Most teenagers’ lives revolve around school, homework, friends and whether to love or loathe Justin Bieber but Dubai College student Kristen De Sousa is not like most teenagers. In fact, she has accomplished something which no other girl at her age has ever done.
Joined step-by-step by mother Sharon, the 15 year-old began a journey in November in which the pair completed seven marathons, on seven different continents, in only 88 days.
This achievement saw her recognised by The Book of Alternative Records as the youngest girl in the world to carry out the feat in such a short period of time.
“It is nice to be unique,” Kristen said. “Not many people have visited seven continents, never mind run a marathon in each one.”
Kristen comes from a sporting family and it was her mother Sharon who kick-started a journey that would take her over the freezing tundra of Antarctica, past the quirky sight of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy and beyond.
“My mother came to me and said she was planning to do the marathons with her friend,” Kristen revealed. “At first I said ‘no way’, as at the time I had run the 800m at the school sports day and absolutely died.”
But the challenge was nevertheless accepted and an intensive training programme for the duo began last March.
While her schoolmates were still in bed, Kristen was hitting the tarmac at 04:00 for a morning jog and had to pass up weekend social events to reach her latest training targets.
All the pain was worth it in Kristen’s native Canada when mother and daughter passed the finish line together after completing the trying 42.16km Hamilton course in four hours, 34 minutes and 42 seconds on November 3.
Three weeks later they travelled to Central Coast, Australia, then on to Port Elizabeth in South Africa where they raced the weekend after former president Nelson Mandela’s death.
A week later, on December 15, they passed Italy’s iconic Leaning Tower of Pisa before competing in Doha following a well-earned Christmas break.
The final leg saw them whizz past an audience of penguins in the freezing temperatures of King George Island in the Antarctica before finishing with an arduous 50km ultra marathon in Punta Arenas, Chile on January 30.
Kristen holds a dream of studying at the University of California in Los Angeles in the United States and this desire meant she had to schedule the marathons around her educational commitments, and do her homework in some rather unusual places.
“I had English coursework and essays which I had to do on the plane,” Kristen said. “I had to learn my 400-word French speaking examination on the plane – my classroom turned into the plane.”
Understandably, Sharon stands alongside her daughter and beams with pride when asked about what Kristen has achieved.
“It was 10 times harder to do it than we ever thought it would be,” she said. “Each one was either fraught with danger, had visa issues, or we missed connecting flights. I am so proud of her.”
With the help of Dubai-based osteopath Cristina Mesquita, Kristen was able to overcome injuries to both knees, a sprained ankle, troublesome hip, damage to her Achilles tendon and three lost toenails while running around on the seven continents.
Kristen admits her friends think she is crazy for doing the marathons. But with more than Dh30,000 raised for Children of the Mountain, an organisation dedicated to supporting the education of children in the poorest areas of Nepal, the sacrifices have certainly been worth it.
