I’m a bad eater. The docs think one of the (many) reasons I had a stress fracture last Christmas was because I had this thing called “REDs” which is Relative Energy Deficiency Syndrome in Sport. It’s a fancy term for something that seems to me to be pretty simple. I didn’t eat enough. Not that I didn’t eat the right things – I was religious about getting in my whole grains, veggies, beans and other protein sources. The problem was that I wasn’t eating enough.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to see my new massage therapist. He’s a man called Garry Miridis and, amongst other things, he used to look after Cathy Freeman. Yes – the Cathy Freeman.

A few days ago I had a long discussion with my brilliant Melbourne-based physio Ali Low and my new athlete manager Tim Cole. We were talking about an injury that has literally stopped me in my running tracks – over the past 10 days or so, I have been forced into the pool and stressing on a daily basis about the fact that I’m well….not running.

Picture this. It’s just turned 6am. It’s pitch black and outside it’s 4 degrees, but feels closer to zero. Wind careens across the ground, and rain is in the forecast.

I have a secret: I’m actually okay with not running. It’s nice to sleep in on a wintry morning and not have to go out into the cold trussed up like a chicken with water in my backpack that feels like it’s been in the deep freeze.

Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to ask people what water means to them. During the 7 Deserts Run in 2016, I was haunted (and still am) by this comment from one person I met: “The question isn’t if the water will run out in Jordan, it is when. Perhaps it will be in my lifetime, [it will] definitely be in my children’s lifetime.”

Several years ago my Mama made me promise her I’d never climb Everest. At the time, I agonised over the request. I stood in my bedroom looking out over the smog hidden rooftops of Beijing thinking about the corner of the dream I thought I was being asked to relinquish. We wound around a variety of topics - safety, altitude, risk, teamwork, risk. I thought I knew what we were discussing as many years earlier I’d made the trek to K2 basecamp and met a bunch of successful Everest Summiteers who were then preparing for an ascent of K2.

It is the beginning of May 2017, and less than 10 days ago I finished an admittedly crazy, and perhaps seemingly impossible quest. On March 22, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada, I started to run a marathon a day for 40 days along six of the world's most iconic and precious rivers to draw attention to the global water crisis. Now that it’s all over, I’ve run a total of 1,688 kilometers.

I’ve been in love with the capital of England for as long as I can remember. As a teenager born and living in Australia, when I first heard The Clash singing London Calling I’d pretend it was written for me. Decades later, as an adult corporate lawyer, I lived and worked in the city while procuring assets for a boutique climate change investment fund. But I left that to set up a water advocacy non-profit in Beijing.

Flying into Cairo to run part of the Nile River - the penultimate ultra marathon in my #run4water journey - I’m reading about the water challenges that face the entire Middle East and North Africa region.

1,050 kilometres down, 638 kilometres still to run. I’m in China and have passed the 1,000 km milestone of my 1,688km journey. Today I’m in Shanghai, running along the the world’s busiest inland waterway, the Yangtze River. For me the Yangtze is a metaphor for our global water crises, and there is a particularly hopeful story I'd like to share with you about it.

I’m suspended in a tree high above the Amazon River, and from this vantage point I can see the incredible canopy of green that shrouds the banks of this mighty waterway. The trees fill every space until they meet the horizon. The only gap is the big blue divide that snakes through this jungle.

Running out of Las Vegas, Nevada on World Water Day at the beginning of my 1,049 mile epic quest for water, I marvel at how innovation affects the relationship between the vulnerability and resilience of a city’s water management.

This is going to sound a little crazy, but on March 22, 2017 I will start to run a journey of over two million steps for water. I’m not an athlete. Then there’s the fact that 25 years ago I broke my back and was told I’d never run again.