In January, 2023, Erchana Murray-Bartlett set the Guinness World record for running the most consecutive marathons. She ran 150 marathons in 150 days and raised money for Australian wildlife along the way. Erchana started at Cape York, which is in the northern tip of Australia and ran along the coast all the way down to Melbourne.
In January, 2023, Erchana Murray-Bartlett set the Guinness World record for running the most consecutive marathons. She ran 150 marathons in 150 days and raised money for Australian wildlife along the way. Erchana started at Cape York, which is in the northern tip of Australia and ran along the coast all the way down to Melbourne.
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Shelby Stanger:
On October 2nd, 2022, I got this video message in my Instagram DMs from an Australian listener named Erchana Murray-Bartlett. This is what she said.
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
Good day, Shelby. My name's Erchana and I'm an Aussie marathoner. I'm currently running from the very top of Australia, Cape York all the way to Melbourne the entire length. It's about 6,000Ks. I'm trying to break the record for the most consecutive marathons run by a female, doing it for the ladies. I just wanted to say your podcast is exceptional, Wild Ideas Worth Living. I've been listening to it since it started but in this trip particular, it's really inspired me to keep going through injuries-
Shelby Stanger:
It felt really good to get this message. In the video, Erchana was literally running on the Australian highway and her story blew me away. In January, 2023, Erchana set the Guinness World record for running the most consecutive marathons. She ran 150 marathons in 150 days and raised money for Australian wildlife along the way. Erchana called her mega marathon Tip to Toe. She started at Cape York, which is in the northern tip of Australia and ran along the coast all the way down to Melbourne. Overall, Erchana ran nearly 4,000 miles climb more than 177,000 feet. That's the equivalent of eight non Everest stacked on top of each other. I'm Shelby Stanger and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studio's production. Erchana Murray-Bartlett, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
Hello. Thank you for having me.
Shelby Stanger:
I am so excited to have you on. You've had one of the wildest ideas of anybody I've been following, and I'm really glad you started following my Instagram because then I found you and I was like, this girl is the most legit athlete I've ever seen in my life. It's awesome.
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
Well, that's a stretch. Thank you.
Shelby Stanger:
So tell me about your relationship with running. How did you get into it?
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
Yeah, I ran for fun as a kid just because I love to explore. I love to just be outside. I was always running. I had this bridge that I thought was miles and miles from my house. I used to run there every morning, and as an adult I've gone back and it was only like 700 meters away. So here's me thinking I was a huge runner, and it was not even my warmup these days, but actually no, I played soccer until I was in my early twenties to mid twenties. I actually went to college at Mount Mercy College in Iowa, USA for soccer, and then I moved to London to play soccer too. But when I moved back to Australia when I would've been 24, I needed a change.
So I thought, you know what? There's an athletics track probably 400 meters from my apartment in Melbourne. Let's just walk over and see if I can meet some people. So I did, and yeah, I fell in love with it straight away. The people, the community, the competitiveness against yourself and the challenge. And it's just so easy to run. You just need shoes and you just go out and you can have a solid workout in 20 minutes if you wanted to.
Shelby Stanger:
So, okay. When did you start competing and running then?
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
Straightaway ish. I mean, I think I'm just naturally a competitive person, and so I wasn't very good. I just started, but I joined with a coach and a club and there was competition pretty much every weekend and me just wanting to be completely involved, but always just dive in and say, yeah, sure, I'll give it a crack. And I remember it took six to seven months to break 40 minutes for a 10 K, and I remember it being the ultimate achievement. I thought I was the best runner going around. And now I know that that's a very good time, but it's not a competitive time. So I just gave myself these time-based goals and I had a really supportive team around me.
And at the same time, maybe three or four months after I joined my club, another lady joined who was the same age as me, and she's just one of those people just so naturally talented. Her name's Gin McCormick. She went on to run for Australia only like three or four years later, and because she just rose to the top so fast and I watched it happen, I was always chasing her. And I think because we were a close partnership, we were both running really quickly, really fast. So there was this big competitive energy at our club. There was a lot of support for us to be both doing the best we could do. It just had this new energy that I hadn't seen in sport before.
Shelby Stanger:
Were you running the distance of marathon at this point?
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
No, no. I didn't start running marathons until maybe five years in. So I really only ran my first marathon in 2018 when I would've started in 2013. And at the time, I was running fast, but I had no legs. And I remember my first ever marathon attempt, my coach paced me and he wanted me to run 2 45. And he goes, absolutely, you can. This is fine. You can do this for a half, you can do it for 30 days. And it was on Gold Coast, which is my hometown now. It wasn't back then. And we went out and I just got so caught up in the energy of it and I had fast legs, just no engine. And I got, what, 22 kilo kilometers in, I just absolutely blew to pieces. So I made it to 30Ks and then just sat on the side of the road and just I couldn't finish it. And it was a huge learning curve, but also very humbling.
Shelby Stanger:
That first marathon didn't work as planned, but Erchana decided to stick with it. She adjusted her training to work on running farther at a more sustainable pace. And it worked. Erchana was getting faster and faster, and she was ready to compete at a higher level.
Speaker 3:
Well, there's still no word a cure for the virus.
Shelby Stanger:
When Australia entered an intense lockdown in 2020, the marathons she'd entered were all canceled, but Erchana couldn't stop thinking about running outside. She remembered an old childhood dream that she wanted to make a reality. When did you come up with this idea to run 150 marathons in 150 days?
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
The idea was a childhood dream and it didn't have any structure as kids' dreams do. I just wanted to run from Cape York to Melbourne, the top of Australia to the bottom. It was always the east coast because I think that was my world as a kid. I didn't know there was the whole west coast, didn't exist, so it was always the east coast, which I don't regret because it's super beautiful.
Shelby Stanger:
You also wanted to do it for something greater than yourself, which was wildlife. I've been to Australia. I understand the allure of these beautiful wild animals, but I'm just curious from your perspective why? You could have just done it to do it. You didn't have to raise money for wildlife.
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
I grew up in the Yarra Valley in Victoria, and it was just absolutely brimming with wildlife and iconic Australian wildlife, koalas, kangaroos, and echidnas. And I've done a lot of traveling. I'd never really traveled Australia. I always went overseas, yeah, and as I got a little bit older and wiser, I was like, these animals don't exist anywhere else. And Australia's a world leader in biodiversity loss. We are second in the world to deforestation rates behind the Amazon.
Shelby Stanger:
In Australia, wildlife is full on the country, has some of the most biodiverse animals, insects, and plants in the world. Erchana dedicated her entire run to building awareness around endangered wildlife. She raised funds and spoke at schools about the importance of conservation along the way. But Erchana also came face to face with some pretty hairy creatures as she ran through the desert, rainforest and wetlands.
I'm curious if you had any close encounters with snakes or...
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
Here's me running for wildlife, but also running terrified from wildlife. I actually run through magpie season, which is this kind of fierce bird. And so I got swooped like three times a run for about three months straight. So not venomous, but absolutely terrifying when this bird's kind of coming at you from all angles.
Shelby Stanger:
Describe what that is for people who don't know what a magpie is and what that means when they come and swoop down on you.
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
Okay, so a magpie is a typical Aussie bird that it's a bit of a fighter bird. It's not very big. It's black and white, and they protect their young to absolute 10th degree if you go near their nests. So you'll be running along and it will swoop down and it will clip with its beak or its feet, your head, your ears. It will just get you and it will actually make contact. And so I would have to run with my hat kind of waving over my head so it wouldn't get me. But yeah, they're actually, they're terrifying.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. So were there any other things besides magpies, which are terrifying enough?
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
There was, yeah, I saw a lot of snakes. I mean, I've grown up with snakes, so I'm not scared of seeing them. I know that they will just slither away most times, but doesn't mean you should be complacent. I mean, I carried a snake bike kit with me every day because I was quite remote half of the time. And we do. We have the world's most venomous snakes here, so yeah, you absolutely can't take the risk. Spiders, I mean those crocodiles in the first 2000 kilometers, which means you don't go anywhere near the water.
So you're in this beautiful landscape and it's hot, it's stinking hot, but you can't go anywhere near anything beautiful because there's crocs and marine stingers, which are these jellyfish that just immediately kill you if you get stung. It's just like everything, the air, the ground, the ocean. I got chased by a wild bull in the Cape as well. I was running down this freeway, and when I say freeway, there's very rarely cars on there 'cause it's so remote and this kind of huge big, muscley thing just charged at me and my mom on the bike. She zipped off on the bike and left me just running for my life. But a car came through on the opposite direction and cut off the trajectory of the bull. I know.
So we had to go back past it because it was an out and back that day and just my mom refused. She's like, I'm not going anywhere near that thing. And eventually we had to wait on the side of the road until a car came. And then because I'm not allowed to get into a car because of the record, I then used the car to sort of chaperone me for a few kilometers. The poor person had to drive at 12K an hour to just until we got back into safety.
Shelby Stanger:
When we come back, Erchana talks about some of the best and worst days on the road, her keys to injury prevention and recovery and what it was like to finally break the world record.
Runner Erchana Murray-Bartlett spent five months last year running a marathon every day. Her goal was to break the Guinness World record and raise money and awareness for Australian wildlife. Erchana ate over 6,000 calories a day of oats, lentil pasta, bananas and tubs and tubs of ice cream to fuel her marathons. Each morning she woke up before 5:00 AM and hit the road wearing a colorful shirt designed by an aboriginal artist from her hometown. The shirt was her uniform and it made her easy to spot on the road in a sea of brown and green landscapes. Erchana ran through some incredibly rural parts of Australia. Most of the time, she was alone on her runs, but sometimes she was joined by an entire community of friends.
Do you have any stories of just some of the most memorable, magic days?
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
It's kind of I'm torn between the places I got to see and the people I got to meet. The crowds or the people that ran with me would grow and grow as I got more and more south. And it got to the point where I would advertise I was running through say, a town or a regional town or a city, and the legends in that town would organize a group run for me so I had company.
And I remember one, it was an Aubrey, and there was 15 or 16 of us, maybe even more. And I was chatting to this lady to my left, and she goes, yeah, my coach has prescribed me 20Ks of trail today. And at 22Ks, I looked over to her and I said, oh, what are you still doing here? She goes, I'm having so much fun, I'm going to try and run the marathon with you. So out of nowhere, she just runs this marathon. And then she keeps looking at her watch and she goes, oh, we're going to run under four hours. And then ended up being the one leading this whole pack of people to be like, no, we must get under four hours. And just got so caught up in the excitement of it all.
So sharing these kind of moments with people who are doing their own personal cool things and she ran her first marathon, her first sub four hour marathon, and being part of that was really special and really unforgettable. And I grew up in the Yarra Valley in Victoria, and we did this one run through this rail trail, which is exactly 40Ks long. And it's where I trained all my life. It's where I ran for fun. It's where I, yeah, it's just this trail I used to run on every day. And I remember everyone kind of knew that. And so we had this huge group of people at the start of that on the Saturday, and my family all on bikes and my old soccer team all with their kids on bikes because it's been 15 years and we all just did it together. And running that particular trail.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh.
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
Was just, oh, I can cry talking, thinking about it. It was just so special.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm writing about this in my book, but it's not really an adventure until something goes terribly wrong. And I'm sure that happened a lot. So what were some big moments where you were like, I call these the OF moments because that's usually what you say when it goes wrong.
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
Oh, yeah. I learned pretty quickly that if you let them all get you, it's going to just sink you immediately. Oh, yeah. I got an overuse injury in my calf in the first three weeks, and that was very painful. So I had to change my running technique. And then I gave myself another overuse injury in my shin, so my [inaudible 00:14:28], and then ended up having to drive 'cause I was all the way in the Cape. So it's pretty much just desert for hundreds of miles. It was like a thousand kilometers to the nearest town.
And so I had to drive all the way into this closest town to get a physio treatment on a Sunday for this amazing woman who came out to see me. And that was scary for two reasons. The first being I was in pain and running through pain. So there was this overwhelming feeling every morning that you had to run 42Ks through pain. But secondly, it was so early into the pace that I almost felt ashamed that I'd quit my job. My parents at that time had taken long service leave to come and help me get through this kind of corrugated Cape region. And then I'd got all these sponsors on board only to fail or to get injured in the first month just felt really, yeah, really hard. And so I'm really grateful I got through those and again, testament to the human body for being able to heal whilst injured.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. The injury part, this is the part that baffles me the most, is how you managed to recover and run through injury.
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
My objective wasn't to get to the start line as fit as possible. My objective was to get to the start line as healthy as possible, knowing that I would get fit as I ran down. And so I actually started going to the gym a lot more, working on single leg strength exercises, stabilizing exercises. I put on weight, I put on five kilos deliberately as a buffer. And so when I did get to the start line, I was a little bit unfit and a bit heavier than usual. And yeah, of course I was going to get this injury. I'd been gone. I'd went from running a hundred K a week to 300K a week without a break. So I did expect it.
What I was excited about, or I guess I learned was that you can treat them on the run. I thought the second I got injured that I would be done and dusted and it would be over, but I would run through it, it would flare up, and then I would spend three hours in the afternoon self massaging or using every kind of anti inflam cream possible and taping. And yeah, I don't have the answer as to why I could do it. It just did heal in time.
And my keys to recovery on a day in day out basis was just trying to eat the best food possible and try and get as much sleep every night. And they're the only really two pillars in the remoteness of the Cape that I could lean on so I lent on them really hard. And then, yeah, I just didn't get injured going down the rest because I think my body adapted as I went on, which again is just absolutely exciting to hear the body can do that. And I finished my marathons months down the track faster than when I started. So I got faster and faster as the journey went on.
Shelby Stanger:
Was there ever a point in your run where you're like, I'm not going to be able to keep going, or you just wanted to be done?
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
Oh, I wanted to be done every day from 36 kilometers onwards. There was like, there's so many times where I was like, why is a marathon 42Ks? This is the worst distance. The hardest part for me was actually after I broke the record. So the current, well the previous record was 106. So on day 107, it was all celebrations. My whole family came to the finish line. It was the most incredible feeling ever. Breaking a world record, it did. It drove me every day for 107 days. And then on day 108, I had to wake up and run, but I'd achieved this big personal goal.
And it was the first time I realized I was leaning on this kind of self-drive to get the record more so than the why. And I really struggled for two or three days afterwards. And I had to remind myself that back when you planned this, your goal was just to get to Melbourne. Your goal was to raise money and awareness for this incredible cause that's close to your heart. And yeah, there was someone that reached out to me and said, because I was, I publicly shared that I was struggling, kind of a 108, a 109, a 110, a 111. And they said, yeah, but Erchana every single day now, you're setting a new world record. It's, you're breaking and setting a new one every day.
Shelby Stanger:
Once Erchana broke the previous world record, she had her sights set on her next goal, completing the 150 marathons. She ran through Christmas and New Year's scarfing down lentil pasta and focusing on her finish line. On January 15th, 2023, after five months of running a marathon every single day, Erchana finally reached Melbourne.
So what did it feel like to finally reach the finish line?
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
That final day, it's just, yeah, I can't put it in words. I did four laps of this 4K loop in Melbourne, and each lap I picked up more and more friends and family and supporters and people that were just interested in the cause.
And so by the end of it, there was this huge mass of people running through Melbourne. There was dust flying everywhere, the Wilderness Society were there, all my sponsors were there, the TV crew were there. And I just remember thinking, oh, this is something that I've thought about for the year and a half straight that I've been planning it. And I don't know, I was trying to be as present as possible, but you're kind of getting dragged in all these different directions and yeah, it's hard. It's probably like a wedding where you want to be as present as possible, but there's photos over there and a speech over here and your mom's over there. And it just went so fast. And yeah, it took me a few days to process just how excited I was.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm curious, you've had a little bit of time to reflect. What do you think you've learned from this journey about yourself, about the testament of the human body, about just our mental states? I'm asking you a lot of things, but about perfectionism and failure, which I know is something that you're going to relate to.
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
I think I learnt that I'm stronger than I thought I was. I that every time something got difficult that I could get through it and that developed through experience.
So there was a day in Holbrook where it was really hot and windy and I didn't have anyone to run with and my headphones ran out of battery. So it was just me and this distance ahead of me and no water. And I was just hot and thirsty and just could not be bothered. And I was so fatigued, I was always so fatigued. And I just remember thinking, oh, if I can get through today, I can get through anything. And then I'd break it down, I'd break it down into just do 10 more, 10Ks. If you get to 10Ks, I'll be stoked. And then it'll be like, all right, let's just do one K, let's just walk for a bit and then we'll start running. So I had these sort of constant options, A, B, and C, and I would always, and so quitting wasn't an option because it was like, well, you've got to get through A, B, C, D, E, F before we quit.
And that definitely kept me going. And then when I got through one of these hard mental times or hard physical times, it was almost like building this brick on my resilience wall. And so the next time it happened I thought, oh, do you remember Holbrook? You got through this, you did it. You were in a same place as you are now, but you did it then. Today's no difference so you're going to get through it again. And you'd build another brick on your wall and, yeah, your wall gets taller and taller and taller every time. And I definitely use that wall now in different things where it might not be physically challenging anymore, but there's things that still terrify me like sometimes public speaking or live TV or stuff like that terrifies me. I'm like, okay, well you remember you did it last time. You faced it, you got through. It was all okay, so there's no reason why today can't be the same. So it was just about constantly reminding myself that you are stronger than this. You can do it. It definitely, definitely helps.
Shelby Stanger:
So what about Guinness? Do they give you an award? Do you have something physical? Are you going to be next to the guy with the longest fingernails?
Erchana Murray-Bartlett:
I hope so. Guinness, that's a really interesting story actually. So same when I applied for the record, right? So you have to apply. So you have to say, hey, I'm doing this, what do I need? And they send you the exact guidelines and I submitted this kind of request to say, hey, I want to break this record. What do I need to know? It takes them three months to get back to you. And I was literally already at the Cape and they hadn't got back to me. So I'm panicking. I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to need. I don't want to start running and not know what they are going to verify this against.
So I reached out to the current, at the time record holders, which is two women from Scotland, and said, ladies, any chance you can give me the guidelines? I'm going to go for this record. I hope you don't take offense. I know it's your record. I know you've only had it for like three months. And they did. They did. They did. They did. So they got back to me. So I knew straight away what I needed to do, bless them. And then now I'm just waiting. So it took a long time to upload every single GPS map, every single photo, every single film, every single witness statement. It took me about a week, a week and a half, which was another thing I was doing immediately after I finished just uploading evidence to Guinness. So fingers crossed, I get it kind of sometime in March.
Shelby Stanger:
As of April, 2023, Erchana still hadn't received the actual award from Guinness. Turns out it's quite a slow process to officially be placed in the Guinness Book of World Records. In any case, when Erchana does get officially posted in the book, we'll put an update in our show notes. If you want to keep in touch with Erchana and learn more about Tip to Toe, visit her Instagram at tip_to_toe_2022 on Instagram. There you'll also find updates on the documentary that's coming out all about her run.
Erchana, thank you so much for DMing me your video and for coming on Wild Ideas Worth Living and telling us about your record setting Run for Wildlife. Our team is so flattered that you're such a loyal listener to the show.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. And our senior producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Motola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, rate it and review it wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.