Woman battles through broken leg to finish 100 marathons in 100 days

“If I didn’t take a break, I would break.”

This was the devastating reality for 48-year-old Mini Guli after doctors discovered she had fractured her femur bone during the 62nd marathon of her unimaginable mission to complete 100 marathons in 100 days.

But amazingly, it didn’t stop her – in fact, it started something incredible.

Knowing full well how crazy the idea sounded Mina created the #RunningDry campaign in hopes to raise awareness of the current global water crisis, highlighting the fact we are literally ‘running dry’.

“It was something so big and looked incredibly unachievable and I thought, ‘That’s what this water crisis is, it looks big and it looks unachievable and sometimes we have to stand up and look fear in the face and do something about it and that’s what I started to do,” Mina tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

Growing up in the midst of Australia’s 10-year drought, Mina had always looked at water as an ‘incredibly precious resource’ but it was the reality that, in 2030 experts predict that our demand for water will be 40 percent greater than the supplies available, that really struck a chord with Mina.

“We need to do something about this so I decided I was going to try to make saving water famous that’s why I started running,” she says.

As you can probably imagine, waking up and running 42km every single day was no easy feat, she was physically and mentally pushing her body to its limits.

“Was it hard? Yes. Were there days I thought I just don’t want to run? Yes. And were there times I dragged my heels to get out of the door? Yes. But at the end of the day this is what I signed up to do, so it just needed happen,” she tells us.

Throughout the course of the campaign, Mina admitted her body was slowly deteriorating: “I watched my body change, I was shrinking and there was a lot of wear and tear.”

However, by the time her 62nd day came around, it looked like it could have been the end for Mina who was now on crutches and taking up to 12 hours to finish.

“That’s when we knew we had a problem because I was literally hobbling, I could barely walk… we needed to go to a hospital now.”

The news wasn’t good. Mina was told that she had a fractured femur and would develop permanent damage if she was to keep going – which unfortunately came only weeks later when her leg broke completely.

“I felt destroyed,” Mina says, recalling the moment she found out about the fracture.

“That was just completely and utterly devastating to me…I felt that I was watching everything I had worked for, everything I had dreamed about, all my goals, everything just fall apart.”

At that moment, Mina was reminded of the saying, ‘The darkest moment comes before dawn’ and in a way, it couldn’t have been more true.

“I was just sitting there in a really dark place and my phone started to ping with messages of people saying we’ve heard you can’t run, we’ll run for you and do your miles today and not just today but tomorrow, and the next day,” Mina tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

It wasn’t long before the news of Mina’s injury spread and people around the world began volunteering to help her finish what she started by contributing a few kilometres every day. Together these would total (and most often exceed) the full distance of one marathon per day.

“All of a sudden I looked at this and I just went wow, this run is not for me, this run is for water, I wanted to build a community that’s committed to #RunningDry and now it’s become bigger than I could ever possibly imagine.”

Before long it became a viral movement and while Mina may not have been able to run as she used to, she is still committed to finishing her job – whether that means completing the course on crutches or in a wheelchair or sharing stories to raise awareness and motivate the community.

Now not only have they reached the final stretch with less than ten marathons to go but the community has become so dedicated to finishing the cause that in one day they incredibly tallied a total of 8495.3kms – an incredible 201 marathons.

“It feels unreal, I’m blown away by the support of everyone around the world and there are no words to describe how immensely grateful I am that that’s happened,” Mina says.

If you want to contribute kilometres for Mina to smash the final days of this epic challenge, simply take a photo of yourself completing your kilometres an upload it to social media including how far you ran/walked and the hashtags #RunningDry and #Everydropcounts.

Her final marathon is set to take place this week in New York City on February 11th.

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