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1. She used to be “allergic to fitness”

While she’s not a household name, Peloton users know Robin as a woman of almost superhuman fitness. She leads some of Peloton’s toughest classes and has written a book about running ultramarathons. Yet she says, “I was allergic to fitness when I was a kid. I wasn’t an athlete growing up and it was definitely something I started falling in love with as an adult.”

2. Her fitness journey began with a hostage situation

Robin gives a very surprising answer when asked how she first embraced running: “When I was held hostage at 21 years old.” In her final year of university, Robin was at a bar in New York with some friends when, “a man with a gun walks in and holds the bar hostage… It felt like a movie, when time slows down… You're hyper aware of what's going on in front of you, but it doesn't feel real.” The experience affected her deeply and the road to recovery led her toward running, “because I needed to run through that trauma.”

3. She used running as therapy

While Robin went to traditional therapy to try to process her feelings about the hostage incident, she says it was the running that helped her move on with her life. “I do believe now that it was in the physical run that I literally started to rewire my brain,” she says. “I started to access memories that I had pushed aside, and it was in the runs that I was able to acknowledge it, access it and then send it on its way.”

4. She gave up law for fitness

Robin was a lawyer for nearly eight years, but one day decided to give it up for something she enjoyed better. “I enjoyed a lot of aspects of the job,” she says. ‘I loved the intellectual rigour and mental gymnastics, but I realised I was living a divorced existence, counting down the hours until I could run or go to spin class or the gym. I realised I shouldn’t be living for… 45 minutes a day.” So, she quit to become to work in the fitness industry, initially becoming a freelance sports reporter.

5. She lives by the 10-minute rule

One of Robin’s core exercise beliefs is that once you make yourself do something for 10-minutes, you’ll probably do it for longer. “Even now I go by the 10-minute rule,” she says. “Start 10 minutes of the workout – pick up the weights; do the stretching – chances are you’ll finish a 20 or 30-minute workout. Once you get that blood pumping and the endorphins moving, it really changes you.”

6. She once ran for 29-hours straight

Robin is a long-distance runner. A very, very long-distance runner. She’s run 25 marathons, three 50-mile ultramarathons and a 100-mile race. Yes, 100 miles. “I finished in just over 29-hours,” she says. “I ran for 29-hours straight. It doesn’t even sound real to utter those words.” She says she got through it by, “dialling into the conversations we have with ourselves… that internal conversation. That’s why I fell in love with ultramarathons, because I was able to go inward.”

Burning Man Festival, Reno, Nevada, 2003

I ran for 29-hours straight. It doesn’t even sound real to utter those words.

Robin on running a 100-mile race

7. She once ran an ultramarathon in the desert

Robin has run all over the world and cites the London Marathon as one of her favourites. She says her number one favourite, though, was an ultramarathon she ran in the Black Rock Desert, at the Burning Man festival in Nevada, USA. “Burning Man is like an arts festival, I guess you’d call it… They have an ultramarathon there and it’s mesmerising… It starts at three or four in the morning, so you’re running in the middle of the night, through the height of most people’s partying, actually. Then most folks finish an hour or two before sunrise.”

8. She turned her hobby into a career

“My ‘fun workout’ when I was training for marathons was going to spin class,” says Robin. “That was like a hobby.” In 2014, she read an article about Peloton CEO John Foley and his plans for the business, so decided to get in touch. “I thought, ‘This is the confluence of fitness and entertainment I’ve been dreaming of’… I reached out to the company – a cold email – and was like, ‘I need to be working with you.’” She is now Vice President of Fitness Programming.

9. She sleeps nine hours a night

Robin says sleep is the most important thing for her mental health. “I am a solid nine hours per night. I will go to bed at 9pm and wake up nine hours later like clockwork. I’ve really dialled in my sleep habits… I’m not going to watch that extra Netflix show. I would even say no to social engagements, because sleep is the foundation for everything I do.” She’s so regimented about sleep that she even sets an alarm to tell her when to go to bed. “People think of alarms to get them up, but I think of alarms to wind me down… I set an alarm on my phone to remind me to put down the phone… at least an hour before I go to bed.”