Stories of  the running, cycling and science adventures of Stacey and Max Holloway, a clinical and a climate scientist based in London and Cambridge.

2015 saw Stacey getting back into running again after a chronic illness, our cycle touring honeymoon and our first trail race on the Gower Peninsula with Max racing as part of Project Trail for Men’s Running Magazine.

Adventures for 2016 included walking the West Highland Way, our first ultra marathon – The Hoka Highland Fling and through-hiking parts of the Pennine Way.

2017 saw Stacey and Max enter the Ring of Steall Skyrace and the inception of the ‘Challenge Peaks‘ as a way to get into the mountains to train for the race. Stacey cycled from London to Manchester for charity and also won her first ever race – the Merry Hill 6-hour Challenge. As the first year this race was held, Stacey is the current women’s course record holder with 31 miles. Max travelled to the Antarctic in December 2017 for 2 months working on the ice shelf and sea ice. During the two months Max learnt a range of winter skills, including ice climbing, roped traverses (on foot and on skidoo), camping in extreme environments and general mountaineering skills. Stacey also changed jobs to leave the hospital in Cambridge for university in London as a junior lecturer.

2018 is a big year for us both! The year started with Max returning from Antarctica and deciding to take on a camper van conversion. Max’s race calendar focusses on 3 ultra marathons in Scotland; the Highland Fling, the Devil of the Highlands and the Ben Nevis Ultra. How high can he place in each of these races? Stacey has one ‘A’ race this year – the 96 mile West Highland Way Race and is being followed on the race podcasts and sponsored by Body-Balance Sports Massage. The last half of 2018 has seen us living full time in our van and moving to London. Our adventures moved to open water winter swimming in the lakes around London.

Everything changed for us in 2019 when we moved to the Scottish West Coast! Max is full on long distance swimming and Stacey has founded an outdoor swimming group – Oban seals. We are starting a new business called WayOutside. It is swim, run and swim run guiding and training camps with the goal to get more people enjoying the outside. WayOutside started a jogscotland group call Sofa 2 Summit that ran two beginner runner 10 weeks courses in Oban seeing over 20 women build from 5min continuous running to 30mins and held our first ultra-running training camp. Both Max and Stacey joined the Oban Mountain Rescue Team.

2020 started at full pelt with Max being selected to join endurance swimmer and UN Patron of the Oceans Lewis Pugh as his training partner in the outer Hebrides. Stacey was race director and founder of a new ultra race The Tyndrum 24 and 9 months into a full time sportscotland funded role working in community sport. Max was full time working as an ocean physicist at the Scottish Association of Marine Science and both training for events – Max, the three peaks yacht race and Stacey, for another run at the West Highland Way 96mile race. Unfortunately, with the COVID pandemic both started #wfh full-time, events were cancelled and WayOutside went online with a new page of online resources for exercise, a virtual charity Tyndrum24 and an Evening In virtual night or swimming and running. However, as the pandemic continued, the business was no longer viable.

In 2021, Max returned to swimming again with Lewis Pugh, this time in Iceland and Stacey joined the Pugh team helping with day-to-day logistics and support. Max began working in sustainable food sources and potential carbon capture alongside ocean modelling and Stacey was commissioned to write a guide book for Vertebrate Publishing of Scotland’s best beaches. In the summer, Stacey did her Mountain Leader Training and left her community sport role to finish the book and is about to return to science to take up a 50% research and 50% clinical post a the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre as a radiotherapy physicist and honorary research fellow at the University of Glasgow.

Dr. and Dr. Holloway!