I’m a volunteer coach with the Speed Freaks. I’ve seen the effects of movement, getting social and exercising; the positive effect that it can have. It’s such a cool tool to have in your toolbox for wellness.

I struggled with mental illness for most of my adult life. I couldn’t quite find a way to manage it properly. I don’t want to bring this up to make it sound heavy, but it does help to say that I sort of had a choice, and my choice was to leave, totally. At the very last minute, I thought, ‘what if I really regretted it and wanted to come back here?’ I felt like; if I am gonna be here now, it’s a fresh start, I’m going to start taking risks, doing things that I don’t normally do.

About five years ago, I discovered running. I read that there’s five things that are good for your mental health and well being. And the fifth one I hadn’t tried, that was exercise. I hated exercise – I don’t like the gym. The idea of it terrified me, I didn’t grow up around it. So I made myself try it. My sister said, ‘why don’t you just come out for a jog around the lake?’ And it just took that, I went for this jog. I got this boost of hormones, I just felt amazing. It made a huge difference, I was way more stable, calm, I was just a lot happier.

That’s also when I decided I wanted to try not to be so self-centered in my own problems. I wanted to find a way to help other people. I started doing a bit of volunteering with different things.

Then discovering Speed Freaks, that aligned with my values. Nobody’s that judgmental, we’re all totally different, different backgrounds and experiences and I find that with runners, they’re always way more accepting. It helped me so much that I thought I really want to try and spread the word more. If you think about us as human beings, we should be moving all the time, we’re built for it, and we’re curious creatures.

I’ve been doing a lot of organizing around this for the last five weeks trying to get this going, so I haven’t been able to paint. I’ve been really missing it. I do oil paintings, New Zealand landscapes, that sort of thing. I work part time for Otautahi Creative Spaces in the Phillipstown Hub, their values are just about exactly the same. Just supporting people doing art, getting creative and just being in a nice, positive space.”