warrior

Juliette Denny took on an epic goal for her first run challenge; back in 2017, she ran 100 miles for charity. You’d think running marathons after that would be a cinch but no, running’s not like that, and Juliette found that training for the London Marathon meant going right back to the beginning

Juliette Denny

Words: Rachel Ifans

Juliette Denny is 31 and lives in South London. She works in digital marketing but spends as much of her time as possible outdoors or exploring in her campervan. She runs, hikes and cycles and has developed a taste, in the past five years for taking on – [understatement klaxon!] – big challenges.

0-100 in 60 seconds

Juliette was an accomplished footballer in her youth but, apart from haring around the pitch, she’d never run much until 2017 – when she took on a 100-mile monster of a challenge. It sounds a bit of a crazy thing to do but it was receiving some heartbreaking news that pushed Juliette into setting herself this challenge.

Juliette’s best friend was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour that year, and it knocked Juliette sideways. She says: “I struggled to cope with the emotions I was feeling. My default coping mechanism is always to try and fix things but of course, this was not something I could fix. I’m no medical genius, so my next best thing was to try and raise money for a relevant charity.”

Juliette decided to run the South Downs Way, a 100-mile trail that goes from Winchester in southern England to Eastbourne on the coast. It’s got about 13,000 feet of elevation and, just to reiterate, was wildly bigger than any running challenge she’d taken on before.

She smiles: “I look back at it and think, goodness me, what were you thinking? At that point, I hadn’t run more than about 10K in a burst. I wasn’t a runner, I didn’t own a pair of trail shoes, I didn’t know what a running pack was and I didn’t really know how to navigate. I mean, there were a lot of things that were telling me that it wasn’t a good idea.”