A sev­en-time win­ner of West­ern States 100, Scott is argu­ably the greatest ultra run­ner of all time. He switched to a plant-based diet in 1999, the year he won his first West­ern States, and often cred­its vegan­ism for his dom­in­ant suc­cess. Scott has even pub­lished a book detail­ing his diet­ary philo­sophy, Eat & Run. Put simply, no oth­er ath­lete has had a big­ger influ­ence on the rise of vegan­ism amongst ultra run­ners.

Des­pite being just 24 years old, Lucy is already some­what of a house­hold name in the ultra run­ning cir­cuit. She ran her first 100km aged 15, and has since racked up a slew of impress­ive res­ults, includ­ing wins at Ultra-Trail Cape Town and Ultra-Trail Aus­tralia, and third place at West­ern States. She has been vegan 2016 and says: “The biggest bene­fit I’m noti­cing is my abil­ity to recov­er and race and train at a high level. I have a lot of energy.”

A Swedish ultra run­ner spe­cial­ising in multi-stage events, Elisa­bet has a string of world class per­form­ances under her belt, includ­ing win­ning the icon­ic Mara­thon des Sables twice. She exper­i­mented with her diet for sev­er­al years before turn­ing vegan for the per­form­ance and recov­ery bene­fits she exper­i­enced.

A former pro­fes­sion­al Iron­man triath­lete and ultra run­ner, Brendan was twice crowned Cana­dian 50km cham­pi­on. He’s been vegan since the start of his career and is now a nutri­tion­al con­sult­ant. He’s writ­ten sev­er­al best­selling books about nutri­tion and also co-foun­ded Vega, a line of plant-based food products and sup­ple­ments.

After smoking a daily pack of cigar­ettes in his young­er years, Tre­vor recom­mit­ted to fit­ness in his late-20s and soon dis­covered a tal­ent for ultra run­ning. He’s won the Wasatch 100 twice and placed second at HURT100 in 2019. Tre­vor has been vegan since he star­ted run­ning and says giv­ing up dairy changed his life.

Helen is a Brit­ish veter­in­ary sur­geon and moun­tain run­ner who has rep­res­en­ted her coun­try at long dis­tance moun­tain run­ning numer­ous times. She won the Eng­lish and Brit­ish Fell Run­ning Cham­pi­on­ships in 2013. Helen turned vegan in 2009 aftrer becom­ing dis­il­lu­sioned with the way anim­als are exploited for human gain.

Swedish ultra run­ner Son­dre has won or podi­umed a num­ber of icon­ic ultra mara­thon and clocked a top ten fin­ish at UTMB in 2014. He’s been plant-based since 2013 and com­ments: “I feel that a vegetarian/vegan diet helps me recov­er a lot faster. And I just feel bet­ter!” He’s also mar­ried to fel­low vegan ultra run­ner Elisa­bet Barnes (see above).

Vlad star­ted run­ning in 2012 and turned vegan shortly after­ward. The 33-year-old Ukrain­i­an is a North Face ath­lete and one of the fore­most run­ners in Asia. He’s already won more than 40 ultramara­thons in his short career and often sets new course records, includ­ing at The North Face 100, which he’s won twice.

Tim Van Orden has been crowned US Mas­ters Trail Cham­pi­on an incred­ible 10 times and is a four-time US Run­ner of the Year. He turned vegan in 1998 and became a raw vegan in 2004, exclud­ing all cooked and pro­cessed foods. He describes how his diet has had a hol­ist­ic pos­it­ive impact on his life in his book, A Com­pas­sion­ate Approach.

Pop­ularly known as “The Nat­ur­al Life-Styl­ist”, Tony has devoted his life to devel­op­ing tech­niques for liv­ing nat­ur­ally in the mod­ern world. In 2019, he ran 874 miles bare­foot across Great Bri­tain to sup­port envir­on­ment­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity. Tony has writ­ten extens­ively about diet and lives a plant-based life­style.

After ditch­ing a career in fin­ance, Denis star­ted run­ning in 2010 and quickly became a world-class ath­lete. He won a num­ber of races, includ­ing The North Face 50 and Vir­gil Crest 100 and set a world record 12 hour tread­mill in 2015. He is entirely vegan and eats almost a com­pletely raw diet.

Dami­an has been a prom­in­ent ultra run­ner since 2006. He’s won and podi­umed at races all over Amer­ica, yet he con­siders his greatest achieve­ment to be run­ning injury free for more than 10 years. Dami­an attrib­utes this impress­ive feat to his plant-based diet, which he’s been fol­low­ing since 2000.

Sarah is a pro­fes­sion­al Under Armour ultra run­ner and coach. As a vegan, she believes that ultra run­ners are more likely to adopt a sus­tain­able diet as they spend more time out­doors: “Per­son­ally, this makes me feel more con­nec­ted to earth, and I guess it just feels right to use Moth­er Nature the way it was inten­ded.”

A mod­el turned act­ress and dir­ect­or liv­ing in Cali­for­nia, Eimanne made the shift to vegan­ism after run­ning her first 50 miler. She was heav­ily influ­enced by Scott Jurek’s book Eat & Run, and dis­cusses the bene­fits of a vegan diet for endur­ance ath­letes on her You­Tube chan­nel, Act­ress Adven­turess.