🌍 FIELD GUIDE 46: Race for the Earth
Joining us today is, Tash Acres. Tash is the founder of an organization called EarthRuns.
Tash has founded a cause that promotes exercise that walks hand in hand with reducing waste and reforestation.
Tash shares with us how it’s not about doing the most or being the best, it is just about moving. It’s about giving back but more importantly it’s about focusing on our bodies and minds.
Find the enjoyment in what our bodies can do and not what we cannot do.
Name
Tash Acres
Habitat
North Devon, England
Occupation
Founder of EarthRuns
Soundtrack
I’m Tash Acres, founder of Earth Runs Active for Earth. A not-for-profit organisation I set up to encourage people to be active and plant trees in return for them.
I live near the coast in rugged North Devon with my wife, three step-children, two goats, two dogs, two cats and a tortoise.
None of this has been planned.
Please do not mistake the fact that I run an organisation that encourages people to run, walk, cycle or roll to mean that I’m some ultra-fit, buff, middle-aged supermum. I am not. I am distinctly and happily quite average. In fact, if you’d told my 20 or 30-year-old self that I’d be doing anything to do with health and fitness, I’d have laughed and raised another beer.
I grew up in the East of England, near the coast. I loved being outdoors, being captivated by nature, and being active. At school, I was involved in a lot of team sports, but as we got older and the teams went our separate ways, so did my fitness. By the time I was in my 20s, I owned a design and marketing company in the commuter belt of England, a high-stress, deadline-lead, heart-attack-inducing kind of business. High stakes, good money, bad health.
I lived off anxiety and beer for 18 years. But bodies don’t work like that forever. Something had to give, and it finally did.
I had a breakdown. The curl up on the kitchen floor, unable to breathe, kind of breakdown. Weighed down by an impenetrable wall of anxiety-induced paralysis.
The advice from my therapist was to go back to what I loved. Simplify things.
It took a lot of time, a whole lot of therapy, mindfulness, time in nature, and finally, the discovery of running to put me back on track.
I’d always hated running at school - it was always equated to competition, being the fastest and winning or losing. At no point did anyone say to us kids to slow things down. Take your time. Breathe and feel the body. Feel that motion, the forward momentum.
No one told us that. So we just focused on the burning sensation in our chests.
Thankfully, I had a good couple of friends who told me to start slow, run/walk, and not worry about speed, time, or distance. I would go out early in the morning, so no one could see me. I would run from one lamppost to the next and then walk the next two lampposts. Gradually, over time I increased the lampposts.
There was something magical about moving under your own power, being able to run for ten minutes, then half an hour, an hour and then more.
It gave me the time to think and process all my thoughts. The opportunity to be out in nature, to ruminate and then let go. To focus on the momentum and not worry about the minutiae of life. Perspective is incredible when you see the trees grow through their seasons, birds follow their natural life cycle, and animals focusing on survival. Suddenly the deadline you had is a tiny part of a giant universe that’s just living.
I fell in love with running.
Around this time, I started to enter a few races; most running media and books focused on races, and I got swept up in them.
For each race I did, I got a race t-shirt, a cheap medal and a goodie bag of stuff that mostly ended up in the bin. By this point, I had kids all studying climate change at school and participating in the Greta Thurnberg school strikes. This just didn’t sit right with me. We runners were out in nature, loving all that it offers and yet getting a pile of crap for our efforts.
There had to be a better way.
Unsurprisingly I had the idea for Earth Runs on a run. What if we could plant a tree for every mile a runner did? Imagine the incredible impact we could create?! What a difference we could make. I could help be a part of the solution, no matter how small. I had no idea how to make that happen, but I was gripped by the idea.
I utilised my skills as a graphic designer to test if there was a market. I set up Earth Runs as a virtual race website. For those who don’t know, virtual races are when runners pay to enter a race, such as a 5k, and then do the 5k anywhere they like, in their own time. They usually are rewarded with medals. We reward them by planting trees and showing the impact that those trees have had. Doing 5k will plant 5 trees, whether it’s running, cycling, walking or rolling.
The idea took off.
Fast forward almost 3 years, and we’ve now planted 120,000 trees. We’re partnering with organisations to encourage people to get active. We’ve opened up to all types of activity and just launched the one-percent-club.org, which plants a tree for every day you’re active - whatever ‘active’ means to you.
I now know that being active isn’t just good for our bodies but for our minds too and that being active doesn’t have to be about being the fastest or best.
Active can be a really good walk or a session of yoga. You don’t even have to change your clothes. Inactivity is one of the biggest culprits to premature death in the West. It leads to so many health problems. Our bodies are meant to move, and it does something incredible to our minds when we do.
I’m still passionate about helping get people active while doing something incredible for the planet. Seeing what being more active and giving back to Earth has done for me, I want to share it with as many people as possible. To make it as inclusive and as accessible as I can. Creating a healthy habit that’s good for us and the planet.
With the 1% Club, no matter how bad my day has been, as long as I’ve managed a walk, a run or any other activity, I’ll have planted a tree that will live for 70+ years and help change the world for good. This brings me such joy. I’ve achieved, and on bad days that matters.
I had never done anything like this before. I’d always followed the path that I was meant to. Stay in a job, grow a company, do what you always do, and choose safe.
When I finally realised that safe was slowly killing me, I started to look for things that meant something. Things that aligned with who I was.
I have no idea where this will lead, I still suffer from bouts of anxiety when I don’t know if I can make a living from doing what we do, but when there’s a purpose to what you’re aiming to achieve, that anxiety is lessened. You believe in the process. You know what you’re doing is giving back, and you start to believe that the path will unfold as it’s meant to. And on the really bad days, I run, or if I can’t muster that, I walk, and I know I’ve planted a tree. And that’s changed the world for good.
One tree matters. It counts.
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