Welcome to Coasting
A newsletter by writer and runner Elise Downing, author of Coasting (The Times Best Sports Books of 2021) and long-time explorer for The North Face UK. Weekly posts about the outdoors, running, writing and freelance life.
Hello
I’m Elise, and this is the place you’ll find me writing every week. I’m a writer and runner in an ongoing pursuit to spend as much time outside as possible. I like running a long way, mountains, books, type two fun, wearing a fleece and post-adventure trips to the pub.
My ‘claim to fame’ is being the first woman to run a lap of the British coast self-supported back in 2016. I was 24 at the time and it was a journey of 5,000(ish) miles, carrying all my kit on my back. It’s impossible to overstate how completely unqualified I was to run around the country. My running career prior to this consisted of one disastrous marathon dressed as a purple Crayola crayon (where a small child heckled me as ‘The Crying Crayon’) and I’d never wild camped or read a map before. I was mid-heartbreak and spent a lot of time getting lost, crying on grass verges and calling my mum. But I saw Britain at its most wild and wonderful, met literally hundreds of amazingly kind strangers, and discovered that I could do something ‘impossible’.
Since then - via lots of trial and error, various bad choices, some hard work and a healthy dose of luck - I’ve managed to build a career from running and adventure. I wrote a book about my coast run called Coasting, which was chosen as one of The Times Best Sports Books of 2021 and longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year. I’m self-employed now and make a living from a combination of writing, public speaking and events work and social media/brand collaborations.
When I was writing Coasting, the book, my number one priority was to be honest about the whole experience. It’s so easy to look at other people doing big adventures and think, ‘but I could never do that’. I truly believe that if I could run around a country, then anybody could though. You don’t need to be the best, you’ve just got to have a go.
The same is true for the newsletter version of Coasting. I’ll be writing about running, adventures and how I make a living from adventure (or sometimes don’t). You can expect honesty, transparency and, hopefully, to not take the whole thing too seriously.
Why subscribe?
Whether you’re looking for ultrarunning advice and adventure inspiration, a glimpse into the behind the scenes of pursuing a less traditional career (and all the ups and downs of both) or just honest thoughts on being a 30-something in this weird world, I hope you’ll find something for you here.
Here’s what you can expect:
Weekly newsletters (usually landing in your inbox on a Friday morning) with updates from the week and some recommendations. Try this piece about maximising the joy in everyday life or this roundup of things I’ve been enjoying.
Adventure guides and route spotlights like this one on how to spend a week in the Dolomites.
Race reports and practical advice for the outdoors. Read about the time I ran 100km around the Alps or how to stay safe on a solo adventure.
Honest thoughts about life and struggling with the bad days in my brain. Here I wrote about the difficulty of thinking about the future sometimes.
All things books, both writing them and reading them.
All subscribers will receive at least one newsletters for free each month, plus news and updates about new books, events, etc.
Paid subscribers will be able to read all content in full (1-2 new pieces per week) as well as getting access to the complete archive (more than two years worth of work!). You get all of this for less than 90p per week if you subscribe annually, plus an extra 25% off using the button below as a thanks for reading this far!
I love supporting my favourite writers using the paid subscription model and you can read about why I think it’s important here. However, I totally understand that being a paid subscriber isn’t for everyone. Non-monetary ways you can support my work include liking and sharing my posts and recommending this page to others, and you can find information on complimentary subscriptions below.
Complimentary subscriptions
I’m always trying to balance my belief in the need for widely available information in order to increase accessibility (to both the outdoors and certain career paths) with my own need to make a living and pay the bills.
If you think you’d benefit from accessing the content here but genuinely can’t afford to subscribe right now, I’m happy to offer a no-questions-asked 12 month complimentary subscription. Times are hard, I get it. Just email hello[at]elisedowning.com. No explanation needed but this is an honesty-based system so, you know, don’t be a d*ck.
Likewise, if you have a little bit extra to contribute, please consider subscribing as a Founding Member to support me in offering free subscriptions and engaging in other unpaid work, such as charity collaborations and delivering pro-bono talks. You’ll get a free signed copy of Coasting as a thanks. (If you already have a copy, I’m happy to carry this gift forwards to my next book release.)
