“Honestly? I’m exhausted,” laughs Mina Guli. “Physically, mentally, and emotionally, I’m living on a knife-edge.”
When we talk, 52-year-old Guli is three-quarters of the way through her mission to run 200 marathons in a year. After starting in March 2022 on World Water Day in Uluru, Australia, she ran in central Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and South America to raise awareness about the world’s water crisis ahead of this year’s UN Water Summit—the first for 50 years.
Guli wants people to realise that pollution isn’t ‘someone else’s problem’
She is speaking to me over Zoom from a hotel in Delhi, having just completed a gruelling marathon (number 151) in Vietnam. I watch as she demolishes a strawberry, banana and almond milk smoothie (her achievements are a retort to anyone who still believes vegans are wimps).
Originally from Melbourne, Guli started her career as a lawyer and businesswoman in the energy and infrastructure sectors—“on the other side”, as she puts it. She later joined the World Bank and worked in renewables and carbon trading. In 2012, she founded Thirst, a water conservation non-profit organisation.
This isn’t the first time Guli has run to highlight the need to protect water and combat climate change. In 2016, she completed 40 marathons across seven deserts in seven weeks. In 2017, she ran a marathon a day for 40 days along six of the world’s rivers. In 2018, she attempted 100 marathons in 100 days, but broke her leg on number 62.
But Guli has come back before—aged 22, she broke her back at a swimming pool and doctors told her she’d never run again. She recovered. “I have a resilient spirit,” she says. “I had two choices: I could give up, or I could face the challenge in front of me.”
This campaign—called Run Blue, and averaging four marathons a week—pushed her limits. “In Australia’s Simpson Desert, I got heat exhaustion and was violently sick. In Vietnam, I got a gastro bug. I was doubled over on my hands and knees by the road, sick as a dog, asking ‘How will I get through this day?’” She also found it emotionally gruelling to witness the enormity of the water crisis first-hand, seeing people suffering extreme drought in northern Kenya, for example, not to mention the numerous environmental atrocities—such as illegal sandmining on the Mekong and rubbish being dumped into rivers—that have contributed to it.
She is also disappointed at the inadequate work being done to solve the problem. Six marathons in England and Wales earlier this year left her with a mixed impression: respect for the efforts made to restore rivers, but frustration at pollution levels and “fatbergs”—blockages of oil, fat, wet wipes and other things people flush down sinks and toilets. “I want people to realise this isn’t someone else’s problem,” she says. “Europe just went through a drought and is heading for a cataclysmically bad drought this year. When I ran along the Rhine and the Danube, the rivers were at 500-year lows.”
She can’t hide her delight as she talks about completing her project. “The thing that excites me, even more than not having to run, is having an opportunity to tell the story of all the people I’ve met along the way and talk about the importance of what we’re all there to do,” she says. “This is our moment.”
In March, after running the final 50 races across Spain, South America, Mexico and the US, Guli finishes on the steps of the UN Headquarters in New York, just as the summit begins.
