Entrepreneur, ultrarunner, race director, and philanthropist Malcolm Law is among the top individual nonprofit fundraisers in the trail running and ultrarunning community worldwide and an integral part of the New Zealand trail running world. Through completing six audacious endurance goals and garnering the help of other trail runners along the way, he’s fundraised nearly one million New Zealand dollars for the Leukemia Foundation and various mental health foundations worldwide.
Along the way, he also wrote a book, filmed a documentary, and founded Wild Things, a community-driven trail directory for New Zealand. Most recently, he launched The WILD Epic Mountain Runs, a multiday trail running event that not only includes racing but also focuses on rewilding the surrounding landscape by removing invasive species and rehabilitating it with native plants. The organization operates as a trust and is centered on collaboration versus profit. Members of the iRunFar team experienced The Wild last year and wrote this article about it.
Here’s more of Law’s story.
Mal Law has raised nearly a million dollars for various charities through his various trail running challenges over the years. All photos courtesy of Mal Law.
Childhood and Running Cross Country
Mal Law grew up in Liverpool, England, with two sisters whom he described as “both elder, both bossy.” He went on to say, “One still lives in England, and the other lives in Seattle, Washington. Makes for interesting family get-togethers.” Throughout his childhood, Law was very much into the traditional sports of rugby, cricket, and tennis, and he followed English soccer. But running had a somewhat unlikely appeal for him from the start.
“At school, we had cross country. In a place like Liverpool, it’s pretty hard to actually access anything you call country. So, you’d run around the perimeter of the sports field a few times, and I did actually quite enjoy that. But you could not possibly admit it to your peers at my school, otherwise you just got beat up. So, it was not a cool thing to do at all. I kept under wraps, the fact that I did secretly quite enjoy it,” said Law.
University and Career Path
Law studied geography at the University of Sheffield, a couple of hours distant from his home. His love of maps is still apparent in his non-stop exploration of both his New Zealand home mountains and ranges around the world. The creation and routing of his adventures over the years shows a deep love of the study of landscapes and their secrets.
“I would have dearly loved to have become a cartographer with the Ordnance Survey, which is the British mapping people. They produce the topographic maps for the U.K., but I think they took about one graduate every five years into their program, so there weren’t a lot of other options for geographers. I stumbled around for several years and finally ended up in market research and had 30 years working in the field before I managed to escape,” explained Law.
Mal Law running the Northburn 100 Mile in 2018, one of the premier 100-mile events in New Zealand.
New Zealand and Endurance Racing
Law wasn’t one to sit still and did a couple of half marathons in his early twenties. He said, “I was definitely always going to be more the endurance runner than the sprinter. I’ve got no fast twitch fiber in my body.” At age 27, he moved to New Zealand and, intrigued by the world-famous-in-New-Zealand Coast to Coast, an event which involved cycling, running, and kayaking width-wise across the country’s South Island in a day, he delved into the world of multisport races. He participated in these for a decade through the mid-1990s and into his early forties.
“The main reason I stopped doing multisport events is it’s very difficult to do without support, because you need people at the transitions to help you from one thing onto the next. And it was probably quite a major factor in my first marriage not working. That I’d rather overindulged and frequently did those events,” he shared.
When he met his current wife, Sally Law, he said he “realized that this is the woman I wanted to spend rest of my life with. I didn’t really want to put at risk that relationship by making the same mistake twice.”
Mal and Sal Law on a mountain in 2014.
As he entered his late forties and retired from his full-time market research job, his focus shifted to trail running. He had been consulting internationally and was burned out on travel.
“The first thing I did after finishing that role was I took off into the mountains to go and do a solo hike for a week. While I was on that hike, I had this idea about doing New Zealand’s Great Walks back-to-back over a week, and that necessitates running them, not walking them, to get through in time. So I went from this part-time trail runner who also hiked and biked and kayaked into becoming totally focused on trail running in order to train for a year to get myself to a point where I could take on that challenge. From that point on, my focus has very much been on long-distance trail running and mountain running,” he said.
Seven Great Walks in Seven Days for Charity
New Zealand currently has 10 Great Walks, which are hiking trails through gorgeous terrain throughout the country. These trails are traditionally completed as three- to five-day backpacking trips with huts to stay in along the routes. About the huts along the routes, Law said, “They’re now extremely busy and popular, and you have to book well in advance. And for the most popular ones, they sell out on the day that they open bookings for the season.” But all of the walks are short enough and well-maintained enough that they can be run in a long day, and without having to book the huts in advance. In 2009, there were nine Great Walks, and that year Law decided to complete seven of them in seven days. Of the two he left out, one is a kayak journey, and the other is on an offshore island.
He called the effort the Seven in Seven Challenge. It involved running 370 miles and extensive land, boat, and air travel both between each of the Great Walks and sometimes between their start and finish points. Logistically, it was a huge jigsaw puzzle and task to organize.
Mal Law used his Seven in Seven Challenge to fundraise for the Leukemia Foundation and dive deep into trail running.
Law wanted to use the challenge to bring awareness to a loss in his life. “When I was a wee nipper, my brother died from leukemia. I was nine, he was 13, and I’d always had in mind to do something to raise some money for that cause.” Leveraging the challenge, he raised awareness and 75,000 New Zealand Dollars in donations for the Leukemia Foundation.
His final run overlapped with the Kepler Challenge, a 400-person race race on the Kepler Track, one of the Great Walks. The race director mentioned his challenge in the pre-race briefing, and he got a fair number of donations from there.
A dozen other runners were invited to join on various days of the challenge, too, and their fundraised amounts went into the pot. “It was the start of quite an amazing blossoming of network of friends that has developed over the years,” he said.
After completing the challenge, Law wrote a book, “One Step Beyond,” about his experience.
More Foot Challenges: Nearly One Million Dollars Fundraised
[Editor’s Note: A kind note for our readers that this section discusses suicide.]
After his inaugural challenge in 2009, Law would go on to complete five more big ultrarunning challenges while fundraising for causes. In total, his efforts have raised just $20,000 short of a million New Zealand Dollars.
In 2010, for his second challenge, he did a similar Seven in Seven Challenge and ran seven new trails as another fundraiser for the Leukemia Foundation. Together, those first two projects raised a quarter of a million dollars.
“I realized, through all that work, that I had a lot of quite unresolved grief from many, many years prior from losing my brother. And doing those two challenges really helped me draw a line under that, really helped with closure, as we call it, for losing a sibling,” he said. “For me personally, this has really fulfilled a purpose with the fundraising. And for me personally, it really kind of closed the circle.”
In addition to his family losing his brother in his youth, Law faced another traumatic transition in his family, as an adult in 1995. His brother-in-law from his first marriage committed suicide while visiting. Law was the one who found him.
“I was very aware of the inextricable link between running or activity and mental wellbeing. So it’s like these two things just go together beautifully. I can do a lot more good beyond just raising money if I get the message out there that connects with people: Be active, give yourself a goal. All those things are vitally important. Having a sense of purpose, being active, connecting with people — they’re vitally important to mental well-being.”
In 2012, his third challenge, completed with another runner, fundraised for the New Zealand Mental Health Foundation and the British Mental Health Foundation. The pair followed the length of the 630-mile South West Coast Path, the longest footpath in Britain.
Next, he attempted 50 mountain marathons in 50 days around New Zealand, covering the entire geography of the country. During the challenge, he experienced some injury and sickness, so he had to revise a few of the days and shorten some of the distances. He ended up doing 50 peaks and the equivalent of 40 marathons. However, his fundraising hit a maximum during that time, and more than 300 runners joined him over the seven-week period. They raised more than half a million dollars — double their target goal.
Mal Law climbing a peak while attempting to complete 50 mountain marathons in 50 days in 2015.
Facing Chronic Fatigue
Unfortunately, the effort led to chronic fatigue. There had been a two-year period of training, planning, and preparation, followed by 50 days of running, and filming it for a movie, which was followed by a promotional tour all over New Zealand and Canada.
“I was just mentally, emotionally, physically beat at the end of it. My doctor sat me down, said, ‘Right, you need to make some serious lifestyle adjustments because you’ve got chronic fatigue, and if you’re not, you will never recover.’ That was a real wake-up call and a very hard thing to deal with. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. So debilitating,” he said.
The result of attempting 50 mountain marathons in 50 days was injury and chronic fatigue that made Mal reconsider his approach to life.
Law was given an 80% chance of full recovery within two years. He buckled down, going cold turkey on running for four months. He ate a strict diet and was more mindful of stretching, doing yoga, and meditating. After 18 months, he recovered. Today, he is prone to relapse, so he remains vigilant to a well-rounded health approach.
Creating the Wild Things New Zealand Trail Directory
During his recovery, Law launched the Wild Things trail directory, which has turned into a member-driven database of trails around the country. “I’d always liked the idea of trying to share my knowledge of New Zealand trails with other people and encourage them to get out and explore them. And this idea just kept blossoming,” said Law. His love and training in geography made it a natural fit. “Because I had time on my hands, I had mental energy that wasn’t being channeled into anything else — the idea of building this comprehensive directory of trail runs around New Zealand came to me.”
What was supposed to be a hobby project became a full-time job with a subscription-based membership model to support the site. After five years, in 2021, he and Sally sold the business to a passionate trail runner and the site’s web developer, Rob Bathgate. It remains one of the top trail running resources for New Zealand routes.
More Challenges and Fundraising
In 2017, after recovering from chronic fatigue, Law couldn’t resist the draw of another challenge in the U.K. He and friend James Harcombe set out to run a 1,000-mile route circumnavigating Wales, which included the Wales Coast Path and Offa’s Dyke Path, in 26 days. The then-fastest known time (FKT) was 40 days. But while running, Law started to experience symptoms of chronic fatigue — dizziness and lightheadedness. Learning from past experience, Law decided not to push it. Harcombe kept the pace, running ahead and setting a new FKT, while Law took rest days.
“That wasn’t a huge one in terms of the fundraising, but it was a pretty cool experience. It was quite nice, where I really enjoyed it in the end, because I wasn’t the main focus anymore. It was like James had become the main focus because he was the one going for the record, and so I could play more of a support role,” said Law.
In 2019, Law set out to complete one million feet of elevation gain on foot in a year and raised another $75,000 for mental health foundations. “I still love the idea of personal challenges and pushing my boundaries and going to explore new places. But the extra burden that organizing these things puts on you and on your relationships, I find I’ve got less mental energy for that. I’m in my mid-sixties now, so I’m not getting any younger!” he said.
Moving to Wanaka and Developing The WILD Epic Mountain Runs
A decade ago, Law and his wife moved from Auckland to Wanaka, on the South Island of New Zealand, an hour over the hill to the north of Queenstown. Their dog, Maudie, is named after a local peak, Mount Maude.
Maudie is the one creature on the planet with potentially more energy and enthusiasm than Mal.
Today, the couple’s current project is The WILD Epic Mountain Runs, which launched in 2023. Law has ensured that it’s more than just a race and has created an opportunity for runners to give back to the surrounding landscape that they’re racing through.
“My other big passion in life is native habitat restoration, or rewilding,” said Law, and invasive trees, or wilding pines as they are called in New Zealand, are a major problem in the region. As part of the multiday event, runners have the opportunity to go into the hills to remove the pines and replant native vegetation. Also part of the event are speakers, films, and five races, with the longest being a 50 miler with 16,500 feet of elevation gain. The race organization is a charitable trust, with seven trustees on the organizing committee, two of whom are full-time event organizers, and everyone else is woven into the trail running community.
The races are routed in the wild and mountainous terrain outside of Arrowtown, but the area is heavily altered from its pre-human habitation state due to centuries of use for hunting and agriculture. Ongoing efforts aim to reintroduce native species to the area. Law is proud of the event’s immediate impact on the landscape and said, “Last year, being the first year of the event, we pulled out 7,000 wildling pines in a matter of a couple of hours.”
He realizes the unique position runners are in to be able to help. “Runners are very fit and can get to these backcountry areas. So why don’t we try and mobilize the running community to give back to nature?”
The event also helps fund other rewilding efforts. Law said, “A percentage of the entry fees plus any other money we happen to make or get through donations goes into the rewilding fund. And then we spend that money using runners as volunteers to help with the control of the exotic species and the replanting of plant species. So it becomes this lovely little self-contained thing.”
Law said the inaugural year of the event, 2023, was “ridiculously successful. It exceeded all our expectations. We had 650 entries. We’re hopefully all go again for this year. We have entries open and trying to get people signing up again.”
The vision is to expand the impact. “We’ve got a lot of work to do in our own backyard, so to speak. But, ultimately, we want to have a more national influence. Ultimately, we’d like to be getting enough money into that pot that we can also be handing out grants to running groups around the country to organize their own plant-and-run weekend or get involved however they feel is appropriate,” he said.
Up Ahead
Last year, Law had an opportunity to check off a long-standing goal: Running the Bob Graham Round in the U.K., an iconic fell running route close to where he was born and raised. He completed it in 23 hours and 53 minutes and became the third oldest person to complete the round.
Mal climbing in Scotland in 2024. He may not be getting any younger, but he’s not slowing down either.
“I’m very pleased with myself for getting around that, but also, I felt when I’d done that, that would be a good one to sign off with, to be honest. That’s a good swan song in terms of big, hairy, audacious challenges that require me to do lots and lots of training and really push my personal boundaries. I think I’m done,” he shared. “What I do still love is getting out into the mountains. I’ve returned to my roots a bit and am doing a lot more overnight hiking and fastpacking. It’s a great way to go and explore.”
Call for Comments
- Do you have a Mal or Sally Law story to share?
- Have you been able to use running as a way to give back to your community or the environment?
