WELCOME!
Kia ora, my name is Carly, I am the face behind MoveNation and the co-creator of the RunnersNZ project. A runner myself, I am also a photographer and a storyteller, I love a good adventure in the hills, and I’m a devoted cheerleader to anyone giving it a crack. My current backyard is beautiful Fiordland, and I am super passionate about people, purpose, the outdoors, and wellbeing / mental health. These things are central to everything I do.
MOVENATION NZ
Loosely set up in 2022, MoveNation was a space to expand on the stories and mahi of RunnersNZ – with more leeway and a greater freedom to share and celebrate a wider community of runners and walkers (even hikers and triathletes) and commercial partnerships. The VISION of MoveNation is to create an incredibly supportive and nurturing community for all New Zealand runners, with further scope to include runners’ resources, meetups, missions, event updates, and podcasts.
Core drivers and VALUES for both myself and MoveNation :
- The first is Community & Connection – I believe that we are better together, in our challenges and our achievements. I believe in helping others rise and celebrating our wins. I believe that the genuine support and connection, and the sharing of common interests, experiences and goals, lessens the feelings of loneliness and isolation, and ultimately creates happy healthier humans.
- The second is Gratitude – that the practice of being present and ‘collecting’ the positive and wonderful moments and things around us, no matter how small, can change your life. That we should never take for granted our life, our environment, our whenua, or our bodies and their ability to move.
- And the third is prioritising our Health & Wellbeing. In my own experience, movement and running has had a huge and positive impact on my physical and mental health. Running has allowed me to develop a greater sense of self awareness, given me a deeper feeling of personal accomplishment, helped me to build and sustain mental fortitude, improved my overall wellness ten fold, and brought with it regular bouts of that ‘runners high’!
MoveNation was incorporated as a Social Enterprise in 2024 and aims to continue uplifting and celebrating the New Zealand Running Community as well as backing the RunnersNZ project. I’m refraining from getting too specific on GOALS (at the moment) as these will no doubt emerge with more clarity in the coming months. But, I do want to start by providing valuable, meaningful and accessible content, resources, tools and experience that will help all runners of all levels improve their performance, overall wellness and mental health. I also hope that MoveNation can be a space of encouragement to people who are starting or restarting their ‘Movement Journey’.
One foot in front of the other. Let’s go!
He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata he tangata he tangata!
What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people!
The RunnersNZ Backstory :
Carly & Lee started the RunnersNZ project in 2019. Carly, with a background in studio portrait photography, had already spent a number of years creating multiple series of portraits; photographs that were presented alongside deeply personal interviews, delving into the motivations and WHY of her subjects when it came to their passion and vocation. Having now traded the studio for a motorhome, living on the road and travelling around New Zealand with their 3 children (two on the Autism Spectrum), she was eager to create a new and adapted photo series. In the vein of ‘HONY’ (or Humans of New York), and inspired by her and Lee’s relatively new running journey, the theme of RunnersNZ and ‘Why I run” was chosen.
No strangers to the challenges of depression and anxiety, and now isolated without a ‘home base’, their initial motives for the project were partly selfish; to meet and converse with other runners, to develop new social circles and a sense of community, and to discover and be led on some of the coolest trails around Aotearoa!
Before the first photo was taken the scope of the project was set; simple, unquestionably inclusive, and wildly diverse : All Runners. All Stories. No matter a person’s journey, their distance, speed or ‘success’, if you had been running for 60+ years, or started last week; track, trail or road; fast, slow, somewhere in between; if you run every day or run every so often, young or old… if you run, you are a runner… congratulations, you qualify! The only criteria was that (at the peak of social media ‘influencing’ #notafan) these stories would only be included when documented and photographed by us, in person. And there was to be no commercial input, advertising, promoting or peddling. It was our hope, through openly shared personal stories and experiences, featured runners would continue to connect, celebrate and encourage one another, be a welcoming face at events or group runs, an ‘ambassador’ and source of information for their own town or city, and grow and develop meaningful relationships and networks beyond the online platforms on which they first ‘meet’.
200+ runners, and stories of every WHY imaginable, we are overwhelmingly grateful and proud of the RunnersNZ community for being exactly that… and a whole lot more!
Find out more :