Last November, I stood at the start line of my sixth major marathon wearing a red spandex jumpsuit that made me feel like Britney Spears. I was a child of the Nineties and a teen in the early Aughts when Baby One More Time and Oops! I Did It Again went platinum. Britney’s red latex catsuit is a core fashion memory; her outfit was bold and brave and it symbolized power to me. Back then, Britney was one of the most powerful young women in the world.

I’ve wanted to replicate that outfit at a costume party ever since. What I didn’t bet on was replicating it, to a degree, for a 26.2 mile run. But that’s exactly what happened during the New York Marathon last year. I toed the start line on Staten Island in my Britney-era bodysuit from the LA brand District Vision, having not done a single training run. In fact, I had barely been running for five months prior. I was underprepared and undertrained. To counter this, I decided to be over-dressed. 

Athletes from Coco Gauff to Sha’Carri Richardson have professed the power of the mantra: ‘look good, feel good, perform well.’ This was the manifesto behind the all-women’s athletics racing series Athlos NYC; it’s an ethos upheld at Danimás. Today, style is a well-known method of self-expression in sport. The British Olympic boxer and Danimás contributor Ramla Ali wears haute couture in the ring; Naomi Osaka served a couture look inspired by a jellyfish at the 2026 Australian Open. World renowned track runner Flo Jo who was among the first to use fashion to her competitive advantage, in the Eighties. I thought: if fashion enables the elites to channel a headspace, perhaps it will enable me.

I am not condoning endurance events without training; ordinarily, I build mileage for 12-16 intense weeks prior. A marathon is a serious undertaking and I knew it wasn’t without risk. My theory was that I’d jog until I could no longer, or jog-walk if I needed to, and I was not against dropping out altogether. This time, I wasn’t racing myself and I had nothing to prove. The only outcome I wanted was to have a good time; to give myself a chance to run free, to feel wild and to rediscover my joy. It felt liberating.

Few people show up to a marathon relying on nothing but a red bodysuit for affirmation; there is, of course, a backstory. My lack of training reflected my changing relationship with running. I had begun running in 2021 while coping with immense grief. Within a year, I’d run my first marathon in 3:26; fast enough to qualify to run the Boston Marathon. People spend their whole lives trying to qualify for the Boston marathon, but I was a novice who suddenly discovered that I was good at something. It opened my eyes, and made me realize that I could do more than I ever thought possible—in sport, and in life. I gained a new-found confidence. 

Soon, I was hooked. I ran marathons in Chicago, London, and New York. The dopamine was addictive, and I loved the ritualistic element of training, and of trying—to run faster, to recover better, to grow. I dialled in my nutrition and worked out what carbs best fuelled me. All those incremental, one percent improvements add up. 

A year before I donned that red one piece in New York, I had lined up in Berlin. I’d had the best training cycle ever; I was the fittest and fastest I had ever been. I was on track to run a sub-3 hour marathon, and I knew I was capable of it. But that day didn’t go to plan. I'd unfortunately been experiencing harassment and stalking from a man I had met through running. On the day of the race, in this foreign city, I learned that this person was there, watching. 

I was on edge. As soon as I started running, I knew something in my body wasn’t right. The thing about endurance running, and running fast, is that the activity itself puts your body in a heightened state of stress; when real-life anxiety is met with physical exertion, there is nowhere for the cortisol to go. I felt like my body was trying to metabolize it; I was in a push-pull cycle between my mind and my muscles. I thought about dropping out, but I had trained so hard and so well, I wanted to show up for myself. I didn’t want to let fear win.