"My tired, slightly overweight reflection in my computer monitor sparked the beginning of an adventure"

"I want to show people who think they're not capable of doing anything like this that you can take on seemingly impossible challenges and achieve them,” says Vicki Anstey. The adventurer, motivational speaker and leadership coach believes we can all push our limits that bit further than we think.

“I'm 47, so I’m not some kind of young fitness influencer. But I’ve shown that you can make different choices at any time in your life – and it’s just the most incredible, vital, wonderful thing to discover what you’re capable of.

“My journey to becoming an adventurer started in my late 20s when I glanced at myself in my computer monitor whilst working in marketing. I didn’t like the tired, slightly overweight person looking back at me. I’d never been particularly active as a child and had done no sport at all at university. By 29, I was living the typically sedentary lifestyle of an office worker with too much alcohol, too many cigarettes and far too many late nights. I’d lost my spark, felt unfulfilled and trapped.

“I’ve always had a very determined streak and decided there and then that I was going to get fit, and started Lotte Berk Barre classes. I loved how it made me feel, both physically and mentally, and became completely hooked, eventually quitting my job at age 30 and setting up my own Barre studio.

“As I got fitter, teaching 24 classes myself every week, I also took up running and was fascinated by my strength and what my body could do.”

Cutting old ties, taking up new challenges

“I’d been with my partner since I was 19, married for 12 years, but realised that the relationship was suffocating me and that I had become very disempowered. Aged 39, I decided to leave.

“It was also around that time that a friend (who believed more in my capabilities than I did) persuaded me to put my name forward to be in the first female intake for SAS Who Dares Wins on Channel 4. I was stunned to get selected, let alone make it through 11 days of arduous challenges.

“But it lit a fire in me to push my physical and mental boundaries. I realised I found power in taking on difficult things and overcoming barriers.

“That desire to keep stretching out of my comfort zone and facing my fears is probably the reason I said ‘Yes’ straight away to rowing across the Pacific Ocean in a three-woman boat when someone approached me with the idea at a Who Dares Wins press event.

“I’d never rowed on any open water, never done more than two or three minutes on a rowing machine and had a huge fear of water from a childhood near-drowning incident. But I was determined to do it and to keep my forward momentum going. I was learning that what scared me most was exactly what I should walk towards.”

Pacific Ocean adventure

“It was incredibly tough and didn’t all go according to plan. The team dynamic was very difficult, and there were some long, lonely dark nights and pretty terrifying moments to get through; 40-foot waves, sharks, near capsizes (never mind the disagreements). But eventually, 60 days later, we had set a World Record.

“I’m now in training to try to do the same in a two-woman crew rowing the Atlantic next year.

“I took so many lessons from the rowing experience around teamwork and handling stress and used them to forge a strong unit for the ‘World’s Toughest Cycling Race’ Race Across America last year, setting another World Record for cycling 3,000 miles non-stop from California to New Jersey.

“I’m hugely passionate about encouraging women and girls to believe they are capable of anything they set their minds to. Whatever we can dream, we can achieve. I try to instil that in teenage girls in my role as UK Ambassador for Inspiring Girls International.

“I hope my story shows people that it doesn’t matter if you’re not an expert and you don’t know how to do something or where to begin. When I first got on a road bike to train for the Race Across America, I couldn’t even get my water bottle out of its cage while moving. But I trained consistently, leant into learning new skills, and faced my fears head-on, one day at a time. Really, that’s all it takes.

“We’re all capable of so much more than we think. I call it our ‘secret 60%’ - the extra capacity we all have in us to discover our deepest potential.”