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If you’ve ever run one of the UTMB races around Australia or New Zealand - UTA, Kosciuszko or Tarawera - chances are you’ve been cheered across the line by event MC Ali Pottinger.

It’s easy to recognise Ali at the finish for two reasons - firstly, she has a one-of-a-kind bubbly enthusiasm for everyone who comes across the line. And secondly, she has the most Kiwi of all Kiwi accents. In the audio dictionary, if you look up “Kiwi accent”, it plays you Ali Pottinger. Actually I made that up, but if there was such a thing, it would be entirely appropriate.

Of course, Ali’s much more than an encouraging voice at the finish line of the biggest races. She’s also a mother (to 3-year-old Sebastian who she describes as “full noise”), a partner, an accredited run coach and one of the co-hosts of the excellent podcast from across the “dutch”, Dirt Church Radio.

I met Ali at Ultra-Trail Australia in May where she was on MC duties. In some ways it’s a tough gig, being at the start and finish of races across four days. But while it’s tiring, Ali says it’s not hard work.

"It's an amazing job that I get to do and these are really special moments in people's lives. What a cool space to work in.” One thing that’s notable about Ali is her enthusiastic embrace - often literal as well as metaphorical - of trail ultra finishers. She takes that role as finish line cheerleader-in-chief seriously.

“I feel a lot of responsibility to honour that person in that moment, because I know what it means to people, especially coming from a coaching background. So I know the tears, I know the sacrifices, the times that people have gone out when they really didn't want to or the balance that they've had to strive towards to make their training work,” she says.

“But it’s also so cool to know what it means and to get to be part of their special moment.”

Ali says she has a friend who is a photographer who takes finish line photos at events and he’s regularly asked if his photos can be used at funerals. “Because that's their special moment. And so that hit home - aside from giving birth or getting married or those sorts of things, these are the most important days in our lives.

“So I really do my best to make them feel special in that moment.”

And like the best trails, Ali’s journey to get to where she is today has had lots of ups and downs, switchbacks and difficult sections with both the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.

Beating the boys

When she was growing up in New Zealand, Ali says she was “what you’d describe as a tomboy”. She loved sports. All sports. And running was a natural part of the obsession with sport. “Running was always something that I did to keep fit,” she says.

She was a pretty handy runner too. “I used to beat the boys in cross country,” she says. But only after her mother let her in on a key secret (maybe this was the seed that grew into Ali’s love of coaching).

“I remember Mum at one cross country. She’d seen me practicing and I was just running behind the boys. Mum was like, ‘Ali, you know you can pass them.’ And I went, ‘Oh, can I?’ So apparently I did.”

In her teens, she got into trail running after a friend from her cricket team suggested they run at Mt Holdsworth, not far from her home, Masterton in the North Island. “I remember just thinking, ‘Oh, the bush is so beautiful.’”

After graduating as a primary school teacher, Ali spent seven years living, working and running in London. While in the UK, most of her running was on the roads around the capital. But when she returned home, New Zealand’s amazing outdoors was calling.

“I have always had a sense of adventure and exploration. I started doing lots of back-country hiking in New Zealand,” Ali says. During the week, she’d run trails. “I was really enjoying that and just started pushing those distances.”

Then she met her partner Kerry Suter, who was an elite ultra-marathoner, and suddenly she was running longer distances. “I was constantly running a half marathon distance most weeks as a training run.”

She thought ultras were beyond her, but she kept attending races seeing people of all descriptions crossing the finishing line and realised she had no excuse. “If they’re 70 and they can do it, then surely I can too.” So she did.

Squadrun takes off

In 2015, shortly after they’d met, Ali joined Kerry in founding their coaching business Squadrun. Kerry’s interest had started shifting away from how he was performing in races to instead focus on others.

The two of them quickly realised there was demand when talking to a room full of people thinking about signing up for Tarawera, a race Kerry’s had a long association with having won the first two editions.

“There was a large group of people in a room in Wellington and Kerry looked down and said, ‘Who would like help training towards this thing?’ All these hands shot up and he thought using the traditional [face-to-face] coaching structure I can’t help all these people, but I’d like to.”

Luckily Kerry is an IT nerd, because the answer he and Ali came up with was an online coaching platform correlating events with athletes to produced tailored plans, all delivered over the internet.

Remember, this was pre-COVID. Before we all got used to transacting all sorts of relationships online and over video conferencing and so on. Squadrun were truly pioneers in the field.

And there was a willing market there. A few months later Ali and Kerry hooked up with the founders of UTA to offer the coaching program to UTA entrants. On day one, 100 people signed up. “And I went, ‘Oh wow! Okay, this is a thing,’” Ali says.

In a classic case of the stars aligning, Ali by this stage had been teaching for a decade and was “ready for something else”. She didn’t just want to be the person on the end of an email. “I was saying to Kerry … I want to be there and see these people do this thing [UTA] and go for runs with them and meet them. And I could see the potential and how exciting it was,” she says.

So a month later she gave her notice as a teacher and shortly after the pair of them packed up and headed to Australia. “We were just really dirt-bagging it, living out of suitcases and going for runs with people and getting to know this area [the Blue Mountains],” Ali says.

What they did super-successfully, and it’s not hard to imagine how if you’ve met Ali, is build a great community around Squadrun. And it’s what gives her the greatest satisfaction as a coach. “Being there at the finish line and seeing these people that we’ve been in contact with for a long time achieve these things.”

In the decade Squadrun has been up and running, they’ve coached thousands upon thousands of people of all abilities. One thing they quickly realised was that it’s often the back-of-the-pack runners who reach out for help.

“Kerry, coming from that elite runner background, originally thought he was going to be coaching people like himself - that top 5 per cent or 10 per cent of people. And he soon realised… It’s the 80 per cent that actually want support. If you’re not sure you can do something, that’s when you ask for help,” Ali says.

Providing reassurance for her athletes and being a sounding board is at the core of Ali’s coaching philosophy. “Sometimes it’s recognising the best build-up to something,” she says. “When it comes to coaching, I like to think: What do I have? What do I need? How am I going to get it?” she says.

“I describe coaching as being one of two things - it’s either pulling them back [because they’re pushing too hard] or pushing them forward to what they’ve capable of.”

Opening up on the trails

Throughout her coaching journey, Ali has been very big on building community. That empathy is what makes her such a compelling event MC as races start, but more importantly as runners are crossing the finish line.

She says there are a host of reasons why the trail running community is so strong. “You have a lot of those side-by-side conversations. So people get to know each other far better than a conversation where we're looking at each other [face-to-face]. That can be quite confronting and people might be less keen to open up.

“But when you're running beside someone on a trail, you're not looking directly at them… there’s a little bit less of a filter. So people get to know each other more intimately quite quickly compared to other sports or even just normal friendships.

“I might go out for a coffee with a friend, but it takes a longer relationship to have the conversations that you might have with somebody on the trail.

“So I think that's part of it - that helps form those really strong bonds and connections with people because you get to know them a lot more deeply than you might just a normal friend.

“And then it's that shared experience too. The thing I like about trail running is that people will, at the end of a race, ask, ‘Did you have a good time?’ For road running it’s, ‘What time did you do?’ It's super clinical and it's quite black and white.

“But on trails you have these shared stories or shared moments with the land that you can go, ‘How beautiful was that waterfall today?’ Or, ‘Oh man, that climb up from Jameson Creek was a real bitch,’ or whatever. So you have those shared memories of that area,” she says.

And it’s that shared experience, that we sometimes take for granted, that makes our sport so special.

Just being out there is precious

Life has taught Ali and Kerry not to take anything for granted in the cruelest way. In early 2022, Kerry was mountain biking on a challenging trail near their home in Rotorua when he came off the bike, went over the handlebars and landed square on his head, dislocating his neck.

He was airlifted out and spent three months in a spinal unit.

“Kerry obviously coming from that elite background and then having a life-changing accident, and becoming a tetraplegic, makes me feel like we've got a lot of responsibility, but also an opportunity, for people to really value their movement, and their ability to enjoy the beautiful outdoors. But also to recognise it might not be forever,” Ali says.

“Recently I had a chat with a lady that we coach and she said, ‘Oh, you know, I put my entry in the ballot for Sydney Marathon and I didn't expect to get in [she did] and I don't know… Like, will I be ready?’ 

“And I said to her, ‘This time next year, if you couldn't run, would you regret not running Sydney?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I said, ‘This a bucket list thing for you. Do it.’”

The message is as simple as it is powerful. Next time you’re out there, moaning to yourself because your hip flexor’s hurting, or you’ve tripped on a tree root and skinned your knee, or you’re cramping up or you’ve come out with the wrong shoes or it’s too hot or wet or cold or windy … just pause for a moment. And be grateful.

Be grateful that you’re out there at all. Because nothing lasts forever.

Upcoming Events

There are way too many events for me to list everything that’s happening around the country, but here is a selection of upcoming races (with a bias towards South East Queensland).

The Running Calendar website is a great source if you want a comprehensive understanding of what’s available around Australia.