Interview with Jen Segger-Gigg

Doug Doyle / 07.12.2006

I’ve wanted to interview premier Canadian adventure racer Jen Segger-Gigg who has an incredibly prolific and high profile adventure racing background in the short years she has been adventure racing. Jen has just returned from Brazil with her team DART-nuun at the EcoMotion and I was fortunate to catch up with her between her racing, training and personal coaching business to pose a few questions of what she has been up to in 2006 and where her career is taking her for 2007. As it turns out, “Seegs” opened the door into her life a bit for you to take a peek into – whether she is racing solo as an endurance athlete with Salomon Canada, or leading her clinic clients up a steep slope in Squamish, her positive attitude spills over into everything she does.


SM.ca: You have a profile on Sleepmonsters.ca and you have a nickname, “Sega.” How did that come about?

JS: Sega is what I was called growing up on my sports teams. However, DART-nuun team calls me “Seegs” and that has really stuck. That is all that I am used to hearing now. I don’t always respond to Jen now. Jen sounds a lot like Glen or Ben (other team members names) and so it’s easy to get confused and not hear right. So call me Seegs and I’ll for sure respond.

SM.ca: Your background: where were you born; where have you lived and where’d you got to school? What brought you to Squamish, BC?

JS: Born in Duncan, BC on Vancouver Island. Went to university at Malaspina in Nanaimo and graduated from a school in Queensland, Australia. That was when I first got the travel bug and knew that it would always be apart of my life. Moving to Squamish was a result of being ready to leave Whistler because we would never be able to buy a house there. Tried Vancouver for 4 months but found it difficult to get to the North Shore to train each night. Squamish is the best outdoor playground in the world. Within 2 minutes from my house I am on epic trails and gone into the backcountry. Makes training so easy!