I’ve run every day for 140 days. Typing that, I can’t quite believe it’s true.

I’ve spent a lot of time running, but never considered myself a runner. Distances were not for me. Strong and tall I did quite well at sprinting and hurdles, but distance running was the bane of my existence. When I first moved to America I met one of my best friends ever in PE class. At the back of the class we had given up any hope of catching up with the class as well as any fucks about doing it at all and just chatted as we walked off our angst. I remember talking to him on day 60 or so of this challenge about how his own running program is going and how much joy it was bringing us. My teenage self was rolling her eyes inside of me, but fuck her. She had no idea how much I would need this.

So how the hell did this happen? Is it a good idea? Why would anyone try this?

Simple. I needed something to change. I felt like I was on a hamster wheel when it came to my fitness. Actually, I felt quite hamster-ish in general. I was active in fits-and-spurts and cozy the rest of the time. I also, had been feeling like I looked quite like a hamster. I had lost my fitness level in a major way. Believe it or not, that grumpy teenager had actually become fit once. After a childhood and adolescence of being overweight and not being super interested in anything active (I preferred to read books, organize charity events, write and paint) I had become rather fit. Traveling in my early twenties started a passion for the outdoors and after gaining weight living in Italy (pasta, wine and gelato-no regrets at all) inspired me to actually get into proper shape. I ran, did capoeira, pole dancing and learned how to eat very clean. Then I found a short cut through a particularly edgy ex-boyfriend. I became fueled by caffeine, cigarettes and bottled up trauma…amongst other things. Broken, but thin, I found myself living in a beautiful coastal city in Vietnam, working as a teacher with little kids and in an apartment up 168 stairs. My bum had never looked better. I never worked out, ate whatever I wanted and yet stayed at my goal weight. While I still obsessed over wanting to see the bones in my spine, I was relieved not to feel fat for the first time in my life.

Then one day, I ended up nearly dying from a stomach ulcer trapped in my mountainside apartment in a hurricane unable to get medical treatment… After that I lost my taste for cigarettes and “edgy” life in a major way. It was only then I saw how much smoking had really been helping me stay thin. It was only a few pounds but the fear of becoming fat again was returning…and so was some of my behaviour.

Returning to California with the body I’d always wanted and my shortcuts off the menu, I decided to get fit. The problem was traditional exercise seemed so fucking arbitrary. I’m just going to run, and then stop? Where am I going? Why am I going there? This seems like a ridiculously mundane use of my time.

I don’t enjoy wasting my time, so I needed a reason.

Triathlons became that reason. I now had a goal. A pointless run, swim or bike ride was in pursuit of race day. I loved it.

After accidentally becoming a Catholic High School teacher, I found myself living in a little apartment at the beach in Ventura, CA. I came alive here. Starting my day swimming in the ocean just a few doors down from my place, my street was on a coastline bike path and in a funky neighborhood with some great places to run. I felt a sense of freedom I had never experienced. My body could do all the things I never thought it could and I had surpassed the level of “this is fucking pointless” to “this brings me immense joy and peace.” I kept doing triathlons, but it wasn’t the purpose of my training anymore. I trained because it felt incredible, because I loved being on the California coast and because the warm soreness in my body after a killer bike ride, run or swim brought me a level of satisfaction that I had only previously experienced traveling.

Then. Some shit happened. A lot of shit. My life in the space of 2 years turned to absolute…shit.

My heart was broken after a traumatic relationship with an alcoholic who I had loved desperately.

My back was destroyed by a slipped disc that had me carried out of my apartment into an ambulance where I spent three days in excruciating pain hearing doctors tell me they didn’t know why I couldn’t stand up anymore, fearing I might never actually be able to again.

My weight skyrocketed at an alarming rate after a foray into veganism that crashed my metabolism with all the carbs, a change in job to a more sedentary one, and the steroids they gave me for the slipped disc.

My sanctuary of home was marred by an abusive and bullying neighbor who decided intermittently he didn’t like one of the neighbors and would dedicate himself to hurting them. Then he would get drunk and apologize before changing his mind again. At one point he told a new neighbor not to talk to me because I was…”Too British”. His front door was three feet from mine so I kept the blackout curtains closed to avoid him. He scared me.

I isolated myself inside in the dark.

Then after an attempt to make peace with a tough childhood went wrong, I became estranged from my father in a heartbreaking way.

I experienced a series of misfortunes in my business that led to a complete decimation of my finances and the humbling experience of having to sleep on a murphy bed in my mother’s office for a year at 31 years olf.. I was a broken shell of a person.

And a fat one.

I lost everything I loved and everything that made me feel safe including my fitness. Suddenly finding myself over 300lbs and unable to walk around the block.

I might have had a pulse, but I wasn’t alive.

It seemed like I would never recover, honestly. I had so much to rebuild. My finances. My career. My body. My heart. My whole life.

It wasn’t just a fresh start and a clean slate I needed. My slate hadn’t been dirty. My slate had been a fucking disaster.

I needed a new slate.

It was two years after losing my home and restarting my life that I started the running challenge. How I made it through those years is an entirely different story, but it wasn’t easy.

But let’s fast forward from that rock bottom moment to the day I started this challenge. I found myself living in Santa Barbara, loving it. I had my own place again. I was making money. I was ok. I had lost 60lbs through a keto diet, and intermittent exercise.

What did intermittent exercise look like? I exercised most days. Exploring Santa Barbara by foot. I would run, but intervals. I swam a lot in the summer. Did yoga, sometimes. Rode my bike, from time to time. I was trying to do triathlon training like I used to, but wasn’t doing enough of any one part to make progress. I was in limbo.

I was trying desperately to regain that freedom I felt from triathlon training, I wanted my joy back. That feeling of coming up over a hill on your bike, seeing the surfers and feeling the wind in your hair knowing how strong and capable your body was. I wanted it. But it wasn’t coming. I was still fat. Exercise still felt foreign because the body I was in felt foreign.

It wasn’t the weight. It was how I felt in my body. My weight created shame not because of how I looked, but because of what it represented. In those years where everything fell apart I felt like I had failed. I tried to hold everything together, but it slipped through my fingers like dust. It seemed the harder I tried to hold onto anything, the quicker it was taken from me. Instead of befriending myself and letting the life go to save myself or asking for help…I withdrew. I didn’t want anyone to see or know how badly I had fucked everything up. I could hide almost everything. The heartache, the financial problems, the career, all of that could be hidden to save my pride. Not the weight.

One look at me and you could see the failure sticking to my body hidden under increasingly flowing clothes.

I felt like I was wearing a giant neon sign saying “I LOST CONTROL OF MY LIFE AND I CAN’T TAKE CARE OF MYSELF!”

It was present in every conversation.

Every interaction.

Every time I left the house.

I took the sign with me and the glare from the neon made it impossible to forget.

Was I mad at the world? Furious with those who had wronged me?

No.

I singularly and passionately resented and hated ONE person for the mess that had become of my life. Me. I fucking HATED that chick. “How could you do this to us? How could you let it get this bad? What is ACTUALLY wrong with you?

Really nice. As a former teacher I know that if want to help a student, shaming and humiliating them into greatness is a terrible strategy, and yet that was what I was doing to myself every time I tried to fix the situation I was in.

“You sack of shit, really you can’t run more than 90 seconds? Do you remember how fit we were? Yeah, I bet it hurts, you deserve all that and more. Gross.”

No wonder it was hard for me to be consistent. I couldn’t win over my own head.

It wasn’t just the mental anguish I would put myself through. It actually hurt! I was still up 85lbs from my goal weight. Have you ever tried to run with the weight of a medium child strapped to you? I don’t recommend it.

So mentally, I was causing myself a nightmare. Physically, I was in pain. Emotionally, I was still grieving the loss of my former self, and every time I couldn’t reach the distances or speeds I once hit was a knife in the chest.

That was the cause of the inconsistency. That was why I was stuck not progressing. I was holding me back at every level. It needed to change.

It was Friday the 13th of November, 2020. I had just spent the weekend dog sitting at a beautiful home with views of the ocean from the deck. I was in a good headspace, I was finally starting to acknowledge how incredible it was that I had pulled myself back. Things weren’t perfect, but in two years I had made progress.

I wasn’t screaming at myself so hard that day.

My best friend sent me a youtube video of a guy who had run every day for a year. This friend and I LOVE to start a challenge. Whole30, meditation every day, living on a budget, fitness challenges… let us make a chart and dream about success and we are beyond happy. Arts and crafts plus self improvement. Intoxicating. I tidied the kitchen while watching the video and something about it struck me. “LET’S MAKE A CHART” I texted him back.

And we did.

My instinct at this was to CHANGE MY WHOLE LIFE AT ONCE:

Ok self, if you’re going to run every day. You need to do at least two miles every run, even if it’s intervals. Also, you need to eat 100% clean, back to Keto you go. Your mindset needs to change, every day you will meditate for 30 minutes. Yoga will stop you getting injured so you need to do 30 minutes of that a day too and make sure you drink a gallon of water every day. Cross training will be important too, so you need to do a core workout, strength training and upper body work too. Ok we are going to track those 6 habits for the next 6 months.

My god.

This chart is going to be HUGE…

Thank god I got really honest with myself-you’ll never be able to maintain that. You will fail. You will be unspeakably cruel to yourself when you do, and this will not change anything. Please. Don’t do that to yourself again. Try something different.

One thing.

Running.

Every day. You will put on your running shoes and you will go outside and run because it feels really good. No minimum distance. You run as long as it feels good. Learn to love it again. Be gentle with yourself. But you never miss a fucking day.

I made a chart. To track consistency and enjoyment. Every day I write down how far I went and what I loved most about it. He had the idea of “Running into Summer” so we made a square for every day between Nov 13th 2020 and Memorial Day 2021. 196 days.

And off I went.

Focusing on what I loved about it, as it turns out, was key.

The cunty voice in my head had to shut up so I could try to notice what I loved about the run. I had trained myself to look for how it hurt, why I hated it, why I was not a runner and what a failure and loser I was. I couldn’t stop it by will, I had to give that voice a new task.

I tasked her to answer the question: What is the best thing about this run today?

Umm….

This song is pretty great?

That dog basically smiled at me as I ran past.

That sunset was the most beautiful.

I ran under the moon and felt like I was in a cheesy movie.

Or even, I was exhausted and still showed up for myself.

The voice tried to sneak in. “Oh wow, that’s the best you’ve got?”

“Shut up please, I’m trying to enjoy myself. Plus, if today wasn’t great there’s always tomorrow. I run every day now, don’t you know.”

I’m starting to feel like a runner. I had spent so long telling myself I couldn’t run far enough, that my body didn’t look like a runner, that I was too slow that even when I was doing triathlons I never felt like a runner. Now I did. Why? Because runners run. It was never about who I was, it was about the action. Of course I’m a runner. Why? Because I run.

The consistency taught me to trust myself again. I said I was going to do it, and I did. Day by day, I learned that I was trustworthy to myself.

The first week being able to run a full 2 minute interval was an achievement. The first week felt great. I couldn’t believe I was doing it. The stakes were so low “Put on running shoes, go outside” that it was so easy to do. Had I put restrictions of distance on it “Do a 5k every day!” I would have never had time or energy to do it. Knowing that if I just put on my shoes and ran to the mailbox and back that counted, got me outside. And the funny thing is, once I had made it to the mailbox I always wanted to keep going. When work got stressful and I would close my laptop after 14 hours of work at 10pm, it was hard, but not impossible to drag myself outside for a moonlit run around the block. You never, fucking miss a day.

The second week, I was hurting. “You need to rest, your legs hurt.” You never fucking miss a day. Fine. Rest. Walk a bit and run for as long as it feels good. Not moving will not help. You’re on a 12 day streak, do you REALLY want to start from 0? Isn’t that harder than pushing through the pain a bit? Put on your shoes, go outside.

By the time Christmas came I was over a month in! Holidays have always been a time that fitness takes a back seat to wine, but not this year. I broke my rule slightly, once. Christmas Eve. I had been cooking for about 12 hours straight. I was a considerable amount of Gin in and the family was about to sit down for the dinner I had spent all day preparing. I ran laps, barefoot around the kitchen island while my sister cheered me on. No shoes. Not out. I let it count but told myself “once is an exception, twice is a habit.” So, Christmas day, I put my shoes on, and I went outside.

On that note, I realized drinking made running the next day super hard. In 2016 I had stopped drinking for a year as an experiment. It had only come back into my life as 9 months of pandemic loneliness got too much. It was starting to affect my running. My running had become sacred. So I stopped drinking, again.Not a hard rule, just a preference. I like how my body feels sober, I like how it feels healthy. So even in the absence of strict rules, I choose sober and clean.

I noticed too, when I ate poorly, running was harder. I knew what made my body feel good. High quality protein and vegetables. I started choosing that over anything else. I wasn’t going on a strict diet to force myself to become a “better” version of myself. I was making running easier for me by food choices that supported it. I was being kind and supportive to myself, and it felt good! Water and electrolytes helped too, so in came gallon of water daily and effortlessly. Slowly the life I had wanted to start all at once through force was becoming my reality effortlessly.

For the first time in January I was able to run a full mile. It had been over 3 years. It was a glimmer of her again. The girl who had felt unstoppable, wind in her hair. Before her heart was broken, before her back got broken, before she broke her body and her life. Slowly slowly, she was poking her head out of the cave of shame she hid in and coming back into the world.

I wasn’t running the neighborhood anymore. Or hidden in the woods. Or in dark parks at night. I was running in public. In. Public. Where people could actually see me! That public!

Santa Barbara is one of the best places I’ve ever lived, but it is intimidating as fuck. Everyone here looks like a model. On the one hand, hell yeah! Eye candy! On the other hand, the humiliation I felt being in my body was exacerbated greatly by being in this environment. “Best thing about the run today, was running by the pier-it’s so beautiful!” “Ran past a crowd watching a paraglider crash into the bushes today-hilarious!” My enjoyment of these places became more important than how I looked being in them. Those places are popular and populated because they’re wonderful, and I have just as much right to enjoy them as the blonde supermodel looking chick on her extremely cool rollerskates. Who cares if I’m still kind of fat, and slow, and not running far…I’ve run every day for 90 days with the weight of a medium child strapped to me. You have NO idea what it took for me to get here, so I’m going to enjoy this. I’ve earned it, damnit.”

I realized soon, the voice stopped fighting me, and started fighting for me. She’s a powerful voice, I’m really happy she’s finally on my side.

Injury came inevitably with a twisted ankle. The pain. Outrageous. How was I going to keep going? Not my ignoring it and resting in victimhood. I had a mantra; put on running shoes, and go outside. But also, go see a doctor. I slowed down, was easy on myself but never missed a day. Identifying what was wrong made a lot of sense. Pereoneal tendonitis caused by weak ankles and rolling my feet out (supination.) I had to fix this. Yoga. Massage. Strength training for my posterior chain and a new pair of shoes. Shoes with proper cushioning for my unusually high arches. I had always avoided cushioned shoes, feeling like they were for the weak and real runners would have more hardcore shoes.

No.

I have run every day for 90 days despite being injured. I’m not worried about being a ‘real runner’ anymore and my feet need shoes that are going to make me a better runner. This was flow over ego.

After about 100 days, I was ready to train. I was enjoying it and built up enough of a base that I could start to push myself a bit harder. I wanted to run a 5k. Very few races in a pandemic, so I planned my own. I picked a day and planned a route.

Turns out that takes me from this awesome duck pond by the zoo, along the entire coastline, past the pier, past the harbor and to a big beautiful beach.

I started training. 4 weeks to go. I could run a 11.35 minute mile (started at 14…) and could run about one mile non stop. I decided three runs a week would be training runs.

The first training run was rough. By the third ten minute interval I was hurting. My entire left foot was completely numb. But I had run every day for 110 days. I had lost 70lbs. I had gone from homeless to living in Santa Fucking Barbara. I had pushed myself every day for two years to overcome the mess I had been in and I had succeeded in so many ways. I was a winner. I had failed, and got back up and kept fighting. That’s not a loser, that’s not a failure, that’s a badass thing to do. So, if I could do that, I could run for ten minutes more.

And I did.

So here I stand. I have run every day for 140 days. I ran a 5k today at a pace of 10min/mile. I’ve lost 100lbs. I do yoga almost every day. I meditate almost every day. I drink plenty of water. I eat a very healthy and nutritious diet. I do Capoeira three times a week. I feel amazing.

And every day. I put on my shoes. I go outside. I never miss a day.