Miscellaneous
Ultra-runner Mira Rai nominated for NatGeo's Adventurers of the Year
Ultra-runner Mira Rai has been nominated for the National Geographic People's Choice Adventurer of the Year.Samuel Chhetri
Ultra-runner Mira Rai has been nominated for the National Geographic People's Choice Adventurer of the Year.
Rai, along with ten other adventurers has been nominated for NatGeo's annual list that selects adventurers for their extraordinary achievement in exploration, adventure sports, conservation, or humanitarianism.
The voting lines for the People's Choice will be opened untill December 16, 2016 and the winner will be announced in January 2017.
Other adventurers include, Park Protectors Pete McBride and Kevin Fedarko, Rock Climber Ashima Shiraishi, Cave Diver Krzysztof Starnawski, Celestial Circumnavigators Hōkūle‘a Team, Ocean Advocate Shannon Switzer Swanson, Kayaker Semit Lee, Paraglider Antoine Girard, Wilderness Defender Kristine McDivitt Tompkins and Mountaineer Colin Haley.
From National Geographic:
“Generally there are no opportunities,” says Rai, who left school at age 12. “None. Access to education is limited for girls. Women don’t have that much time to study.”
So when Maoist rebels came through her village when she was 14, Rai joined them and spent two years training in the jungles of Nepal. Eventually she returned home but was too restless to settle down. She traveled to Kathmandu to room with her karate guru from training camp, run in a few track races, and look for work, but she had little luck. Just as her hope and money were about to run out, she found herself at the starting line of her first big trail race.
Unlike the other runners, Rai didn’t have any food, water, or fancy athletic gear. Over the course of those 31 miles, hailstones and rain pelted down and muddied the trails. It was farther than she had ever run, and she had never been so exhausted. But Rai, the only female competitor, completed the race.
“The trail course she entered was a bastard, and finishing as she did showed she had something special,” says Richard Bull, the British co-founder of Kathmandu-based Trail Running Nepal, an organization that stages races and supports Nepali runners. Eventually, Bull helped Rai secure lodging, food, visas, and opportunities to race. The next year, she outpaced all expectations, particularly for a young woman—now 27—from a place where women typically don’t do sports. In 2015, after reaching the podium at international races in Australia and Europe, Rai snagged a remarkable prize: second place in the Skyrunning World Championships.
So many people believed in me and took chances—and I want to give back so others can have a chance.— Mira Rai | Adventurer of the Year
In 2016, Rai aimed to continue racing but a ruptured ACL forced her to undergo surgery. Instead of running herself, she decided to encourage others. So she organized the first ever running race in her home village. She secured 90 pairs of running shoes for children who don’t have shoes and raised money through generous donors in the running community, a pasta sale at a race in Italy, and screenings of a movie about her journey, Mira, which was a finalist in the Banff Mountain Film Festival this year.
More than a hundred people showed up in mid-October to take part in the festivities and run 10 kilometers around the dry, arid hills of Bhojpur. Rai watched the colorful chaos of all the runners, ages 15 to 35, huffing up slopes and grinning on the descents, their new race bibs fluttering in the mountain air. A bubbly, perennially upbeat person, she lit up seeing the joy on their faces.
“In a way, the biggest thing Mira has done is shown what is possible,” says Niraj Karki, a friend and two-time national rock climbing champion in Nepal. “Even coming from the worst of situations, the best can happen when effort, pure determination, and people come together to create a chance. And it is this chance that she wants to spread.”