Veronique Bourbeau

Veronique Bourbeau is an ultra-distance runner with a passion for humanity. She is driven to make a change in the world, to put right injustices and to create better lives for the most disadvantaged communities.

She credits her passion and her hyper resilience to a near-death experience she had at the age of just 12, when she drowned and was brought back to life. She realized that life now held nothing for her to fear, which allowed her to push herself to her full potential.

Veronique took up running in her 30s – when she was already a mother, a student and a full-time worker. Never one to do things by halves, her first race was a marathon – and she was hooked. Running was a sport at which she excelled, and soon marathons were not enough, and Veronique moved on to ultra-distance running.

Vero established herself as an ultra-runner by running the length of Japan. She covered 3010km in 72 days – or in other words, one marathon a day for two and half months.

Veronique has won almost all the ultra-races in Asia and SE Asia. In 2019, she competed in the Malaysia 444km C2C race with a time of 98.27h. She not only won the race, outright, but broke the event record.

As a journalist by profession, Veronique had spent time in Senegal, where she was struck by the impact on communities of having no easy access to fresh, clean water. Very much aware of her own privilege, and the unfairness of having water filters when the communities around her didn’t, Veronique vowed to make a difference. Veronique put her humanitarian goals and her sport together and Run4Humanity was born.

With the creation of Run4Humanity, Vero has a new focus for her ultra-distance running – using it to change lives, one kilometre at a time. raise awareness of her mission to transform lives through clean, safe water.