In 2018, Judy Nyaga was gravely ill. Her blood pressure was dangerously high, and her doctor's prescription was blunt: medication, weight loss, exercise. It was the kind of wake-up call that demands a response, and Judy tried the obvious route first — the gym. It didn't stick. The motivation came in waves and faded just as quickly, leaving her no closer to the sustained habit she needed.

So she simplified. She started walking — about seven kilometers a day. It wasn't dramatic, and for a long time, it didn't seem to be working. The scale barely moved. But she kept going anyway, mostly because it was the one thing she could stick to.

Now 48 years old, Judy looks back at that season as the quiet turning point of her life.

When COVID arrived in 2020, Judy did what a lot of people did — she looked for ways to stay sane. She joined a small running group in her estate, and a few times a week they'd cover five to seven kilometers together. It wasn't about performance. It was about having somewhere to be and people to be with during a time when both felt scarce. She started hiking too, joining a group of about 25 for a climb up Kilimambogo. The movement helped. The company helped more.

By 2021, as restrictions lifted and the estate running group thinned out, Judy took stock of where she'd arrived. Her blood pressure had normalized. She was off medication entirely. At that point, she weighed 78 kilograms — a significant shift from where she had begun.

Today, she weighs 58 kilograms. The hospital room that had set everything in motion feels like a different life. And yet she keeps running — not because a doctor told her to, but because she is determined never to go back there. 

The scope of what she thought possible began to expand in 2022, when a fellow runner named Catherine Kinyanjui suggested she try a half marathon. Twenty-one kilometers was a distance Judy would once have dismissed as absurd for someone who'd started out simply trying not to have a stroke. But she turned up at the start line anyway, and she finished. That same year she completed both the Nairobi City Marathon and the Standard Chartered Nairobi Marathon, running at steady paces that reflected her methodical approach to the sport. Each race opened a door to something larger — new routes, new mountains, new people who seemed to reflect back a stronger version of herself.

The next significant shift came in October 2023, through a conversation with Peterson, a local MCA, who mentioned the Intertown runs. That introduction led her to Raymond Otieno, the founder of the Intertown Running Group — a connection that quietly reshaped her trajectory. By 2024, she was toeing the line of her first full marathon — 42 kilometers — surrounded by a growing circle of runners who were beginning to feel like family.

At the center of that circle were three steady pillars. Raymond, who opened the door and continued to mentor from the front. Paul Murigu, her faithful companion on long runs, accompanying her through the miles when the road felt endless. And Charles Mbuya, her gym instructor, helping her build the strength that made endurance sustainable, and Nelson Munjua of Max 30. Around them were others — fellow runners, hikers, training partners — who drifted in and out of seasons, each playing a part.

It had become clear that community wasn’t just supporting her progress. It was accelerating it.Strength, sweat, and a silver reminder

But ultramarathons are a different animal, and Judy will be the first to tell you that no amount of community can carry you through the worst of it. The hardest moments tend to arrive late in a race, when the legs feel like they belong to someone else and every step requires a small internal negotiation. She remembers one such moment vividly — the thought of why did I sign up for this arriving with full force, followed almost immediately by you didn't come this far to stop here. Her solution was to stop thinking about the finish line altogether and focus instead on the next visible landmark. The next aid station. The next bend in the trail. One step, one breath, one moment at a time — a mantra that sounds simple and is anything but.

She has stood at aid stations longer than she should have. She has bargained with herself in the dark hours of a race when quitting would have been the easier choice. She hasn't quit yet — not because the temptation hasn't come for her, but because she has learned to outlast it. Discomfort, she's found, is never as permanent as it feels in the moment. If you stay in it long enough, it passes.

The fear before her first ultra was real. She was afraid of not finishing, afraid of what the distance might expose about her physical and mental limits, afraid of breaking down somewhere out on a trail with kilometers still to go. What helped was reframing what the fear meant. Fear meant she cared. And caring, she decided, was reason enough to run anyway.

Her approach to training has matured considerably since those early days. She once operated under the assumption that more mileage automatically meant better performance, pushing harder and skipping recovery without much thought for the consequences. Now her week has structure and intention: recovery runs, speed sessions, tempo work, strength training, long runs, and genuine rest. She protects three days a week for recovery the way she protects her long run — as non-negotiable. Progress, she's learned, doesn't only live in the hard sessions. It lives in the balance between effort and restoration.

When fatigue hits mid-race, she strips everything back to basics. Fuel. Hydrate. Control breathing. Then she coaches herself through it — calm, firm, matter-of-fact. "Fatigue is temporary. Finishing is forever."

Her family took some time to come around. The question of why anyone would voluntarily run such distances is a reasonable one, and they asked it. But they've watched the consistency over the years, seen the discipline up close, and their skepticism has given way to pride. She carries that with her on race day in a way that's hard to quantify but very real.

Trail running remains her first love within the sport — the quiet of it, the uneven terrain that demands your full attention, the way being out in nature forces a kind of presence that road running doesn't always require. Her dream race would sit somewhere dramatic, at high elevation, on a course that tests body and mind in equal measure.

In 2026, Judy is training for 88 kilometers. She has a sequence of targets mapped out ahead of her — 56 kilometers to Kenol, 62 to Machakos, 88 to Naivasha — each one a stepping stone toward distances she is still growing into. It's a long way from the woman who walked seven kilometers a day because her doctor said she had to. But the thread connecting those two versions of herself is the same one it's always been: she decided to move, and she kept moving.