Meagan Brown "Brownie". Brisbane based ultra distance trail runner on her ten year running journey; landing a place at Western States Endurance Run and her female focused running side hustles!

This week’s episode is a super inspiring and lively conversation with Brisbane based, ultra distance trail runner, Meagan Brown. If you haven’t listened to her husband’s episode, you can check out Sammy’s interview in Episode 20 and compare tales! Meagan’s energy is magnetic! She shares with us her journey from being someone who didn’t even really like running initially, albeit competed in all the sports growing up, to someone who has now been running for ten years, competitively.

Meagan talks to us about a pivotal moment in her life - a spiritual experience she enjoyed while hiking Kokoda Track in Papa New Guinea at a junction in life - which gave her new found independence and confidence and inspired her to seek out more adventure outdoors. This evolved from ticking off trails on a map of her local National Park to completing the Oxfam Trailwalker 100km. After reading Scott Jurek’s Eat and Run she was inspired to try solo events and tackled the Surf Coast Century 100km, finding she preferred this solo style of racing.

Meagan has since completed numerous ultramarathons and road marathons and her life has taken a fantastic course since her first half marathon (Gold Coast Marathon) just for fitness, where she walked from the 18km mark, to now being a regular on the trail podium both in South East Queensland and beyond. We hear her awesome story of the massive contrast between her first 75km Buffalo Stampede - a sky run with 4500m vert. (which she signed up for not understanding “vert”) and ended up crying on the side of a mountain; chasing cut offs and coming through the finish as they were deflating the Finish arch; to her strong victory at this same event last year. 

Excitingly, after five lottery entries for the iconic Western States Endurance Run, Meagan has landed a place on the start line this year and we can’t wait to hear how she goes in her first miler in the USA! Side note - there are 378 prized places for this race - as we quote a variety of entry numbers across the last two episodes! 

We also chat about the representation of women in sport and Meagan’s side hustles, including Queensland Trail Queens - an initially “Gossip Girl” style Instagram account borne out of frustration and anger with the lack of and inconsistent coverage between men and women. We also hear about a co-hosted project, Ladies of the Trail Brisbane - an inclusive introductory and social level trail running group. We are excited to hear that Meagan has started her own run coaching business, Shakeout, designed specifically for female athletes and we wish her every success! 

Meagan is sponsored by Spring Energy and The Trail Co and also makes reference to Ultra Trail Lavaredo, to Jessica Schluter winning Ultra Easy, and of course, to the Brownie's fur children, Mo Furah and Scottie Puppen!!  You can find Meagan on Instagram at @megatron_brown

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