She Started Running at 82. She'd Never Run Before.

Meet Marian Leicester — None to Run's Oldest Graduate

At 82 years old, Marian Leicester had never been a runner. Sure, she'd played hockey and tennis in her younger days, and she'd once tried the old lamppost-to-lamppost approach — run one, walk one — but it never stuck. "If I couldn't run impressively for whatever length of time, it meant I was a total failure," she says. "So that was the end of that."

For decades, Marian stayed active in other ways. She walked the steep hills of Wellington, New Zealand, cycled long distances, and maintained a busy career as a counsellor and clinical supervisor. Her friend Judith — a lifelong marathon runner — spent years trying to convince her to take up running. Marian's answer was always the same: never.

Then Judith got cancer.

After a significant operation, Judith had to rebuild her fitness from scratch, starting with a Couch to 5K program. Something about watching her friend start over planted a seed in Marian's mind. She began quietly researching beginner running programs on her own.

"I came across this video of this ancient Japanese guy who was running at a pace that made me think I could do that," she recalls.

She tried following a standard Couch to 5K plan, but quickly realized the jumps between weeks were too aggressive. She kept searching until she found None to Run.

"I looked at the structure of the workouts and the gradual building up," Marian says. "That combination of little bits of running and bigger bits of walking, gradually morphing into bigger bits of running and little bits of walking. I thought, this is the one for me."

And so it proved.

12 Weeks. Zero Repeats. No Injuries.

Marian completed all 12 weeks of the None to Run program without repeating a single week, without modifications to the strength exercises, and without a single injury — something that surprised even the program's creator.

"Boringly perfect score!" she laughs.

She credits the program's time-based approach as being crucial to her success. "It wasn't a question of distance, it wasn't a question of speed — it was just time. And that was absolutely crucial," she says. "It gave me permission to run slowly."

How slowly? Slow enough that she had to manage her inner dialogue when a walker once passed her mid-run. "I had to deal with my internal self-talk over that. It was hilarious."

As a professional counsellor, Marian was uniquely equipped to observe her own mental game. "I really enjoyed monitoring my own self-talk," she says. "It was very useful to be able to hear myself working my way through my doubts and my uncertainty and my anxiety."

Her strategy was simple but effective: Let's give it a go. And if I need to stop before the app tells me to stop, I'll just have another go next time.

She never had to.

Coming Out as a Runner

For weeks, Marian kept her running a secret. She ran in the early morning, hoping no one would see her. She didn't even tell Judith.

"I knew she would be ecstatic and then I would feel pressure to have to keep going, and then I'd get into mental tangles in my own head."

Her osteopath was the first to know. "It was lovely watching her face," Marian says. The osteopath now tells Marian's story to other patients — including a 50-year-old man who claimed he was too old to run. Her massage therapist became an encouraging companion through the journey. Her GP noted it for the record — "So if I did have a sudden heart attack, they might have an understanding of why."

It wasn't until around Week 12 that she told her family. "That was part of my celebration," she says. "That's when I came out as a runner."

Stronger in Every Way

At 82 Marian is noticing changes that go far beyond running.

She's stronger on the hills at Zealandia, a wildlife sanctuary built on some of Wellington's steepest terrain, where she walks with a group of friends her age. "While I was always one of the fitter ones of the bunch, I'm now even more fit," she says. "I don't feel as exercised at the end of the 6K walks up and down the hills."

Her heavy gardening — lugging 20 kg bags of compost, digging out tree roots, mowing lawns — feels easier. Her Apple Watch shows longer periods of deep sleep. She can hold a full conversation while running without any breathing difficulty. She can even do push-ups.

But the change she values most is harder to measure.

"Once you get to about 70, there's this chatter in your head about getting old and life is coming to an end," Marian says. "It's just so easy to fall into that downhill slope and feel it's inevitable."

"But for me, the biggest value out of all of this is — I can't be specific about it — but I'm just feeling so much younger. I've always looked younger than I am. And now it's like I carry around in me this not-quite-guilty secret. I'm 82. You'd never guess."

She pauses, then adds something she considers almost the most important thing of all: "I suspect it's making me more focused in my work too. My attention span and my response process is somewhat sharper than it has been."

What's Next

Marian is now working through the None to Run 5K program and recently ran 4 kilometres. She's eyeing Wellington's annual Round the Bays fun run — a flat, scenic 5K course where thousands of runners take to the streets every February.

"Previously I thought, nah, not me," she says. "But I can see that maybe next year I will look at doing that."

Her friend Judith wants her to sign up for a 10K. Marian isn't ruling it out.

"It's a voyage of discovery," she says.

Marian's Advice

When asked what she'd tell other people who want to start running later in life, Marian doesn't hesitate: "Get the None to Run app."

Beyond that, her counsel draws on both personal experience and decades of professional practice as a counsellor: don't just paste on positive thinking. Acknowledge the anxious voice too.

"The danger is if people only give voice to the positive stuff," she explains. "In my experience, it's only when you fully acknowledge the anxious side that any attempts from the reassuring side can actually be believed by the anxious self."

Marian Leicester is 82 years old and lives in Wellington, New Zealand. She is a counsellor and clinical supervisor who completed the None to Run program in 12 weeks without repeating a single week — the program's oldest known graduate.

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