Charlie Arkless only laced up for the first time in July 2025. This April, she lines up at the start of one of the world’s great marathons, wearing the colours of a community built on one idea that every girl belongs in sport.

There is a version of this story that begins years earlier, with childhood race days and school athletics programmes and a steady, deliberate build toward a first marathon. Charlie Arkless’s story is not that version. She started running in July 2025. Not to prepare for anything specific. Just to start.

Less than a year later, she registered for the Paris Marathon, to be a part of Team TrackGirlz, a community organisation dedicated to getting young girls into track and field. The timing of it still catches her off guard. “It feels incredibly meaningful and surreal,” she says. “It’s a reminder of how quickly things can grow when you commit to something and believe in yourself.”

THE COURSE

Ask any marathon runner what they know about Paris and the Eiffel Tower will come up within seconds. Arkless is not immune to it. She has visited the city before, but she knows this time will be different. “Experiencing that moment on foot, in the middle of a marathon, is going to feel surreal,” she says. “Something I will never forget.”

The stretch along the Seine is the other section she has been looking forward to. She has heard about the crowd energy there. What she is hoping for, beyond the noise and the scenery, is something more internal: a moment to slow down mentally, to be present, to absorb what she is actually doing. “I want to really take it all in and enjoy the moment,” she says. In a race that demands so much forward focus, those are the kind of checkpoints that keep runners grounded.

THE PREPARATION

Arkless’s training has been structured without being rigid. Gradual mileage increases, long runs, speed sessions, recovery days. She has leaned into the less glamorous work too: strength training, mobility, nutrition, sleep.

The hardest part, she says, has been patience. “There are days when your body feels great, and others when everything feels heavy.” Learning not to treat the heavy days as signs of failure has been its own discipline. But the breakthroughs have come. There have been training runs where she pushed past limits she had quietly assumed were fixed. “That’s given me a lot of confidence going into race day,” she says. “It’s shown me that I’m more prepared than I sometimes think.”

That kind of self-knowledge, earned through the grind of preparation rather than gifted at the start line, is arguably the most useful thing a first-time marathoner can have. “Every strong athlete was once a beginner. Your goals are valid, your voice matters, and you belong in this sport just as much as anyone else.”

RACE DAY

When the gun goes off in Paris, Arkless will not be thinking about 26.2 miles. She will be thinking about the next kilometre. That is the strategy: break the race into pieces small enough to manage, and deal with each one as it arrives. “Instead of thinking about the entire marathon, I break it down into smaller, manageable parts,” she says. “I remind myself that the training is the hard part, and these are the kilometres to celebrate.”

For the moments when that reframing isn’t enough, she has a mantra. Simple, direct, borrowed from no one: “You’ve got this, dig deep.” She is the first to admit it sounds basic. But in the middle of mile twenty, with legs starting to negotiate and the finish line still distant, basic works. “It grounds me and brings my focus back to what I can control right now.”

She also plans to think about why she is there. The Trackgirlz community. The younger girls watching. The idea that someone, somewhere, might see a woman who picked up running eight months ago and decided to go after something enormous, and think: maybe I can too.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Arkless is careful not to overclaim what her participation means. But she is equally clear that it means something beyond a personal bucket list. “I hope my participation highlights that track and field isn’t just about competition, but about confidence, resilience, and creating opportunities for young girls to see themselves in places they may not have imagined before.”
The message she would send to those girls is unambiguous. Start anyway.
Show up even when you feel out of place. “Every strong athlete was once a beginner,” she says. “Your goals are valid, your voice matters, and you belong in this sport just as much as anyone else.”

She pauses on one last thought, the kind that tends to surface near the end of marathon training when the hard weeks are behind you and race day is close enough to feel real. “Discomfort is temporary. But finishing is forever.”