RADICAL WHO?
The Speed Project is a coveted, near-mythical 340-mile desert race built on the promise of total freedom: no route and no rules. Runner, filmmaker and activist Tilly GW has spent five years helping to make that promise a reality.
By Glorious
The Speed Project (TSP) promises total freedom. No fixed route, no rulebook, no finish-line fanfare. Just you, your team and 340 miles of desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. First run in 2013 by Nils Arend, Blue Benedum and their friends as a wild experiment, it has since grown into one of the most sought-after experiences in endurance running. It is part race, part fever dream and entirely addictive. Over the years it has grown far beyond the original experiment. What makes it remarkable is not just the race itself, but how it continues to evolve. Tilly GW has spent the last five years helping shape that change.
“My first conversation with The Speed Project happened back in 2020, I was 22,” Tilly says. “I brought together an all-women’s team for TSP DIY, a decentralised version of the race during Covid, and we ran for the prescribed 33 hours as a relay team across continents.” When the race’s photo competition afterwards featured images taken solely by and of men, Tilly got in touch to say so. That exchange opened a relationship with TSP founder Nils Arend that would define everything that followed.
Two years later, Tilly ran the LA to Vegas race for the first time, invited by runner and creative Dora Atim to join relay team Long Distance. “The experience was incredible, but also difficult,” Tilly says. “I bore witness to some deeply disturbing behaviour out in the desert, rooted in sexism, riddled with unkindness.” Tilly spoke openly about that experience and was invited by Arend to discuss how participants could be held to account. “Our intention was to plant seeds for how we expected people to show up, without explicitly directing the community on how to behave.”
At the same time, Tilly was building a relay team of their own. We Are All Protagonists brought together eight women with very different running backgrounds, and the documentary Tilly made about the experience, which Glorious covered in January 2024, opened with a single stark observation: men dominate the start line. It was not incidental. It was the point.
By the end of 2023, the conversations had become formal. Arend invited Tilly to join the TSP core team, and Tilly agreed on one condition. “I made it clear, literally put it in writing, that I’d be bringing the topic of equity into every component of our collaboration.” In the first month, Tilly pushed to change the OG relay team format, a structure that had stood unchanged for ten years. The original formation was four men and two women. Tilly proposed a maximum of three men. “We discussed topics such as tradition, legacy, records and what is considered “standard” in our sport. It took a few months of workshopping, before we formally made the update, which was wholly embraced by the community and something the team felt very proud to announce.” A small detail on paper. A significant one in practice.
Then came the Radical Equity Program (REP) created by Tilly alongside Bronx-based ultra runner, counsellor and mentor Malcolm Ebanks, with the full support of The Speed Project. The goal was specific: increase the number of women and non-binary runners taking part in TSP Solo, the individual version of the LA to Vegas race.
LALV 25 refers to the 2025 Los Angeles to Las Vegas Solo race. In 2024, there were 21 athletes on the start line. Six were women. That is what REP was built to change.
It started with an open call, a round-table discussion for women and non-binary people who wanted to know more about running TSP Solo. Two hundred people signed up. From there, the work became practical. “We created a space to acknowledge the challenges and barriers associated with participating in The Speed Project Solo,” Tilly says, “through monthly workshops and open discussions, one-to-one mentorship, resource and information sharing, group reflections and, ultimately, community building, but in a very real sense.”
challenge
The barriers the programme addressed were not abstract. They included family members who would not support them, financial pressure, low confidence, imposter syndrome, route planning, nutrition advice and the wider questioning that often greets women and non-binary people doing something ambitious in sport. “It was very interpersonal and emotional work.”
Twenty-eight runners became part of the REP cohort. At the 2025 start line, 41 athletes lined up for TSP Solo. Twenty-one were women or non-binary, 51 per cent of the field. “There’s no denying the impact that was made,” Tilly says. “But this is just my side of the story. Malcolm, too, had been showing up, asking questions, offering support and championing countless solo runners for many years. Nils, Malcolm and I come from very different perspectives, but our motivation to create space and challenge the norm is the same.”
One month after the race, REP brought the runners back together on a call. “Everything was different,” Tilly says. “The runners had since lived the ups, downs, cool and heat of the desert. The stories shared were candid, open and honest.” Tilly typed a loose transcript as people spoke, and that document became the foundation for REPZINE VOL.1. “I had never made a zine before, but realised that this was the most effective way to create a raw and honest artefact that did not need to be polished.” The result is a 90-page A5 publication gathering WhatsApp messages, screenshots, notes app entries, iPhone photos, poetry and letters. “The entries did not need to be coherent or follow a particular style or fulfil a particular need. We could all exist in the pages as we were.”
“My motivation for REPZINE is to celebrate those who pave the way, who put themselves out there, ask for more, dedicate themselves to their craft, bring others with them,” Tilly says. “It’s also to spread the message that equity is not radical, and that this should be the standard of participation that we strive for.”
Running 500km from LA to Vegas is, by any measure, radical. Being on the start line should not be.
REPZINE VOL.1 is produced with Make Running and is available now.
Title Image: Yamir Adames and Tilly GW. Photography by Ashley Stewart – @ashleystewartt.ca
REPZINE VOL.1 is produced with Make Running and is available now.
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