The Adventure Trail: Nancy Jiang sprints past tradition to achieve her childhood dream of crossing the finishing line
- Learn how this Chinese-born Kiwi trail running champion found a way to combine a busy career in engineering with a love of competitive trail running
- How she managed to navigate family resistance against the sport and to take part in Europe’s top races, making a name for herself in the New Zealand running scene
Mark Agnew and Mary Hui talk to Nancy Jiang about how she managed to transform herself from a teenage sports enthusiast, bored with athletics, to a successful career woman who competes in Europe’s most famed competitive races in her spare time.
It was while at her first job as an engineer in Auckland she became interested in distance running, moving swiftly from lunchtime jaunts around the city with colleagues to taking part in the Auckland Marathon.
Find out why something as simple as kids running around barefoot in her new home in New Zealand, where her family moved to when she was five years old, made such a big impression on her.
Also, listen to how after just one year of training she swapped tarmac and the city for mountain altitude and running in the French Alps, and later going on to represent New Zealand in the World Mountain Running Championships, and thus fulfilling a life-long dream.
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