Madeleine Collins doesn’t really remember a time when running was not a part of her life. She was about five years old when her dad had a health scare that saw him quit smoking and take up running.
“Throughout my childhood he would run every weekend and do marathons when he could,” she recalls.
“At school at this time my four brothers and I were always capable runners, competing in cross country and long distance athletics events and doing a bunch of sports but nothing serious.”
Her dad ended up befriending two other runners from the building where he worked, it being a case of ‘different floors and companies but same shower room so they became buddies.’
One of them was Shaun Collins’ father – yes, the father of ‘Mr Running Beast’ himself, the other half of Lactic Turkey Events, and purveyor of many moments of suffering and muddy joy for Kiwi trail runners across the years. That Shaun, her husband and the father of her three daughters.
