Australian Lucy Bartholomew finished second at the 2026 Transvulcania Ultramarathon in her first time at the race. In the following interview, Lucy talks about chasing winner Blandine L’Hirondel for all of the race except for a brief moment over the top where she led; how she treated the course as a 50-kilometer race to the top, 17k of limiting losses on the descent, and then a 7k race to the finish; and how this race fits into her 2026 racing plans.
For more on how the race played out, read our in-depth 2026 Transvulcania Ultramarathon results article.
[Editor’s Note: If you are unable to see the video above, click here to access it.]
Lucy Bartholomew Post-2026 Transvulcania Ultramarathon Interview Transcript
iRunFar: Meghan Hicks of iRunFar. I’m with Lucy Bartholomew. It’s a day after her second-place finish at the 2026 Transvulcania Ultramarathon. I think I have a race hangover, and I didn’t even run yesterday. Congratulations, Lucy.
Lucy Bartholomew: Thank you. I’m super stoked.
iRunFar: That was quite a run. Just out of the gate, you took it out, and then found your second-place position, and then lived there all race.
Bartholomew: Yep, made that place my home. I mean, my plan going into it was I knew that the uphill is more my strength, and I definitely knew that this downhill, particularly with the technical, is not. So in my brain, I was running a 50-kilometer race, and then just surviving for 20.
iRunFar: To the top of the mountain.
Bartholomew: To the top of the mountain. That was my finish line. And then I took a long cooldown and just tried to survive, and then tried to rally as best I could through the riverbed and to the finish.
iRunFar: So let’s talk a little bit about how the race unfolded. I think in the dark hours you took things out hot and sort of led the women’s race for maybe …
Bartholomew: No, Blandine [L’Hirondel] was always ahead of me.
iRunFar: Always?
Bartholomew: Always.
iRunFar: Okay. She must have come through Los Canarios and stopped in the aid station a wee bit longer than you.
Bartholomew: She had a film crew that she hugged someone, she high-fived. It was good because then she came past me, and that’s where she pulled her poles out, and the gap began to form.
iRunFar: Marched onward up the mountain.
Bartholomew: It was a thing of beauty. But yeah, she kind of relaxed through that bit and then put in an effort.
iRunFar: So in reality, Blandine was setting the pace, like marking the women’s race, and you were going behind.
Bartholomew: Always. Yep.
iRunFar: Were you trying to mark her on that ascent, or were you just falling into, “This is a really long haul up to the top. I’m going to do my own thing?”
Bartholomew: No, I was in a constant surprise that I was hanging on. It was an honor to watch Blandine’s bum go up that volcano. I was in complete awe. Yeah, she was incredible and really locked into her plan, which I didn’t know what that was. I don’t know Blandine. So yeah, I was just kind of running to my effort and what I thought I could do. And I didn’t know the course, and didn’t know that section. So it was just kind of like, blissfully, beautifully unaware of how tough it got as we got higher and higher.
iRunFar: And it kind of gets tough twice. You do that first big climb, and then you’re in those volcanic highlands, and I think people are usually surprised by how rough it is so quick up there.
Bartholomew: Yeah. Oh, it’s exhausting. It is beautiful, which is lucky because it is brutal, and you’re very much playing with fire of feeling like everything feels like it’s working pretty hard right now, and it’s pretty early in that race. But I also think that this island seems to give you these opportunities of some easy footing, a little bit softer downhill. And I think if you kind of let the nature pace you, and you don’t try and push through the black soft sand, and instead ease through that, and then roll through the forest bits, it kind of farleks you through, and that was kind of my focus.
iRunFar: Interesting. Blandine, yourself, and Emelie [Forsberg] just sort of fell into your slots early on and then stayed in your lanes almost all the way.
Bartholomew: Yeah.
iRunFar: Did you find some men to race with? Or like where were you mentally just going, “Okay, I’ve got a gal in front of me and a gal behind me, but I’ve not seen them really.”
Bartholomew: Yeah, I was very much in no-man’s-land. I had a few men I would kind of it would ebb and flow with. On an uphill, I would catch them, any descent, I had one person who was like, “I don’t speak English, but you’re not good at downhill.” I was like, “Sounds like English.”
iRunFar: Apparently, you know enough.
Bartholomew: I understand. He meant it in a really friendly way, and it did make me laugh.
iRunFar: If he sees this interview, you’re a champ, buddy.
Bartholomew: I was just like, “Oh, the beautiful honesty of translation.” And it was such a small downhill. I was like, “Wow, he gauged that off just those steps.”
iRunFar: And we have 2,500 meters of those later today.
Bartholomew: Yeah, but we’re not talking about that. But yeah, I kind of had people around. And then you catch the back of the marathoners, and it’s just kind of fun to have the company, and, yeah, I was really just happy locked into my own headspace and own pace. It’s one of the few races that I’ve had in recent years where I haven’t been worried about what’s going on behind me. I was just kind of like, “This is it. This is my pace,” and I feel really happy. If someone’s having a day and comes past, then what a privilege to watch that.
iRunFar: I think it was on the live stream that they were saying that up in the high country, you were keeping like running steps where some of the other top women had dropped in, not dropped, but moved to power hiking.
Bartholomew: Yeah.
iRunFar: What did that high country ridgeline feel like to you?
Bartholomew: Yeah, I’m kind of known to … I didn’t use poles, and it’s one of my weaknesses when it comes to bigger and longer races like UTMB, that I just don’t have the skillset, and I think my ego keeps me putting these little shuffling steps up. And then someone walks past me, and I’m like, “I’ve just got to work smarter, not harder.” But it was cool. I kind of found that if I walked, like I was saying, those more exhausting sections, then I was able to kind of put my foot down. And I’ve been doing a lot of faster running lately, having just come from being in the U.K. and the Paris Marathon, so that kind of running felt really comfortable to me.
iRunFar: So you said you were planning to take it out as a 50k and then survive the downhill.
Bartholomew: Mitigate the damage.
iRunFar: Mitigate the damage on the downhill. This is a fascinating course. I don’t know of another course out there that has one continuous 2,500-meter descent.
Bartholomew: I’ve not met it, either.
iRunFar: Yeah. So, how was meeting this one yesterday?
Bartholomew: I feel like we’re trauma-bonded.
iRunFar: It doesn’t know it yet, but you do.
Bartholomew: We’re best friends. Yeah. I mean, it’s just crazy. It beats your body up, and your quads, because it’s so technical. But it also for me, it really beats my brain up. It’s just you’re so focused. You’ve got the marathoners that you’re trying to navigate around, and you’re just kind of like, hoping for the best, preparing for the worst with every step. And when I had Blandine, I was in front of her momentarily from the top, and she came past me …
iRunFar: That’s right. You did come through the Roque in the lead.
Bartholomew: It was very cool. And then I even went past Blandine, and I was like, “Don’t worry, I’ll see you very, very soon.”
iRunFar: See you in a bit.
Bartholomew: And she came past and, yeah, it looked like she was doing a different sport, and I yelled out to her, “Please be careful.” And the guy was like, “Yeah, but maybe something happens.” And I was like, “No, I want her to make it down okay.”
iRunFar: Yeah, yeah.
Bartholomew: And I spoke to her yesterday at prize-giving, and she said she took some falls, and I was like, “I was so worried about you.” But, yeah, it was incredible. She was a class of her own.
iRunFar: Amazing. You might have been the only person in the race yesterday — uphill being your strength and your focus yesterday — to enjoy that uphill finish?
Bartholomew: Yeah. Oh, I loved it.
iRunFar: Okay.
Bartholomew: I actually, like the riverbed didn’t faze me that much, and then that uphill, I was really a marble and a groove at that point. It was really cool to bookend a race from start to finish and have just a positive mindset. The nutrition was still going in. I didn’t finish on empty.
If the race was 100k, I think I would have been okay to continue at my own pace. I just was climbing up being like, “Wow, I’m really proud of this race that I’ve run.” And yeah, it’s just cool to run through the streets and have the support and get to the finish line.
iRunFar: It’s a really awesome finish line. I mean, it’s brutal because you can see the blue path going to the horizon, but there are people out cheering for almost all of it.
Bartholomew: Yeah. It’s really something special. And this race was really cool because there were so many moments where you’re in between towns and so remote that you’re on your own, and I don’t understand what people are saying around me, and there are not that many people around me, so I was just kind of on my own. And to come into these little nests of people or into town to the finish, it was just like the energy that pushes you through that straight road to that finish line. It’s really something beautiful, and I felt very lucky to have those cheers.
iRunFar: Let’s add this race to the current context of your trail-running life. You are just turning 30 in a week or so. Happy almost-birthday.
Bartholomew: Thank you.
iRunFar: But to me, it seems like you’ve been a part of this sport since the dawn of woman.
Bartholomew: Yeah. I mean, I ran my first 100k at 15.
iRunFar: Age 15.
Bartholomew: Age 15. So we’re talking 15 years and …
iRunFar: There’s a lot of kilometers in these legs.
Bartholomew: There’s a lot of kilometers in these legs, a lot of experiences, and it’s been cool. I feel really lucky to kind of see the ebbs and flows of the sport and myself, and then to see the explosion that we’re witnessing right now. And Emelie and Blandine and myself, we were just saying this is just a new era of the sport. It’s being done differently. But also at the same time, the one thing that’s been constant throughout my whole career is respect for each other, and that desire to bring out the best in each other. And it’s just cool to see what that does on a day like yesterday.
iRunFar: Yeah. How much faster a group of women can move when it’s the collective pushing each other ahead.
Bartholomew: Right. Yeah. And that’s something that I think we’re just starting to see, and it’s just so exciting for what will come.
iRunFar: A career of running like yours has ebbs and flows, wave crests and troughs, whatever, insert the metaphor of the day. We’ve seen a couple of yours on both sides over the years.
Bartholomew: For sure, yeah. It’s been as steep as that descent to Tazacorte. It’s been as bleak as that sometimes, too. And then it’s been as high as the Roque de los Muchachos. There’s been highs and lows, for sure. And I think one of the things that I’m just mostly proud of is just gritting my teeth and staying in it and giving myself another opportunity to try and try again.
And this feels like I’m different, the sport’s different. It’s a new sport, and it’s really exciting. It feels really fresh to me. I’m kind of like a student again, even though the left-foot-right-foot motion remains the same. Yeah, it’s really cool. I feel super lucky that I’m still standing, still here.
iRunFar: You said off-camera you’re building to UTMB. I think this will be your fifth?
Bartholomew: Fourth.
iRunFar: Fourth.
Bartholomew: Yep. A TDS and an OCC as well.
iRunFar: You’ve done a lot of races in a lot of places, and it seems like you’re a woman who likes to mix things up. But UTMB is one of the couple races that you like to go back to.
Bartholomew: Yeah. UTMB, it fascinates me. It’s a big jigsaw, and it takes a lot to get the pieces together, and each year I feel like I’m slotting together another piece. So I just kind of want to give it one more crack, and then maybe take a break from it. I just feel like I got close to feeling like I found a potential out there last year until I took a fall, and I just want to see it through to the finish line and then give it some peace.
iRunFar: You did say, also off-camera, that in order to keep UTMB fresh and interesting, you had to take a different build and a different process to get there. So you’re here at a new race for you. What else is happening between now and that divine date in late August?
Bartholomew: One of the things that I was talking to my team about was that if I’m going to repeat one race of the year, the journey to that race, I think, needs to be different to keep it fresh. Then the result of UTMB, maybe it’s not a linear progression of being faster, but the experiences and the journey and the lessons will be different, which is ultimately a beneficial thing.
So Transvulcania has been a race that I’ve wanted to do for 10 years, and so got to do that. And then Lavaredo is another one that I have always been inspired by and excited for, and I think it could suit me well with being more runnable. This is me choosing to not focus on my weaknesses and do the things I probably should be doing, but you know, yeah. And then stick around in Europe until UTMB.
iRunFar: But you did say off-camera that you feel like you’re more of a mental runner than a physical runner at this point, and you have to do things that sort of sate the soul on the way to improve.
Bartholomew: Yeah. I mean, ultimately, the best running version of me is the happiest version of me. And I like to do the things that make me feel good, and I intersperse that with the other stuff as well. So I think it’s going to be a really fun year. I’m excited to make the trip home today, back to Australia, and spend some time just kind of taking a breath and then firing back up for the back end of the year.
iRunFar: Lucy Bartholomew, you and the gals put on a great show yesterday, so thank you for that.
Bartholomew: You’re welcome.
iRunFar: Congratulations on the second-place finish.
Bartholomew: Thank you. Thank you so much for being out there.
