Features
These stories showcase the heart of Like the Wind: powerful storytelling that explores why we run. From intimate portraits to expansive journeys, this category brings together the magazine’s most engaging narrative writing. Whether delivered through immersive Long Reads or concise Short Stories, these features capture the emotion, culture, and human experience of running in all its forms.
Only the Brave : The Speed Project
You’ve got to have some nerve to take on The Speed Project, the legendary 340-mile Los Angeles-Las Vegas relay. You’ve got to have even more nerve putting yourselves out there as a group of older Black women in what can often seem like the white-thirty-something-male-dominated world of ultra running.
Run for Freedom
Nike! Nike! Nenikekamen!” “Victory! Victory! Rejoice, we conquer!” 490BC. Pheidippides, a messenger, finally arrives at the end of his 26-mile run from a battlefield in Marathon to the Acropolis in Athens to deliver news of an unexpected Greek victory over Persian invaders.
Still waiting for the change
Just after 11.30am on 5 November 2006, Samia Akbar took a last right turn in Central Park and raced towards the finish line of the 37th annual New York City Marathon. As 12th woman, she would cross the finish line – in her first marathon – in 2h34m14s.
Enough is enough
I ran every night in the dark and had felt pretty comfortable. A man blocked the bridge I was crossing to ‘get directions to the metro’… aka to tell me I was beautiful and that he wanted to talk to me.
A Women’s Place is on the Start Line
Even though the running boom of the past 20 years has been driven by increased female participation, negative racing experiences for women remain a broad and endemic problem that seems baked into the very structure of many events.

