Running News Daily

Singer Charles Costa Needed a Reset, So He Ran the Entire Pacific Crest Trail

Charles Costa spent three months running along the Pacific Crest Trail this summer and fall as an act of holistic rejuvenation.

The 39-year-old from London, England, set out with a bold goal of averaging 90 marathons in 90 days as a means to help reset his life-both to revive his stalled music career and to find a more balanced state of mind-but the multi-genre electronic British folk artist with 1 million streams and more than 120,000 monthly Spotify listeners says it turned out to be so much more than that.

Because of lingering physical and psychological challenges from a brain injury suffered in a catastrophic skiing accident in Austria in 2010, Costa found himself in a delicate position that forced him at times to pause his music career while managing his mental health. Until he found trail running, he routinely battled a variety of mental, emotional and logistical ailments, ranging from uncontrollable anxiety to comprehensive darkness.

After averaging close to 30 challenging miles of running on the PCT per day starting on July 20, Costa admitted he was ready to finish the route, get off the trail, and get back to living a more stabilized

Recovering a Sense of Charles Costa

After the ski accident, Costa had been through numerous types of therapy and was taking what he characterized as "mind-monitoring, mind-maintaining drugs" that wound up consuming his life. In his long rehabilitative process, he eventually discovered that running-and specifically ultra-distance trail running-offered more of a physical, mental, and emotional panacea from lingering pain and mental discontinuity than anything else, and it also gave him a space to process what was going on in his life. It allowed him to get away from it all while being more connected to himself.

Costa said the more he immersed himself in running, the more he wanted to do something special to reinvigorate his life, relaunch his music career while also giving back. He's run numerous trail races in Europe in recent years, including the Montreux Trail Festival 70K last summer and the Swiss Canyon Trail 81K in Switzerland in June. (He placed 54th out of 225 runners in 11 hours, 23 minutes and 7 seconds.) He's also run the 813-mile length of Great Britain from the northern tip of  Scotland down to the southwestern tip of England.

Seeking to challenge himself on a long and very difficult task that he hoped would be a transformative life experience, he settled on running the length of the PCT- a three-month, 2,650-mile trail running journey with 489,000 feet of elevation change. But he hasn't been doing it just for himself. Along the way, he's been raising money (about $170,000 so far) and stirring up attention for The Jed Foundation, a nonprofit that protects emotional health and prevents suicide for our nation's teens and young adults, and James' Place, a UK-based charity that provides free therapy and is dedicated to suicide prevention for men.

At the completion of the route, which has taken him from the U.S.-Canadian border and through parts of Washington, Oregon, and California, the British singer-songwriter officially released his first new song in several years and the first under his own name. (He originally performed and recorded under the moniker of "King Charles," a false front of a stage persona that he never really liked and that also contributed to his inability to fully express himself the way he wanted.)

The song is called "Nothing at the Most" and will be included on

Costa, who plays piano, guitar, and cello, has found his run to be a curing activity that has helped untangle his heart and mind and put him back in position to work as a professional musician.

"One thing I love about running is the rhythm of it," he said. "It's the effect that rhythm has on your mind. Days like I'm doing at the moment, it's dawn to dusk. It's up to 12 hours of just pounding the ground. And there are so many different rhythms that you get into. And I think once you're in a rhythm, your mind gets into a different place. You start thinking less. You let more in, especially when you're in beautiful places. You let more in in terms of inspiration. So, I find running very inspiring, especially in the wilderness and in some of these incredibly beautiful places."

The song "Nothing at the Most" is part of a collection of songs filled with the sounds and lyrics he says are meant to represent his journey between longing and lament. It's an intimate, cello-infused chamber-pop ballad with his soulful voice. Costa recorded several songs in the spring with producer Jesse Quin at

Enduring the Trail

As he was nearing the end of the route last week, Costa said his body was tired and a bit broken down but his soul felt re-energized. While he's remained injury-free, he's battled fatigue, blisters, muscle strains, all sorts of weather conditions, and insomnia-all common maladies to multi-day running adventures. He's worn through several pairs of On and La Sportiva trail running shoes and has relied heavily on his lightweight trekking poles, as well as his small but diligent crew that's managed his meals, gear, logistics and more.

Costa says he's listened to a lot of music out on the trail and has occasionally sang out loud to help the miles go by, but he's also made it a point to soak in the peaceful aura of the wilderness. He says it's been a devilishly hard endeavor and is amazed how "there isn't a single flat section" in the entire route.

"I'm holding it together. My muscles and limbs are all still working  as they should, but I guess what starts falling apart is the mind," Costa said. "Even though I've been looking forward to the last 20 days and the last 10