Nienke Oostra - Mountain biking the Great Himalaya trail in Nepal

Nienke in her own words…

I am an equine veterinarian and have travelled the world pursuing my career. 

Although I have always been an active person I found the love for sports later in life and ended up reasonably good at it! I dreamt of becoming a professional athlete on the mountain bike and as an adventure/multi-sport racer and with the belief of my coaches I starting racing elite in 2013. I was however still working full time as a veterinarian and I ended up overtrained with a serious back injury which put a halt to my sporting aspirations in 2016. 

I couldn’t really let go of what I was so passionate about and although running was not an option with the persistent pain I was feeling in my legs, I started to focus on mountain bike adventures. 

This led to the dream of traversing the Great Himalaya Trail by mountain bike through Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bhutan. 

The first leg was Nepal which I completed in December 2019 achieving a world first by mountain biking the Great Himalaya trail from Hilsa in the West to Phaplu in the east covering 1700kms, 85000m ascend and around 15 passes between 3500m-5000m with two passes over 5000m high.

Show notes

• Who is Nienke 
• Getting into mountain biking and adventure racing 
• Being sporty as a child and growing up around Europe
• Getting into running while at university
• Moving over to New Zealand
• Being very shy
• Wanting to improve in the sport
• Meeting a guy…
• Qualifying for the World Championships
• Making huge improvements
• Having the right people around 
• Working full time while competing at an elite level
• Paying the price with over training
• Breaking her back
• Needing to slow down
• 6 weeks to recover
• Not understating what was going on 
• Pushing though pain…
• Chronic Pain or Chronic Injury
• How she coped 
• Not being able to be the athlete she once was
• Learning to love her body
• The dream of mountain biking in Nepal
• Being goal driven 
• The first step in making the dream a reality 
• What Nepal is like
• Going solo for the first time
• The plans for Stage 2
• Doing the research
• The learning’s from this experience 
• Needing to have a positive mind
• Being grateful for everything she’s been through
• The adventure blues…
• Making some changes in her life
• Feeling really positive
• Advice for other women who want to make changes in their life

Social Media

Challenge Website - https://saikalako.com 

Personal Blog - https://nienkeventures.blogspot.com 

Instagram

@nienkeventures

@saikalako