Anthony Grant

Kia ora, my name is Anthony Grant and I’m a 27 year-old ultramarathon runner living in Queenstown, New Zealand.

6 years ago I started running off the back of a bad spell of depression, alcohol abuse, anxiety and weight gain. Slowly, running became a vice and then starting at a half-marathon I slowly pegged my way all the way through the distances to 100mile+ ultramarathons. Along the way, I transformed my life, mental health and wellbeing with the help of running and movement on the trails.

Now I spend most of my time exploring the mountains of the Otago region of New Zealand, planning big solo-projects where I spend 30-40 hours tackling self-planned routes stringing together what our backyard has to offer. Most recently I traversed all the way from Queenstown to Wanaka in a brand new route called ‘8 peaks’, where I traversed 8 of the major peaks along the way totally nearly 170km and 9000m of elevation gain in one consecutive swoop.

These days, my passion is combining my love for the mountains/running, with documenting my journey on social media and my love of building software to help people experience the same benefits of running that changed my life. Whether its posts about tips & tricks or lessons from my experience, software to help you find the right running shoe, fun apps to help gamify running or documentaries about my adventures - my role is to serve and inspire.

As the tattoo on the back of my leg reminds me every day, the essence of my life is the simple quote of “keep moving”. I’ve never been the fastest or the strongest but at my core I believe that everything is possible if you just take the next step. Whether it’s doing your first 5km run, tackling the next mountain after 140km of running, building the life you want or even beating depression, it all starts with the decision to just give it a go, and keep showing up each day (no matter how small!).

My goal is to eventually to tackle some of the bigger European & American ultramarathons, like the Swiss Peaks 360, UTMB, MOAB 240 as I slowly start dipping my toes into the 200-300km+ ultramarathon territory. Mostly though, just keep having fun!

Nga mihi mo te panui. Kei te tumanako ahau ka kite wawe koe i nga huarahi. (Thanks for reading. I hope to see you out on the trails soon.)