EP44: 🏔️ 🏃🏽‍♀️🇧🇭 Move Mountains: Fatema Husain on UTMB and being the first Bahraini - and GCC national woman - to complete the world's toughest ultramarathon

The Mettleset Podcast

Today’s guest is from one of the flattest countries in the world, Bahrain.

In fact, the highest point in the entire country is only 134m above sea level and that’s not even open to the public. Why is that relevant you may ask?

Well, our guest today just completed what is widely considered the hardest ultramarathon in the world, UTMB. For those who don’t know UTMB stands for the Ultra Trail Du Mont Blanc, a 171 km trail race with 10,000m of elevation - all with a time limit of 46 hours and 30 minutes.

Fatema Husain is the first Bahraini National - woman or man to complete this race and she is here to tell us all about it.

This year UTMB started on Friday, 1st of September at 6pm and as it always does, it traversed the Tour Du Mont Blanc hiking path across France, Italy & Switzerland. All starting and ending in Chamonix with the magnificent Mont Blanc as the backdrop to the start and finish line.

What’s more remarkable is that Fatema once didn’t consider herself a runner, in fact it took her a year and a half to build up to running 3 km on a treadmill.

Fatema is determination embodied and our chat with her has already given us some ideas about taking on the Tour Du Mont Blanc ourselves.

In today’s episode we chat with Fatema about how she went from having very little physical activity in her day-to-day life to completing what many consider the pinnacle of the ultra running race calendar.

We chat through how she built up her endurance over the past ten years from running to running ultras. Her cycling career - yes, she is also a Bahraini National cycling champ… and the day-by-day of UTMB, including the support she got along the way, racing against cut off times and making peace with pain.

We also hear what it felt like carrying the Bahraini flag over the UTMB finish line for the first time ever.

For more information on UTMB visit: https://utmb.world

To follow Fatema Husain on Instagram, follow @FateMoves

We were also delighted to see the celebration and acknowledgement that Fatema has received since arriving home. For more information check out the Bahrain News Agency article here.

Our wider support team for this episode includes Editor JJ Thompson and our Artwork is by the talented Alexandra Hickey of Studio Theodore.

Find us on @themettleset

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Dawn & Afshan