3#08 Claire Maxted: the Wild Ginger Runner

Mountain Air

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“I want to help people and I want to be useful, and that’s the main reason for doing it all”

Episode 3#08 meets Claire Maxted, who was forced to run at school. She hated it. Yet, just a couple of decades later the recently appointed BMC Summit editor can count Trail Running magazine, the Wild Ginger Running YouTube channel and “The Ultimate Trail Running Handbook” amongst projects she’s founded, managed and authored.

So what did it take to turn the horrors of “cross country, group showers, and the bleep test” into a passion for mountain running? And how did she gain the confidence and experience to become an evangelist for the hobby? According to Claire, it was just a subtle shift in perspective. With a born passion for the outdoors, hiking and hillwalking, it was the 2004 Lakeland Trails series that really transformed Claire’s outlook. In her words, it gave her a view of moving fast in the hills beyond the “fell running” norms of (mostly) gnarly men and (some) enterprising women in vests and shorts running up peaks and falling back down again, and instead gave her a way to enjoy the pleasures of hillwalking… but just at a slightly quicker pace.

“We’re not looking at our watches, we’re not discussing our splits, we’re looking at the views, we’re stopping to take a photo, but it’s a bit quicker than walking and you don’t have to take as much stuff”

Driven by a love of writing, she’d found post-uni employment on hillwalking title Trail magazine, met an inspiring mentor in the magazine’s editor, and a natural fit when the idea of a trail running equivalent was floated by the group’s publisher. From that role it was a natural step to creating the same kinds of videos and guides she produced on Trail Running, but independently and on her own terms. From then until now she’s published 782 videos to her 29,000-strong audience on the Wild Ginger Running YouTube channel (she self-identifies as “a mass of ginger hair rather than a face”). Of all the subjects covered in that archive, it’s the popular “Last Place and Proud” series that sums up her inclusive attitude best of all.

“I realised (elite athletes) were saying the same things, over and over again… so I started to be inspired by the people that were coming last”

Now the author of a second trail running guidebook (but this time focused on ultra distances), the proud mother of a three-year-old son, and the newly appointed editor of the British Mountaineering Council’s quarterly “Summit” magazine, Claire admits that she has always been a little “time optimistic” when it comes to new ideas and projects. With the exception of a harrowing experience on Ben Nevis’ Tower Ridge, it’s a philosophy that seems to work well for her.

> wildgingerrunning.co.uk

> youtube.com/@wildgingerruns

> thebmc.co.uk/cats/all/summit_magazine

Listen, enjoy, tell your friends, subscribe to the podcast if you get and chance, and thank UKHillwalking.com for their kind support of this series!

[episode recorded on 13/07/24]

00:00 - Introduction

02:00 - Welcome, catching up after a long gap, straight into the birth and death of Trail Running magazine

04:00 - Cross country, group showers, and the bleep test: “I’d always been forced to run at school… and I just hated it!”, the escape to Uni and rediscovering the outdoors

06:48 - “In those days it was either: fell running (really gnarly, wearing a vest and shorts, run up a mountain side and fall back down again); or it was road running”, discovering a new kind of running through the Lakeland Trails races

07:20 - “We’re not looking at our watches, we’re not discussing our splits, we’re looking at the views, we’re stopping to take a photo, but it’s a bit quicker than walking and you don’t have to take as much stuff”

09:20 - Angry of Earlsden

11:29 - “I didn’t really know what I was doing, and floundered around for a bit until Matt Swaine educated me on how to be an actual journalist”

12:15 - Wild Ginger Running on YouTube, sharing the joy of trail running and showing people how to get started

15:30 - “Last Place and Proud” interview series: “I realised (elite athletes) were saying the same things, over and over again… so I started to be inspired by the people that were coming last”

19:55 - “I’ve always been a bit ‘time optimistic’”

23:20 - “... a mass of ginger hair rather than a face”

24:20 - The Ultimate Trail Running Handbook: “I want to help people and I want to be useful, and that’s the main reason for doing it all”

25:45 - Post-pregnancy ultra-distance running: “It’s quite hard work, to be honest”, but you don’t have to feel the pressure to keep going further and further

31:40 - Working for the British Mountaineering Council and editing Summit magazine, catering for a broad range of outdoor enthusiasts with a conservation focus

40:20 - “Ultra-jog-hiking”

44:40 - Paying forward outdoor writing experience

50:00 - Greatest Mountain Memory: eating cow pie from The George pub in Keswick on a Lakeland fell with two colleagues whilst shooting a magazine feature… (also traversing Aonach Eagach)

53:20 - … and bonus Most Traumatic Mountain Memory: learning limits and humility on Ben Nevis’ Tower Ridge

57:25 - All the time, money, freedom… where do you go and what do you do? Taking Finlay (aged three) up his first mountain, walking hut-to-hut and scrambling in mainland Europe, to “instil in him a love of the great outdoors”