A real human being, and a real runner

“Illustrating a profile of myself in a running magazine” was definitely not on my 2024 bingo card, but here we are.

It’s in issue 43 of Like The Wind Magazine, a quarterly, UK-based running magazine that tells beautiful stories, highlights them with gorgeous photography and illustrations, and looks really good on a coffee table.

AAAHHHHH!

The journalist, Charlie Butler, actually got in touch with me last November (while I was in France) after he saw my running comic in the New Yorker, but the pitch was only picked up a few months ago. It’s so serendipitous that Like The Wind happens to be so art and illustration focused because it meant I got to draw the pictures.

hand-lettered title <3

huge thanks to the Like The Wind editors for giving me free creative reign, and to my cartoon editor Emma Allen for this quote which was set with the funniest possible cartoon

The piece excerpts cartoons from the New Yorker as well as this Substack! In particular, it references “Learning How To Run,” and “How (Not) To Run A Half Marathon.”

link

Though my favourite part might be the mention of me and my sister’s matching Forrest Gump tattoos.

Thanks Yvonne <3

I also got to MAKE AN EXCLUSIVE ZINE for this issue! It was inspired by how I rolled my ankle on the first day of my recent trip to New York, hah hah. It’s available in limited edition to magazine subscribers - find out how to get yours here.

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I remain a little bewildered and confused by the significance of running in my life, and how good things tend to spring forth from it. I have never seen myself as one of those prototypical RUNNER TYPES with shiny new tech every year who springs out of bed at 5:00am and runs for two hours five times a week. I am more this:

New Yorker Daily Cartoon from 2021

But through all of my life stages and changes, running and cartoons have been the constants. I think maybe it’s that they’re both… inherently absurd?

2013: first half marathon, first silly running cartoon

But they’re also challenging and humbling, and they allow me to distill my weird ego and outsized emotions into something I can actually manage.

2015: cathartic breakup cartoon (2am); cathartic breakup run (9am)

I am trying to train for a spring marathon which means that in like two hours, I have to go run in the freezing rain and try not to slip on anything. But *all of this* [gestures wildly] makes it a little easier to get out there.

self portrait that I took in France for my imaginary future running profile.

Thanks everyone.

xo Zoe

And as always -