Name: Jessie
Instagram: @smiley_spartan_racer
Role: Co-founder & elite athlete for Team Grit OCR
Spartan Pro Team Athlete

Hi! I'm Jessie and I'm the Co-Founder for Team Grit OCR and elite pro team athlete for Spartan. In the last few years, I have found a very positive balance of fitness, health and happiness and my aim for Team Grit is to share that balance with others, allow them to see the beauty of OCR and maybe inspire a few people along the way!

But, I haven't always got it right and I certainly haven’t always been ‘fit.’ Growing up, I didn't take part in any sports and the older I got, the less active I became, and the more I used food to help emotionally. When I left university I was at my heaviest - around 82kg not doing any exercise at all. It was then I decided I needed to make a change.

My transformation wasn't fast, I don't believe they ever should be. I slowly became more educated about food and fitness and made some changes that I could integrate into my daily life. The weight came off, but in the process, I became very focused on what I saw in the mirror and on the scales and I started to develop an unhealthy relationship with this. Luckily, around this time my friend Benya suggested doing a Spartan race. At that point, I hadn't run a single km in my life and despite being in the gym a lot the year before (doing ‘bro’ sessions), it annihilated me. I've never felt more unfit in my life and I barely got round the 5km Sprint course.

Once I gathered my pride, I decided I wanted vengeance on my horrible performance, so I signed up for another race and decided it was time to do some training! I spent the rest of the year doing what I now realise was overtraining and as a result I was always injured, but I managed to hit the podium in my age group, my hard work was paying off. The best thing about it all was the amazing friends and community I met at every new race. Suddenly I had so many friends who had common interests, who'd rather spend their weekend’s hiking than drinking.

As the end of the 2018 approached, I decided to set some goals, I had lofty aspirations and wanted to really challenge myself. The competitive world of sport was new to me and I loved it. Talking with Sean it became clear that I was trying to take parts from too many different training programs, I was overdoing it and not getting the most from my training as a result. I had seen Sean have great success coaching other people but I wasn't sure if we could make it work with him being my husband, I wasn't the best at following his instructions and I hated being told what to do! 

But, we decided to give it a go and I turned my training fully over to him. I became one of his 1:1 athletes and with that Sean took control of my whole training plan, providing me with workouts each day and planning in my rest so I could stop overtraining and start performing.
3 months later I had my first elite race and no one was more surprised than me when I came second in a stacked field! I had started out a minute behind the main elite pack as it was my first race so I didn’t really know where I stood. I crossed the finish line and was presented with the second place lanyard - it was an incredible feeling, if slightly shocking - the training was paying off!

The rest of the year was a whirlwind of smart training, even smarter recovery and giving it my all at each race. Of the 8 Spartan races I ran in 2019, I managed to stand on the podium for 6 of them and in November 2019 I became the first female to podium all 5 distances (Stadion, Sprint, Super, Beast & Ultra) in their first elite year. I have also had a go at stair marathons, 50km trail races and different OCR races and I love the variety of options out there. My hard work paid off when in 2020 I was offered the opportunity to join the Spartan Professional Team, something I am still incredibly proud of. When I moved to racing elite I had goals to join the Pro Team but I had never expected it to happen so quickly and it really was all down to hard work, from both myself and Sean.

I now feel so much more confident in my training and performance and I want to share this feeling with others. I have since moved back to the UK and raced in 2021 on the UK Pro Team. This move allowed me to keep challenging myself as the competition was much stiffer so we continued to adapt and progress my training plan.

I still very much remember my first awful race and I know how overwhelming it can be taking that first step into a gym or onto an OCR start line. But, there is nothing more empowering than nailing a good gym session or making it across a set of monkey bars for the first time. I think there is still lots of work to be done to encourage women (and men) to have more self belief and confidence and I feel that the sport of OCR has so much scope to help with this, hence the creation of Team Grit. It has been amazing to work with so many incredible athletes and see their amazing journeys and make so many new friends in the process. So, have a look around and drop us a message if you have any questions or if you'd like to collaborate! We now train people all over the world and we’re always looking to add new members to the team :D

Jessie