Kia Ora Whanau. When Nancy Jiang was five, she moved with her parents from China to New Zealand. One of her first memories was noticing the other children in her street and at school tearing about in bare feet. Nancy immediately thought “I want to do that” and quickly adapted to the largely barefoot childhood that many New Zealand children enjoy. Nancy’s burgeoning love of running started at school during PE and cross country, she joined her local Waitakere City Athletic club and applied herself diligently to training in her early teenage years. This put Nancy at odds with her grandparents and parents, who perhaps took a more traditional view of the path that a young Chinese woman should take. “Chinese people don’t run” they told her, “what, you think you are going to represent New Zealand?”. Nancy’s family clearly wanted her to focus on academic achievement first, and so she did, giving running away for several years whilst she attended university. Fast forward university and Nancy is living in Hamilton and has started to run socially and completes her first marathon as a bet with a coworker to see who could run it the fastest. Needless to say, Nancy won the bet. Several years of marathons followed this, before Nancy finally found herself in France, nursing a few “niggles” (as she tells it) and curious as to just how one runs up mountains…..It seems off road running suits Nancy, as he has recently came 5th at the 57 km OCC in France (part of the UTMB festival) and has just returned from Europe where she placed 15th at the world mountain running champs. We have the pleasure of being the first to speak with Nancy regarding her running and it was a total blast…Enjoy!!

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