24 HOURS. 100,000+ STEPS. A LESSON I’LL CARRY WITH ME FOR LIFE.

When I told people I was going to spend 24 hours walking on a treadmill, the reactions were mixed. Some thought I'd lost the plot. Others couldn't believe I'd put my body through it.

Me? I thought I was turning up as a support person and my legs might get a little sore.

I genuinely believed the hardest part would be mental. Which is exactly why I wasn't worried. I know my mind is strong. If anything kept me up beforehand, it was the logistics of staying awake for a full day. I had boredom, exhaustion and sleep deprivation pencilled in as the enemy.

I could not have been more wrong.

My mind held the entire time.

It was my body that humbled me.

For anyone who missed the backstory: I'd volunteered to spend 24 hours on a treadmill at Les Mills Howick, alongside Yannik, one of the trainers, as he went after the 24-hour SkiErg world record, and Kay, who was taking on 24 hours on the rower. We were raising money for Variety, the Children's Charity, through their Winter Appeal. And because I can't leave a good opportunity alone, I decided to use the day to chip away at another goal I'd set myself for the year: walking five million steps across 2026.

Naturally, one goal wasn't enough. I set a good, better, best.

100,000 steps was the minimum. 125,000 was the stretch. 150,000 was the dream.

The first couple of hours had me convinced I'd walk straight past all three and land the dream. 150,000 steps? No problem.

I came out swinging. 6.5km/hr for the first two hours, energy high, nutrition dialled in, barely a drop of caffeine in me. Everything unfolding exactly as I'd pictured.

Then hour three arrived.

It wasn't exhaustion. It was the maths. We'd been going two hours. There were 22 more to come.
That was one of the biggest mental hurdles of the whole thing, and it landed before anything in my body had even started to complain.

Then, slowly, it did.

I eased my pace, floating between 4-6km/hr depending on how I felt, and settled into a rhythm. Move, eat, chat, lean on the support crew who kept us fuelled and laughing. As the gym filled up through the evening, time moved faster than I expected. People stopped to talk. Music filled the room. The atmosphere carried us.

It was around then that one of the members suggested I nudge the incline up slightly to change the impact through my legs. Such a small adjustment, and it quietly became one of my lifelines for the hours ahead (thank you Tracey!)

Then, around hour ten, everything changed.

The gym closed. The noise disappeared. The crew got smaller. The novelty wore off.

That's when the real work began.

I'd pictured filling these hours with podcasts and replying to messages. But I just couldn’t bring myself to. All I had room for was the next step. Then the next. Then the next. My body was at capacity and I had to keep holding strong. The idea of doing anything beyond this seemed far too hard.

One of the reasons I'd said yes in the first place was to support Yannik chasing his record. Beforehand I'd joked there was no chance on earth anyone would get me on a SkiErg for 24 hours. A treadmill sounded almost relaxing by comparison.

Turns out walking for 24 hours isn't a spa day either.

Nothing prepares you for the sheer repetition of putting one foot in front of the other for an entire day. I've walked for six hours before without a second thought. This was a different animal. The same joints, the same muscles, the same movement pattern, over and over, quietly stacking up in ways I hadn't accounted for.

Around then, Yannik was deep in his own battle. The pace he needed for the record was slipping, and there was a moment it looked like he might stop altogether.

So we turned the music up.

Drum and bass through an empty gym at nearly midnight, the two of us singing our hearts out, finding another gear, remembering why we started (poor Kay, locked in, working away listening to me sounding like a dead cat when I sing, but it got us through)!

The goal quietly shifted. Less about records now. More about finishing what we'd committed to, and keeping the money coming in for Variety.

Then around 1.30am, I hit my wall.

Even with the incline trick, everything from my hips down had seized. Calves gone. Quads locked. Feet on fire.

Here's the part I still find funny. I'd braced for sore muscles. I'd trained for sore muscles. I never once thought my feet would be the thing that tried to end me.

Around 2am I was hobbling back from the bathroom, I lay on the floor to reset my hips, and discovered I couldn't lift my own leg into position. I eventually rolled onto my stomach and army-crawled my way back to the treadmill, which gave everyone a much-needed laugh.

The pain eventually settled into the outside of my right foot. Every step announced itself. I'm getting it checked now to rule out a stress fracture, and given the things I've got planned for my body over the next year, I'm quietly hoping it's asking for patience, not a moon boot.

Somewhere in those small hours, something else caught me off guard.

I hadn't planned on needing much help. I'm usually the one filling everyone else's cup. I'd signed up for this to support someone else's dream, and there I was on the other side of it, needing people to fill my water bottle, make my food, get me on and off the treadmill, tell me to keep going.

As the eldest daughter, asking for help has never come naturally. Receiving it comes even less so. And it hit me somewhere around then that those are two completely different things.

I've always had a standard for how I show up for other people. I'd just never set the same one for letting them show up for me. I couldn’t believe just how hard it felt to receive the help. But I noticed that it didn’t make me any less capable, if anything it made me even more grateful to see the incredible support we had around us.

A running joke by this point was that we should have been counting my words, not just my steps. Somehow I spent the whole 24 hours walking and talking, keeping spirits up, chatting to members, crew, and anyone who wandered within range. If there's one thing I can apparently do for a full day without tiring, it's talk.

At 3am, one of the managers walked in fully expecting to find me a shell of a human. Instead he found me dancing on the treadmill while my lower body slowly filed for divorce.

My upper body had plenty left. My legs simply hadn't got the memo.

By 5am the gym started waking up. Music back on. Members were arriving. Encouragement flowing again. And I was there, same spot, still smiling, still dancing.

The final stretch, 8 til 9am, felt longer than the 20 hours before it combined. I'd look at the clock, certain ten minutes had to have gone by. But only one minute had. Knowing there were still four hours left felt heavier than the first twenty.

I reached my minimum, 100,000 steps, at around 10.30am. And the moment I did, the pressure lifted. I'd done what I came to do. The rest was just bringing it home. Grateful I’d done so much grunt work on the front end of the walk, allowing me to ease off for the sake of my body from here on out!

So that's what I did. Slowed the treadmill right down, dropped into an easy walk, and counted down the minutes.

The final ten are something I'll never forget.

Gym staff gathered round. Members came back. The team from Variety arrived. People cheered. People cried. I cried. The emotion caught me completely off guard.

No, we didn't get the world record we'd hoped for.

What we got was 24 hours of showing up, money raised for kids who need it, and proof, for all of us, that we were capable of far more than we'd believed the morning before.

The challenge is over, but I have a feeling the lessons are only just beginning. My body is still processing what I asked of it. My foot is still making its feelings known. And I'm still unpacking everything those 24 hours taught me about resilience, community, asking for help, and what we're capable of when we stop staring at the finish line and simply take the next step.

I'm so proud of us. I'm so grateful. And I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

Now, if you'll excuse me, my feet have earned a very, very long rest.

P.S. If you still wish to donate, please click here for the Variety Winter Appeal, we were walking and fundraising out of Les Mills Howick :)