Mina Guli is weeks away from running the entire 2000-mile length of the Colorado River. Why?

On June 22, ultra-runner and global water advocate Mina Guli laced her shoes and set off, high in the Rocky Mountains. It was day one of her journey running the entire, 2000-mile length of the Colorado River––a vital water source for 16 million people and a $1.4 trillion economy. For Guli, running is her was to be at the front lines of the water crisis and experience first-hand the people that make up a place. She hopes it’s a mechanism to drive big change, and present decision-makers and business leaders with the stories and realities that can bring about solutions. More than 10 weeks and 1,500 miles in, having battled triple-digit heat and 2 a.m. starts day in and day out, Guli is set to end her run on September 18 at the Santa Monica Pier. Guli chatted with Hiker Box Editor Angie Stevens about her quest.  

TM: What first sparked this intense, courageous journey to run the length of the Colorado River? 

MG: I think it's two things. 

The first one is really understanding how critical rivers are to our communities, our societies, our economies—to everything. They’re the lifeblood of our planet and our lives.

I realized this during Run Blue, a campaign where I ran 200 marathons in 32 countries in a year, leading up to the UN's first conference on water in almost 50 years. That was eye-opening because we saw rivers that were literally running dry. The Rhine in Germany, where I could walk under bridges that should have been filled with water. And the Colorado River—even back then in 2022 to 2023, it was at crazy low levels. So many times I looked at these riverbeds and thought, what are we doing to our planet? That was my first big nudge toward understanding how critical rivers are to our planet and to its people.

The second thing was recognizing that the Colorado River is at a real tipping point. It’s one of the most economically significant rivers not just in the U.S., but in the world. And right now, incredibly low snowmelt over the winter season means water levels are even lower than they’ve been in years of extended drought, which is really saying something.

At the same time, there are some really important conversations happening around the Colorado River. And it seemed to me that there was a lot of conversation that needed to happen, not just in the halls of government, but among companies, communities and local governments, too. It’s not fair to put the whole burden on state governments to divide up an ever-decreasing pie––to focus only on conversations about scarcity. We also need to talk about abundance. What can the rest of us, companies, local governments, communities, all of us as individuals do to help build a more abundant and resilient river system? 

I decided to run to raise awareness at a critical time and to drive impact, because this is more than a run––we’re hosting summits along the way to bring people together to discuss solutions and how to finance them. To have hard conversations and make hard decisions that will save the river, so it can continue to sustain the 16 million people and $1.4 trillion economy that depends on it. Because people throughout the basin will need to do hard things. And they can do hard things, like running the entire length of the river in summer! 

TM: Would you say your personality has always been to go the extra mile for what you believe in, driving action, making noise, and starting conversations?

MG: I've always believed in fighting for what you believe in—standing up, putting up your hand, taking the first step, whatever it takes to actually commit and get behind the things you care about. It’s easy to think, I'm just one person, what difference can I make? But when I started, I was just one person running like a crazy person in the middle of a desert. That was 2016. Since then, we've built a global community of people in over 200 countries and territories, all stepping up and showing their commitment to sharing their own stories about water. 

If I had never taken that first step—if I'd never put up my hand and said, maybe we can—nobody would have believed that we actually could, and we would never be here. So yes, that is my personality, to go the extra mile. But even more than that, it's about standing up for what you believe in. I believe that we need to fight for what truly matters to us.

TM: Can you detail the first moment you knew you would dedicate your life to helping solve the global water crisis?

MG: During my first campaign I ran across seven deserts in seven continents in seven weeks and I’d assumed that afterwards I’d go back to my day job. I would trade my running shoes for high heels and my corporate life would return to normal. 

Then I stood on the bank of the Orange River in South Africa, a river that runs between Namibia and South Africa. When we were there, the water was at incredibly low levels, so low that our local guide pointed up to the bank meters above us and said, “That's where the river used to be.”

I’d never had an experience like that before; I felt my whole world change. And in that single moment, I knew water was the thing I was going to dedicate the rest of my life to. 

TM: How long have you been running, and was there a specific shift when you started viewing this activity as a potential avenue for the advocacy work?

MG: For me, running has been a tool of advocacy. Everything I do, every run I create, has symbolism woven all the way through. Take the distances I run: By 2030, there’s projected to be a 40% gap between water demand and supply, so each day I’d run the distance (a marathon is roughly 40 kilometres) representing that gap—a way to make people feel just how big it really is. 

Running the entire length of the Colorado River—is about bringing communities together to demonstrate that this isn’t your river or my river. It's our river, and it needs us to come together to find solutions. Running is a mechanism to demonstrate that, step by step, we can drive big change. It enables me to go to the front lines of the crisis, spend time with people there and help to tell their stories. It’s filled with story and symbolism and purpose in so many ways.

TM: Have any recent connections with farmers, ranchers, or community members who rely on the Colorado River particularly stuck with you? 

MG: Yes, definitely. Bringing these stories forward is critical to closing the gap between the stories happening on the ground and the conversations happening in the boardroom. As one Indigenous community leader said to me while I was in Australia: “Decisions would be better if leaders could understand that things are different on the land.” I think he’s right, and for me, that’s a critical part of connecting business leaders and decision-makers to what’s actually happening deep in their supply chains. 

Outside of Granby, Colorado, a local named Ian pulled over in his red truck while we were running and said to me: “The truth isn’t always what you read, it’s what you see.” I’ve talked to rafting guides worried they may not have a business next season because the river levels are too low for the rafts to run. And I've spoken to young farmers with low-priority water rights who’ve had to shut off their water for growing feed crops entirely—while working alongside farmers who hold senior, first-in-time water rights and still have access.

TM: You’ve been shown a lof of kindness along many sections of your journey, battling grueling heat, swollen rivers, and trail closures. Can you describe the value in experiencing these moments with people whose lives are located at the heart of the river?

MG: I think it's really easy to look at reports and data as cold, hard numbers on a page. But the truth is, behind every statistic are real people, living in real places, with real stories to tell. It's important to me that we take those stories and put them in front of decision-makers because I believe that it's only by connecting to hearts as well as minds that we can really truly create the kind of catalytic change that this river needs. 

If this were just about data and numbers, the change would already have happened—there’s no shortage of reports, science or information about the state of the river, its challenges, and its opportunities. What needs to happen now is mobilizing people and communities to come together and demonstrate that this problem is real and urgent. It demands the courage to set  big, bold, ambitious goals, and the willingness to do the hard work required to get there, together.

Photo: Andrew King