About

My name is Alexis Oosterhoff, and this is a blog (mostly) about me.

This site will, hopefully, be the final resting home of the many & various blogs that I’ve started over the years. I’ve written a bit here and a bit there about my adventures so consolidating it onto this blog will take some time. If you’re reading this, then hi! and thanks for taking the time to do so.

I’m 50-something male, living in Nothern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. Married to Joanne and father to two amazing young adults, Joseph and Lucy.

For work, I do I.T. stuff. You can read my LinkedIn profile if you care enough to know more about that.

I had something of a mid-life crisis in the late 2000’s, leaving the 9 to 5 in the city to work as a flight instructor at a small school in the town of Wyalkatchem (a couple of hours north east of Perth). I loved the work and the lifestyle - sharing my passion of flying through teaching was profoundly satisfying. But there was no long-term career in it - I certainly couldn’t pay my mortgage and support a family - so it was short-lived. I did buy a plane during that period, but a new passion had started to take hold - running - and eventually it became all-consuming.

After a brief interruption due to a thyroid cancer diagnosis in 2012, I ran my very first marathon in Perth in June 2013. Earlier that same year I started trail running with Perth Trail Series, and soon running became my everything. I’ve since run nine marathons (including New York in 2014) and completed 63 official ultramarathons (along with a few DNF’s and a whole stack of unofficial ultra runs).

In 2016 I became involved with the Australian Ultra Runner’s Association (AURA) after a random conversation at the Coast 2 Kosci ultra while crewing for a friend. I started out collating and preparing race results for the Association’s quarterly (printed) magazine (UltraMag), and that led to my getting involved with DUV (the German equivalent of AURA) as a statistician. I’ve since been adding ultramarathon race results to their global database (over 3000 races & 180,000 individual performances contributed so far).

In 2017 I became Treasurer of AURA (now AUTRA), and was VP in 2018 & 2019. Since then, I’ve remained involved behind the scenes, taking care of all things “IT” for the Association, including running their points competition for several years, and now holding together their membership system with bits of sticky tape & glue :-)

For me, running is about friendship, new destinations and setting myself goals that seem impossible until they are done. I’m always looking forward to the next big adventure.

So, what’s next?

When	What
Jun 26	Run the Camino Salvado pilgrim trail, from Subiaco to New Norcia, as a ‘fully-supported’ Fatass. Roughly 170km.
Aug 26	Six day 300km stage race in France (Ultra en Pente Douce).
Sep 26	The Loop London ; a modified version of The London Loop, going Cockfosters station with a time limit of 46 hours. A Mark Cockbain event.
Dec 26	Six Inch trail marathon
Feb 27	Tarawera Ultra (100km … probably)
Apr 27	18 day stage race in Spain (TransEspana). My second attempt at this event.