Episode 207: Elise Downing, The Crying Crayon

Episode 207 of The Adventure Podcast features runner and author, Elise Downing. Elise is, by her own admission, not your typical adventurer. She didn’t grow up wild swimming or scrambling ridgelines. In fact, she used to hate the outdoors. But in her early twenties, during a time of deep personal disquiet, she made a decision. She laced up a pair of running shoes and pointed herself at the coastline. What followed was a slow, vulnerable, and deeply human odyssey, running 5,000 miles around the coast of Britain with no real experience, very little money, and only the kind of faith that says ‘I’ll figure it out when I get there.' In this conversation, Elise talks with extraordinary honesty about imposter syndrome, crying in graveyards, running through grief, and the strange awkwardness of coming home after something that should have changed everything, but somehow didn’t. She also speaks to what comes next, how she’s slowly built a life that holds adventure in its everyday edges, and how she’s learned that the most powerful journeys often start not with courage, but with not knowing what else to do. This is a conversation about the long way around. About patience. About learning to move slowly, and gently, and with kindness toward yourself. And about the beauty of having no idea what you’re doing, but going anyway.

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