Fuelled by Tribe: Meet Tribe runner Annie

I’m Annie from eXerK. Am fighting the good fight to help get busy people active, by being the busiest and most active of them all.

Your biggest challenge to date? I am currently on number 35 in a mission to complete 52 sporting challenges in 52 weeks. Making exercise sustainable around work and life is my biggest challenge, and for most of you too from what I gather! Covering a huge range of sports, with open invites for people to get involved and join me on the challenges, eXerK is proving to be quite a fun project.

Coolest place you have ever run? Alone at 2am above the Huffington White Horse as part of a 24 hour relay from London to Cardiff. Not the greatest views, but the feeling of running for a greater cause made it one of the coolest places I have ever run.

What type of music makes you reach for your trainers? A playlist made for the Project Esther memorial run really gets me pumped. Down the Road by C2C is the first song on it.

Have you got any advice for someone wanting to start running? It is worth it. Running (or anything new for that matter) only gets easier. The beginning is particularly tough, both mentally and physically. As you start to see improvement, you’ll start to have more fun and realise your independence. Don’t run because others want you to. Run to explore, have fun and to breathe.


**Have you run any marathons?** I ran the London marathon a few years back and have done lots of halves since then. I love halves. A nice distance to push into endurance, but be able to carry on life both before and after the event. I shied away from running for a year after running the London marathon – mixture of my knee and the sangria life as was living in Spain…. Injury has kept me away from full marathons in the 52in52 so far. Who knows. Winter marathon. Perhaps a trail.

Best meal after a hard day running / biking / climbing? Fish and chips or baked beans on toast – back to British by the looks of it.

What is your favourite thing about running with the Tribe? Being part of a community of curious and kind runners. Really like that you can push yourself, but don’t have to. You have options, flexibility and how you run is your own choice. If only all of life was that like the Tribe!