When you think of a marathon sea swimmer, you probably think the idea of sea-creatures and sharks doesn't scare them, for Tracy Clark, this couldn't be further from the truth. Sharks are one of her biggest fears but "land sharks", the people set to drag you down are what scare her the most.

She’d spent her life surrounding herself with people who didn't support or encourage her. even her father said her childhood dream of swimming the English Channel was a pipedream.

During Tracy's presentation "Avoiding Sharks" we could all relate to Tracy’s idea of encountering these land sharks in their many forms as we face physical or mental challenges in our own professional and private life

Tracy has found that by surrounding herself with positive people who build her up and support her life choice is the key to her success. She also has a support crew who push her to the ends of the earth but equally would never let her put herself in danger.

She believes in "Turning Negatives into Positives", never giving up when you have dreams to achieve and being focused on what you want to achieve. In swimming this has meant never asking "how much further". Repeating two of her biggest supporters’ names, her sons, over and over again with every stroke helps her focus on the end goal and not the pain it takes to get there. Every single swim she has undertaken, whether it be sitting on the banks of the Cook Strait for 3 weeks waiting for the wind to stop blowing, sharing the seas with great white sharks in the Catalina Channel, dodging freight liners in the Strait of Gibraltar or worse yet, dodging rubbish swimming around Manhattan Island, Tracy believes that staying focused on the end goal and surrounding herself with her incredible support team has gotten her through.

After experiencing one university term in the UK, Rebecca returned to her family in Auckland unable to understand why anyone would want to live in London as it was ‘so terrible and boring’. So it is quite ironic that, fast forwarding a few years, Rebecca is known to her many readers as Runawaykiwi and regularly blogs on how to get the most out of London life, including ‘coffee, culture and how to survive this crazy city’.

But that’s only one aspect of Rebecca’s London life – in her corporate life she is a business analyst for The Travel Corporation and she also makes and sells iconic jewellery under the name Zeal & Heart (www.zealandheart.com)

So how did that all come about? Rebecca says she made a ‘questionable life decision’ by studying to be a tax accountant, and after one year in her job, her mum suggested that as she wasn’t happy she might as well try England again.

As a teen in Wellington, Emma was convinced she didn’t like camping, after going on school camps in less than waterproof tents. So it may seem a little surprising that she co-founded Adventure Queens, a women’s adventure community set up with the aim of ‘delicately smashing down’ the barriers that prevent women from heading off on adventures.

In July 2017, Emma and co-founder Anna McNuff began by organising 50 women around the UK to go wild camping as part of ‘Wild Night Out’ – a night under the stars with fellow wild women, led by a volunteer queen. Emma’s group of half a dozen or so women camped out in the Chilterns. “I hadn’t met them before but in a short space of time we were sharing and enjoying experiences with people who had recently been strangers.”

Now there are over 6,500 women in the Adventure Queens community with 33 local Queen groups in the UK and beyond. Throughout the year, four in-store workshops are held at Arc’teryx London and four campouts at wilderness campsites around the UK, supported by Kathmandu. Plus there is a £2,000 Adventure Queen grant to help send one woman off on her first big adventure. Last year’s winner, 55-year-old Sue Barrett ran, swam and cycled 1,500 miles along the spine of the Alps from Trieste to Monaco.

Emma says, “The focus is on getting women outdoors. Some members have grown up with the outdoors experience but don’t have others to go on adventures with. And some want to get into outdoor adventures but don’t know where to start.”