Q&A Jenny Tough
The endurance athlete and adventurer on cycling in remote places and what it means to be tough
Cyclist: Is Tough your real surname?
Jenny Tough: Yes. No one believes me, but it’s Scottish. It’s funny because when I was a little girl at school I got teased for it and I hated my name. I used to wish my name was Smith as I was so embarrassed by it. Now I embrace it.
Cyc: How did you get into endurance sports?
JT: I grew up in Calgary in the Canadian Rockies and I spent a lot of time outside hiking, camping and skiing, so I naturally have the technical skills, but my start with endurance sports was quite negative. I was a self-conscious teenager and thought I was fat, so I started running to lose weight. The more I got into it the more I noticed the endorphins and became more confident.
While at university I started doing marathons and then wherever I travelled I would rent a bicycle or run so I could see more. I realised the faster and fitter I was, the more I could see of the world. After university I spent all the money I had, which wasn’t a lot, on a touring bike. I wanted to go to the Yukon because I’d never been to northern Canada. I took on a 3,000km ride and, oh, it was bad. I was up the night before on Youtube just re-watching videos on how to fix a puncture.
I can still remember the first time I did 200km in a day and the freedom I felt. It was just life changing. And you always have to keep raising the bar, so that’s what I’ve been doing.
Cyc: You’ve twice won the women’s category of the Silk Road Mountain Race, a 1,800km unsupported race through the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan. How was it?
JT: The race is special because it isn’t about being bike fit. It’s about whether you make good choices, whether you can survive in such an extreme location, and how you handle the discomfort. The course in 2021 was much tougher than the last time I did it in 2018, which I didn’t appreciate until I finished. I thought
I was just complaining a lot, but I beat my previous time by more than two days so was pretty pleased.
I signed up to the first Silk Road in 2018 because I’d previously run through the Tian Shan Mountain range and I loved it so much. I was a complete underdog in that race. People thought it was cute that I was trying and that I didn’t belong there. I really wasn’t a mountain biker – I didn’t even own a mountain bike. Only 29 out of 100 riders finished that year and I was one of them. So I wanted to do it again as a proper mountain biker, and race it rather than just try to survive and finish.
Cyc: What goes through your mind when you find yourself in such a remote location?
JT: I just let my imagination run wild.
I can get totally lost in the scenery. In Kyrgyzstan I spent a lot of time looking at the mountains, picking a ski line and thinking I should come back in winter and do a ski tour. I’m also really good at being stoic and not letting myself freak out, simply because it isn’t going to help. I do system checks most of the time but sometimes when my bike is making a noise I put my headphones in. But really it is best to check in and ask yourself:
‘Descending from the beautiful, quiet mountains to a noisy, concrete city always makes me question whether I should just turn around and go back’
how’s my bike doing? How’s my body? Have I eaten enough? Do I have enough supplies? Am I making good decisions? Am I going fast enough? When people don’t take care of themselves, that’s when they fall apart. Racing in remote locations like Kyrgyzstan is completely different to racing in the Alps. The consequences are much higher.
Cyc: You’ve done some epic challenges, including running solo and unsupported across a mountain range on every continent. What does it feel like when you finish one of these challenges?
JT: I think you predict that it’s going to be this amazing moment where you hear trumpets playing and celebrate with champagne and pizza, but it’s always bittersweet for me. Descending from the beautiful, quiet mountains to a noisy, concrete city always makes me question whether I should just turn around and go back. My body needs to get to the finish but my mind is not prepared to reintegrate into life. So it’s always a really weird one.
Cyc: What do you hope to achieve with these challenges?
JT: I want to show girls that they’re tough and that being tough is a good thing. Girls are raised on being told that anything they do outside is dangerous and that they always need to have their guard up. How many girls are not doing the things that they should be doing, the things that make them the best version of themselves, because some people tell women to get back inside? That keeps me awake at night. We tell girls they need to fit in boxes and that you shouldn’t identify with being tough but being tough is awesome and tough has many different colours, shapes and sizes.
Cyc: What do you want the future of cycling to be like?
JT: I really hope that in the future we’re a bit more bike-fluid, with people riding different bikes. I love gravel, because it’s an unsanctioned corner of cycling.
Cycling can be quite an intimidating field to enter as we have these very specific categories and we have so many rules, even with sock length. I got my first bike 11 years ago and I didn’t consider myself a cyclist until pretty recently, because I find the sport can be so intimidating. And then gravel comes along, and it’s like, do you want to wear baggy shorts or tight shorts? You can ride whatever way you want with gravel. Seeing the boom in bikepacking is also really cool for me as I think bikes are the ultimate adventure tools.
I also want to see cycling becoming more accessible, and I think the industry is starting to hear the message that we don’t just want to see skinny white men as champions, we want to see everyone riding bikes.
‘How many girls are not doing the things that they should be doing, the things that make them the best version of themselves, because some people tell women to get back inside?’