On January 1, 2019, Sandra Mikulic took her first steps toward a new goal: running or walking five kilometres a day, every day. She vowed to maintain the streak as long as she could.
The 43-year-old from Kelowna, B.C., had started running two years before. The streak, announced to her 300 followers on Instagram, was a way to prove to herself that she could set an ambitious objective and achieve it.
“I was somebody who didn’t finish anything like projects or my university education. I quit,” she reflects.
“I needed my own School of Hard Knocks, so I created it for myself.”
Today, more than 2,200 runs later, Mikulic’s streak continues, and with countless kilometres under her belt, her capacity has expanded exponentially. In 2024, she ran two 100-kilometre ultramarathons; this year, she is training for one at 100 miles.
Commitment to the streak changed Mikulic’s life. Though she continues to work full-time as a financial advisor at a bank, her 300 Instagram followers ballooned to more than 100,000. She publishes a magazine, Run Your Life, for runners of all shapes, sizes and abilities. She hosts empowering travel retreats for women, designed for people who, according to the website, love to “hike a 5K and then indulge in a donut.”
“When you ask me why I do this, it’s because I keep proving to myself that I can,” says Mikulic. “I can create a magazine.
I can create life-changing retreats for women that women will love. I can complete a 100-kilometre race.”
When you ask me why I do this, it’s because I keep provingto myself that I can.
What running hasn’t done is change Mikulic’s size—and that’s okay with her. At 5’11’’, the 50-year-old runner weighs in at 250 pounds. Unlike many people so strongly committed to fitness, Mikulic is not motivated by weight loss.
She knows what she needs to do to lose the weight, but doing so isn’t her objective.
“Before, I thought I couldn’t do any of these things, and I would walk around with these self-debilitating thoughts in my head that were so damaging,” she explains, noting she’s faced mental health challenges throughout her life—childhood trauma, postpartum depression and anxiety.
“Despite being 250 pounds, I’ve proven over and over again that you do not need to be small to complete things; you do not need to be smaller to finish an ultramarathon. You don’t. It’s just about consistency and building up muscle memory in your body so that your body knows, ‘we do this.’”
Often photographed in bright pink running gear with her long brown hair in a floppy bun atop her head, Mikulic says her perception of what a runner should look like has changed since she started logging kilometres every day. She celebrates what a body can do without aiming for thinness.
“Running is about enjoying the movement of your body,” she says.
Her focus on the body’s potential appeals to her followers, who are of diverse sizes—from 0 to 10 to 18 and beyond.
She is motivated by “the Sandras sitting in their living room, wondering ‘will I ever be able to do that? Will I ever be able to be on that start line and do I deserve to be? Do I deserve to cross the finish line?’
“Yes, you do!” she states definitively.
This year, Mikulic will host three Run Your Life retreats, including two in Croatia, where she lived before immigrating to Canada as a child with her family. Her four adult children will join her along with a sold-out group in Dubrovnik in April.
The North American retreat will take place in Arizona in October, the week before she runs the Javelina Jundred (pronounced “Havelina Hundred”), a 100-mile race through McDowell Mountain Regional Park, north of Phoenix. She’s scheduled a few recovery days between the retreat and the ultramarathon to prepare herself to face her longest distance yet.
The habits she formed and maintains through her streak have helped her complete lengthy and challenging training runs, some lasting 30 hours with rests in between.
“You are the only person who’s going to get you through 100 miles while you’re in the dark in the desert,” she explains.
What makes long-distance running particularly amazing to Mikulic is that she—a middle-aged, plus-size financial analyst—will run the same course as elite athletes.
“There’s no other sport where you could actually cross paths by running a loop and see that person who’s pacing for first place,” she says. “You cannot be on the same start line as an Olympic gymnast; you don’t even get to the gymnasium.
You can’t be on the same start line as an Olympic 100-metre runner.”
“That’s the beauty of this sport,” she continues. “I share the same dirt as the winners. Our sweat falls in the same dirt. There are still gatekeepers, but the gates are slowly falling down. Don’t wait to start tomorrow. Start with what you have today.”
Photography: Stephanie Lucile Photography
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