Fourteen hours before The Speed Project started, I decided I was going.
No real preparation. No months of planning. Just an opportunity that came up, a flight across the country, and the slightly unhinged decision to run from Los Angeles to Las Vegas with a group of people who were, for the most part, complete strangers.
If you’re unfamiliar with The Speed Project, it’s a relay race from LA to Vegas with no real set route and very few rules. You run through the desert, through the night, on very little sleep, taking turns moving your team closer and closer to Vegas.
It was unlike anything I had ever done.
There were moments that felt electric...music playing, the desert stretching endlessly around us, running down roads I never would have found on my own.
And then there were the hours in the middle of the night.
The hours when we were exhausted. When our bodies hurt. When the novelty had worn off and there were still so many miles left to cover.
And you just kept going.
You showed up for your teammates. They showed up for you. You ran your miles, climbed back into the van, tried to sleep, woke up and did it all over again.
Mile after mile.
I learned more about myself and running during those few days than I had in quite some time.
Since then, I’ve thought about The Speed Project surprisingly often, not necessarily when I'm running, but when life feels hard.
There have been moments building Bolt when I've felt overwhelmed or wondered how I was possibly going to figure something out. And somewhere in the back of my mind I think: You ran through the desert in the middle of the night on basically no sleep. You thought you couldn't keep going then, either.
And somehow, you did.
There is something incredibly powerful about physically doing something you once thought was impossible. It gives you evidence against your own doubt.
TSP also expanded my imagination.
It showed me a version of running that existed far beyond races, splits and finish times. Running blurred into art and music and fashion and community. It could be weird. It could be creative. It could be whatever we wanted it to be.
I came home thinking differently about Bolt.
I had always dreamed that Bolt could become something big. But I think somewhere along the way, without realizing it, I had drawn imaginary boundaries around exactly how big I was allowed to dream.
The Speed Project reminded me that most of those boundaries weren't real.
They were mine.
And if I had created them, I could move them.
Maybe that is one of the greatest gifts running has given me: the willingness to find out what exists on the other side of the limits I once believed were permanent.
Turns out, sometimes you just have to keep going.
xoxo,
Georgie
Bolt Run Co | Founder
