In this vlog, Julia Fedorin (Canada) and her friend Evelina Fedorin (Latvia) chronicle their joint 30‑day running challenge, documenting the motivations, daily routines, setbacks, and lessons learned. Julia shares her personal running backstory—starting with short run‑walk intervals in May, reaching a 30‑minute nonstop run in July, and falling in love with the feeling of freedom that running provides. Both women maintain similar diets (Julia’s typical meals, Evelina’s vegan 2,500‑plus‑calorie intake) and discuss how they largely kept their nutrition unchanged during the challenge. Mid‑challenge, Julia experiences shin splints, a fever, and a foot injury, prompting her to increase rest days beyond the original plan. She reflects on three major mistakes: insufficient rest/recovery, neglecting short/easy runs, and skipping pre‑run stretches. The vlog also explores mental hurdles—injury anxiety, distance anxiety, pace anxiety, and the negative impact of comparison on platforms like Strava. Both creators emphasize the importance of community support, citing Strava as a tool for tracking progress and connecting with other runners. By the end, they acknowledge that while they didn’t run every single day without rest, they completed the challenge, learned to prioritize health over relentless ambition, and encourage viewers to adopt balanced, sustainable running habits.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Julia Fedorin. I'm from Canada and I've been running every day for 30 days in a row.
Hi, I'm Evelina Fedorin. I'm from Latvia and I've been running every day for 30 days in a row.
Two girls from two different countries, both hated running, but look where they are now, taking on the 30-day running challenge together from a distance. Did they do it? Did they manage to stay consistent and run every day for 30 days? You'll have to find out. My YouTube friend Evelina and I decided to elevate our love for running and do it for 30 days in a row. But before we get into that, here's a little backstory to how my running started. My first ever run was on May 5th. I still remember it being so devilish. I could barely run for 5 minutes straight, so I had to run for 5 minutes and then walk for a few minutes, and then I keep doing that until my 5-minute run became 10 minutes, 10 minutes became 20, and then on July 22nd— I remember the date— on July 22nd, that is when I ran for 30 minutes without stopping for the first ever time. And I think that was the turning point to my, my whole running progression. My why isn't because I want to be faster or I want to win first place in a race. My why is because I genuinely enjoy running. I love how it makes me feel unstoppable and makes me feel so, so at peace. That's why I continued to do it. And this 30-day challenge allowed me to see just how dedicated I am to the sport, a sport I didn't think I'd ever fall head over heels in love with. Why is this sounding like some kind of vow? But yes, running, I will be your lawful wedded wife. Oh gosh, that's so cringy. Okay, let's just get started before I get too far into this. I'm hoping to test my discipline and consistency throughout this challenge. Now, even Even though I have been running a few times a week already and I have this solid built-in routine, I've never ran every single day, and that's just gonna be a whole different story if I'm able to do it even if I don't want to. And also, I just want to improve my running in general because on day 7 of this challenge, I spontaneously decided to sign up for a half marathon that's happening on June 25th. So I just gotta do whatever I can to prepare, and hopefully this challenge is able to help me.
I was hoping to get out of this challenge the ability to run better, to run more comfortably. Did I achieve it? Well, the truth is about these challenges that are 3-day running, you have little to no rest and, uh, everything always doesn't go as you plan it to go.
While I know nutrition plays a really big part in fitness and how well I'm going to perform in this challenge, I didn't really adjust my diet too much. I pretty much ate the same food I would always eat, and this is what a typical day of eating would look like for me.
My diet through this challenge has been pretty much the same. Of course, as usual, after my long runs my stomach is a big black hole. I'm always usually hungry, but after long runs— let's not really talk about my hunger levels. Well, I eat the same thing. I'm vegan, I don't eat dairy, I don't eat meat. Yes, I can run, I can lift heavy without eating animals. I eat a lot, I eat around 2,000 500+ calories daily.
There's no right or wrong way to eat as a runner. You pretty much just have to find what works best for you. For me, for example, I would never eat anything before my runs, especially my morning runs, because I guess I didn't really want to. If I'd have something, I'd probably just have a spoonful of honey to give that like boost of a little bit of sugar, but I'd usually just come back from my run and have a good filling breakfast. So that's just an example of, while yes, websites advise that you have something to eat before every run. If that's not what you are used to, then that's okay. Just make sure that you are eating enough throughout the day to compensate for all the calories you've burned throughout your runs. Oh, it just turned so dark. Now in the grand scheme of things, this was a pretty easy challenge for me because I didn't have to change up my lifestyle too much. I have already been running almost every single day, so just adding in a few more days it didn't really hurt for me, at least in the beginning. So I was doing really great, I was doing really well with it, I was staying consistent. But then on day 12, that's when everything started going downhill. And this is where we're gonna go into top 3 mistakes I made during this challenge. So the first one is not allocating enough rest and recovery throughout this challenge. Now even though Eveline and I decided to make it a rule for us to take at least one rest day a week from runs, run-rest day wasn't really enough, I feel like, because pretty much, yeah, on day 12 I got shin splints, and then on top of that, the very next day, a fever.
Hey everyone, I'm absolutely exhausted. I think I have a fever. First ever, first ever fever. Feeling so sick. Yeah, I honestly overworked myself like always, so I think I'm gonna have to take a lot more than just 2 days of rest from running. I make so many mistakes and I just, I never seem to learn from them. I'm just so mad at myself. So yeah, pretty much this is not going to be a 30-day challenge anymore. I'm still gonna create this video, I'm still gonna try to run for 30 days, but it's not gonna be 30 days in a row anymore. I failed that part. It sucks, but I gotta, I gotta take care of myself. I have to worry about my health and not this, not this challenge. It's okay to give up on challenges if you know that they are— they can be detrimental to your health. So I'm in bed right now.
As you can see, I have a hot comp— I have a hot comp compress.
I have a hot thing right here, and then I have my cozy animal thing.
It's been a while since I've been this sick, you guys. Luckily, I don't have a runny nose or anything.
I just have a little bit of a fever.
Hey guys, good morning! I just woke up and I think I had a good night's sleep. Well, it took me a while to go to bed for some reason yesterday, but I was pretty much in bed all day. And today was my plan to go on a run. I told you guys I was going to take only 2 rest days, but just to be safe, I'm going to take 3 rest days. And today, instead of a run, I'll go on a walk and just, yeah, start moving my legs again. And then tomorrow I'll start my, my runs back up. Now the second one is not enough short runs or slash easy runs. Pretty much every single day of my running would be— I'd run for an hour. I would always go above and beyond. I would never want to do just 20 or 30 minutes of running. But you guys, like, easy runs are so important to incorporate, and here's why. First thing is easy runs, they put less stress on your muscles, and that's what I really needed. The reason why I got these injuries was because I was putting so much stress day in, day out on my legs. Another thing is that if you incorporate easy runs, you're a lot less likely to get injuries because the lower intensity, the better. The next mistake I made is not doing any pre-run stretches. Now, a lot of you guys, I'm sure, can relate to not doing stretches before running. No, it just seems so like daunting and seems so like boring, but sometimes the boring things are the most important things you could do. When you're starting something new, it's understandable that the first few days or the first few weeks or even months, it's gonna be hard to build momentum at the beginning, and it's gonna take a lot more motivation to get the ball rolling, which is why I think it's so important that you have a supportive group of people that you can turn to or just some kind of support. And at least for me, I think at the beginning of my running stages, I tried to seek this motivation from other people. That's what kind of— that's what I did. A friend of mine, he inspired me to start running, and just kind of knowing that he has been running, that kind of motivated me to keep going. And I discovered this app called Strava, which is an app where you're able to track your running progress. And on top of that, you also can build a running community on there, so you can check other people's progress, you can see how other people are running. It's pretty much like a social media platform for runner enthusiasts. So discovering this app was a complete game changer for me because I was able to meet so many amazing people on there and so many like strong, so many fast athletes. So even though this isn't sponsored by Strava, I would really recommend you guys use the app if you are trying to build a running community. Also add me, add me on Strava. I'm always looking for new runner friends. It just makes running so much more fun.
So as a person who struggles with anxiety a lot Seeing the stats, aka like Strava, your pace, it's my anxiety basically. Whenever I run slower, I'm like, I'm not doing enough, why am I slowing down? Or by the end of this challenge, unfortunately, my pace decreased.
Why?
Because you're kind of entering this overrunning phase. And my biggest challenge definitely was getting injured, getting a little foot injury. Which made me, first of all, yeah, run slower, but also made me not be able to run. Everything and anything impacts me, like the weather, like running out of water when I'm running. Running out of water when I'm running. And also, you know, the comparison. The comparison is the thief of joy. And seeing even on Strava— Strava sometimes can be toxic. Yeah, sometimes Strava can be great, you can see your progress, but at the same time you can compare yourself to other runners who run way, way faster.
I didn't really think I'd have any running anxieties, but when Evelina mentioned her anxieties, I thought about it some more, and I do have two major anxieties I want to talk about. The first one is injury anxiety. Getting injuries was the thing I was most nervous about because there are many times in fitness where I'd get an injury. This just shows that I always tend to go overboard with things. I don't really listen to my body, and I don't really know when enough is enough. The next one is distance anxiety. So, Evelina mentioned pace anxiety. For me, it was distance anxiety. The reason why I would always make sure to go for an hour or more long runs was because I saw my most successful runs as the runs that I have the biggest distance for. So, for example, the 21-kilometer run I did, I just felt so proud. And then my short runs were like me being lazy. But like I said in my previous chapters, short, easy runs are so important to incorporate in your running. Another thing I want to add with distance is it's so much better to do shorter runs but more throughout the week than having 2 long runs every week, because those shorter runs are going to add up to many more kilometers or miles than those, those 2 long runs that you do every single week. And also just keep in mind that the distances will come the more consistent you are. Even if you run like for 10 or 20 minutes, that's still going to really help with getting longer distances in the future. And also, any run is better than no run, so even if you just run for 10 minutes, that's still something you should be proud of because you are going on a run no matter how short or long it is.
We did it!
We completed the 30-day running challenge! Well, I didn't really, but let's just say I did. Even though it would have been cool to not take any rest days at all and not have to worry about injuries, we're not robots and life is very unexpected. Things could change from the snap of a finger. What do you think about this, Evelina?
Well, yeah, we often see these extremely crazy challenges when people work their asses off and basically kill themselves, kill themselves till there's nothing left. If you don't have your health, you don't have anything else. So taking rest days, taking recovery days, it's really important. For me as a gym rat, as a really hard achiever, hard-working person, it's It's hard to not do anything. I really do struggle with that. But if you don't take care of your wellness, you will be forced to take care of your illness.
Thank you so much for watching this video, guys. I really appreciate all your support. And thank you, Evelina, for collabing with me. I had so much fun with you. Be sure to subscribe to her channel and check out her video. She'll actually be posting a part 2 to this collab soon, so be sure to stay tuned and check it out. And yeah, I love you guys so much. See you guys in the next one. Bye!
