live
well
Go with the flow Endurance athlete and motivational speaker Samantha Gash shares her top tips on stretching and how to successfully master long-distance events
D
uring a year of saying “yes” to new experiences Samantha Gash found herself signing up to do a marathon. Samantha had enjoyed cross country at school, but it was the first time she had pushed herself to complete an endurance event. “One of my girlfriends asked me if I wanted to join her, so I signed up and did a training program that I found online,” Samantha says. “I started to make a new community of friends that I would join on weekend runs. It’s not this romantic story of ‘this was really easy’ — it was actually really hard — but I remember getting to the finish and feeling like anything was possible. It was a massive turning point in my life.” Since that initial marathon, Samantha, 37, has covered more
84 The House of Wellness
than 35,000km and completed runs on every continent. “In 2010 I was the first woman to do what is called the 4 Deserts Grand Slam, which was four 250km desert ultramarathons in Chile, China, Egypt and Antarctica,” she says. Her commitment to endurance challenges has also seen her compete in two seasons of the television show Australian Survivor. During her first appearance, in 2017, she met husband Mark Wales. After welcoming son Harry, the couple returned for their second crack at the title, in the 2022 series, which Mark won. Not one to slow down, Samantha is eyeing off her next challenge, which will be later this year when she runs more than 1600km across Nepal in support of the men’s health campaign Movember.
PHOTO MATT KORINEK
WORDS ERIN MILLER