Emma Pooley was a world-class cyclist and mountain runner. Now the jack-of-all-trades writes about oatmeal recipes

There are meals and snacks that are burned into Emma Pooley's memory. There was the best pizza of her life after her second place at the 2011 Giro d'Italia, the toppings of which she still remembers. There was a cheese roll in Andermatt, so simple and so heavenly after suffering from hunger pangs after climbing three Alpine passes. Or there was a Solero ice cream in a mountain restaurant after setting the world record for Everesting by bike in 2020, when she was so exhausted and so happy that she sat on the floor and almost cried. More on Everesting later.

Emma Pooley is a universal genius in endurance sports. The 42-year-old was a world champion and Olympic silver medalist in the time trial for Great Britain, and has won cycling races such as the Grande Boucle Féminine and Flèche Wallonne. Three years ago, after becoming a Swiss citizen, she finished eleventh at the 80-kilometer World Mountain Running Championships. She is a multiple duathlon world champion and has completed Ironmen events—the list is incomplete.

In recent weeks, Pooley has become an author: She's published a book with oatmeal recipes for snacks for bike rides or trail runs. She leafs through the book while sitting in the cozy kitchen of her old farmhouse in Hausen am Albis, recounting her multifaceted life. From adventures in nature that turned out differently than planned to her commitment to women's cycling.

Her book is also enriched with anecdotes from her career. Endurance sports and an intense preoccupation with food go hand in hand, but the relationship is often complicated. Pooley says: "During my time as a professional cyclist, people viewed food very clinically: You need so many calories per day, chocolate isn't necessary, and it doesn't have to taste good."

Pooley fought back against the many restrictions and the belief that thinner is always better – by eating chocolate. "I was a bit rebellious." Over the years, she developed a positive approach to food. Today, she enjoys eating healthy.

That's how she came up with the idea for the book, "Oat to Joy," based on Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"—"oat" being the English word for oats—over ten years ago. Because Pooley didn't want to constantly rely on highly processed and expensive snack bars, she experimented with oatmeal in the kitchen. The snacks were also well-received by her fellow athletes, and she shared the recipes with them.

In the book, she also addresses aspects of her cycling career other than food. For example, she addresses how she faced the fear of riding in the peloton, especially on downhills. "I still have nightmares about it today." Although Pooley achieved the greatest successes of her career in cycling, she first came to the sport as a career changer, and her passion to this day remains primarily running.

But Pooley is prone to injury. After suffering a stress fracture at the age of 21, she borrowed a racing bike as an alternative to running training. "I didn't enjoy it at all," she says. "In southern England, it was windy and flat, the bike was too big for me, and I was constantly cold." What she did like, however, was the club scene in England, the social aspect of group rides, and the breaks with coffee and cake.

In the following years, she celebrated numerous successes in duathlon and cycling. By then, she had long since moved to Switzerland. After completing her studies in civil engineering at Cambridge, she decided to pursue a doctorate in geotechnical engineering at ETH Zurich. Her supervisor was the future rector, Sarah Springman, also an excellent triathlete.

For years, Pooley combined her studies with competitive sport, retiring from cycling in 2016. But the sport has never left her. Being out in nature is like meditation for her, she says. And she continually challenges herself. She's currently exploring mountaineering, even though it means overcoming her fear of heights. She also participates in ultra-events on foot or by bike, or simply seeks out small adventures in the mountains in the form of bikepacking tours, which often end with her having to carry her bike—these outings are notorious among her friends.

In the summer of 2020, Pooley rode the Hope 1000, a 1,000-kilometer, 30,000-meter non-stop mountain bike race through Switzerland, unaided, on a gravel bike. Since all competitions had been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic and she was in excellent shape, she spontaneously decided to attempt the Everesting world record.

The Everesting phenomenon has existed as an official challenge since 2012, and its principle is this: 8,848 meters of elevation gain are overcome on foot or by bike, always on the same section, without a break. The total climb is the equivalent of the world's highest mountain, Mount Everest. Pooley chose Haggenegg in the canton of Schwyz for the ups and downs, an average gradient of 13 percent. The 1.57 meter tall athlete loves steep terrain.

She was in good shape. But that day it was so hot that she underestimated her water consumption and had to stop more often than planned to refill her bottle. On top of that, a farmer was harvesting hay on the narrow road and stopped her on her final climb to push her around. Nevertheless, she set a world record in 8 hours and 53 minutes. "Never again," Pooley thought to herself – and two months later, she completed an Everesting on a gravel bike.

Now she's tempted to try the whole thing on foot. "The beauty of Everesting, for me, is that it's non-discriminatory. Anyone in the world can do it, and it's not about being fast. I admire those who take 24 hours even more." Such a challenge appeals to her much more than road cycling, which is characterized by so many rules, including unwritten ones, that she believes it puts many people off.

If Pooley is fit enough, she might also try to qualify for the World Mountain Running Championships for the third time.

Despite her impressive list of achievements, Pooley's life also includes a chapter that she didn't successfully close. At almost forty, she fulfilled a long-held dream and began studying dentistry. Two years later, she dropped out. "It was the first time I gave up on something big," she says, "and it triggered a minor life crisis."

And yet, the defeat had one good thing going for it: Although she thought she had no chance in her profession so many years after graduating and without any experience, she now works as a geotechnical engineer for a company that does everything below the surface, from excavation pit forecasts to natural hazard monitoring in steep terrain. She's found happiness there, too.