Holly Zimmermann

Lake Como Nirvana. The name alone is irresistible. From there it only gets better. Raid Nirvana is a 150-km adventure race (AR) located in and around Lake Como with it’s tranquil waters, picture-postcard villages, friendly locals and all of it cradled gently in a ring of majestic mountains. A more idyllic and spectacularly scenic location is hard to find.  The invitation to join a Swiss team came from Lucas, a friend I’d raced and trained with before, who I got along with well, and who had tons of AR experience dating back to his upbringing in Columbia. And despite having another race already on the calendar two weeks later, this one I couldn’t resist. Nirvana was calling. Race Plan The other two team members were new to me. Lucas had already raced before with Laure, a French woman, and the fourth, David, was a ‘last minute’ replacement for his training partner. David was young and strong but a newbie to both AR and ultra-endurance sports. He’d done some long-distance triathlons, a...

Adventure Racing World Championship, Galicia, Spain After competing at the Adventure Racing European and then the World Championships within a few weeks of each other in the Fall of 2021, covering nearly 800 km in total, I came home with a completely wrecked body, inside and out. I was thinner than I’d been since I was a teenager, my hair was falling out in handfuls, my teeth were over-sensitized, my feet were swollen and blistered, and several toenails were gone. To say that I was simply exhausted grossly underestimates my physical state, as the thought of even a recovery bike or jog was completely out of the question. Sleep. Healthy food. Supplements. Repeat. That was the plan. But when weeks went by and I was still feeling schlapp, I knew I needed to focus more seriously on my recovery. I got a blood test done and found that I had both Vitamin D and Ferritin deficiencies and my Omega 6:3 ratio was through the roof at (33.9:1). And as fate would have it, at that time I met a man ...