message me saying, ‘I’ve followed you since I was a youngster and to see you doing Ironmans is mental. I’m going to start running too.’ It’s such a simple thing. Go buy yourself some trainers, open the front door and go for a run.”

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 Matt wears.

Hit the trail with Anne-Laure Saux

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.

Discovering the trails

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.

Let the adventure begin

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.

Running in the Challenger ATR 3

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.

Hit the trail with Charlie Watson

No matter where you are, there are new paths to run and trails to discover. Join Charlie as she takes us for a run along her favourite trail route in Henley-on-Thames, UK.

I have been an avid runner ever since completing my first marathon in London in 2012. I’m not a natural runner, in fact I have to work really, really hard, but I truly believe that anyone can run a marathon if they want. And I’m proof of that. I’ve run hundreds of miles running new trails and new races across the globe since.

My goal is to champion the journey to a healthy, more active life where honest fitness and food makes wellbeing more accessible to all. You can read more about my goal on my Runner Beans blog, which aims to pace the way to healthy without missing out on any of the fun.

My favourite way to explore new areas

When I train for a marathon, I often run 5-6 days a week, most of which are done in the early morning and so require an easy running route straight out of my front door. I ran hundreds of miles this winter on the only lit two-mile route near my house, which was the one safe place to run in the dark.

On the weekends, I was craving some excitement and a different challenge to my runs, so I’d run further afield. I’d drive to new trails and sign up for races across the country to add some variety to my training. Changing up the scenery gave my training that boost in both motivation and inspiration. It also ensured I actually took in my surroundings rather than just focusing on my pace and breathing. Plus, running is always my favourite way to explore a new area.

Running along the River Thames

I love this run as along the River Thames – it makes me so happy running alongside the water. It helps me feel calm, eases any mental stresses and the route is usually pretty flat. It’s an out-and-back run in a loop because of the lack of bridges to cross the river in Henley, however I don’t mind. It helps knowing that you only have to cover what you’ve already run.

“Changing up the scenery gave my training that boost in both motivation and inspiration.” Charlie Watson

In the early mornings and even on the bleakest of days in mid-winter, there are always other runners out there and rowers on the river, and I love feeling like part of this secret club that works out no matter the weather.

Perfect for any terrain

My run covers a lot of terrains, from road, to path, to trail and grass – and often a lot of mud when it’s wet. My shoes have to stand up to all the demands I put on them, which the Speedgoat 2 were able to do with no problem.

They provide support and comfort over undulating terrain, and I was especially appreciative of the thick sole when running over cobbles, shingles and exposed tree roots. Despite looking chunky, they are very lightweight, perfect for packing in your bag for holidays, mini breaks or when you want to explore a little closer to home.

Learn more about the SPEEDGOAT 2 SHOES Charlie wears.