Red Bull Ireland

While many adrenaline athletes come into their sports knowing that’s what they want to do for the rest of their lives, Rebecca Rusch’s career seems to constantly evolve. After discovering adventure racing in the mid-1990s, Rebecca captained a team of three women and one man to place fourth in the Eco-Challenge. In 2003, she reached the pinnacle of her sport captaining the otherwise all-male Team Montrail to victory at Raid Gauloises in Kyrgyzstan. It’s no wonder Rebecca was named “Adventure Racer of the Year” by Competitor Magazine and one of the year’s top 25 female athletes by Outside.

But the woman Adventure Sport magazine crowned “Queen of Pain” isn’t one to rest on her laurels. In 2005, Rebecca realized that adventure racing wasn’t going to be her primary sports outlet because the bigger races were struggling to find funding. So she turned to mountain biking as her next terrain to conquer.

Interestingly it had always been her least favorite sport. But she knew she was good at dealing with pain and enduring long hours awake; and 24-hour mountain bike events were just beginning to take off in the United States. In her first year of competition, she placed second at the Worlds; she took the title in 2007 and 2008 and plans to three-peat in 2009. “No one can believe that I am doing this because I used to throw my bike and curse about how much I hated mountain biking,” she says. “Now I’m completely addicted.”