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Born | 12 July 1981 | |||||||||||
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Club | IS Göta | |||||||||||
Medal record
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Lill Maria Kotka (called Mimmi Kotka; born 12 July 1981) is a Swedish athlete who specialized in ultrarunning.[2]
In a 2016 interview, Kotka talked about her running background: "I have always loved outdoor life and kept active with skiing, biking, hiking, diving, yoga but not running. But in 2010, I signed up to run Lidingöloppet as a challenge and got obsessed with trail running while practicing for it. That was my thing! Then I took it easy in 2012, 2013, and in January 2014, I decided to go all in. Train more focused. It was a little too focused in 2015. I ran a lot and got injured. In 2016, I took it easier, and now I seem to have found a formula that works. It is more fun than ever to run, and my body thrives."[3]
Kotka's major claim to fame is winning the 101 km Ultra-Trail Courmayeur-Champex-Chamonix (CCC) in Chamonix, France, in 2016 by a margin of almost half an hour and the 121 km Ultra-Trail Sur les Traces des Ducs de Savoie (TDS) in the same location, and in 2017, by almost two hours and a half, improving the previous course record from 2015 by 46 minutes.[4]
For some years, Kotka suffered from RED-S relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S), getting back to normal form at the beginning of 2021.[5]
Kotka is of Finnish descent through her father. who is from Finland.[6] Since 2017, she and her husband, Toni Spasenoski, who is a high-tech project manager and amateur photographer, live mostly in Chamonix.[7][8]
For a living, Kotka works as a nutritionist. In 2018, she started Moonvalley, an online shop dedicated to organic energy bars and sports drinks, together with fellow athletes Ida Nilsson and Emelie Forsberg.[9]
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2022