OOO Spotlight: Running—If I Can Do It, Anyone Can Do It

Many moons ago, in the summer of 2009, I was living with my dad in Boston. I’d had a particularly hard year, my college workload had nearly doubled in the second year of my degree, and I’d just recently ended a stressful three-year relationship with my boyfriend. The spring months were spent in a hazy daze of overwhelming anxiety and heartbreak. I knew something had to change. I turned to exercise to improve my mood, but being a broke college student in Boston meant I couldn’t afford to join the gym. So I turned to running.

Running became something I did when I tried to lose weight or enforce some semblance of health into my daily routine. I always came back to it, because it did actually make me feel good, but never purely for the joy of running. Eventually, in January 2014, I made a New Year’s resolution: get running and stay running. So on a chilly day at the end of January, I walked 5 minutes to a local park as a warm-up and ran a 5K in just about 40 minutes. It gave me an outlet, once again, for my fuzzy head. Except this time I was hooked.

I kept at it, and week after week I ran a little bit farther, a little bit faster. Initially, I only ran at night because I didn’t want anyone to see me. When I ran at night, alone in the dark, I felt free. Little did I know then that people commend you simply for trying, but that was a lesson to be learned at another time. Running became like a moving meditation, and it still is to this day. Some of my biggest stresses and problems have been either released or solved during runs. It’s like a magic wand for stress and anxiety. It’s mind-bogglingly amazing.

Since that race in 2014, I’ve done 35 races, including four marathons. If you had asked me in January 2014 where I would be with my running now, I never would have fathomed my current ability or the journey I’ve been on to get here. And I never would have dreamed that I’d have completed four marathons (two in Dublin, one in Paris, and one in Berlin) and countless other distances. I think I probably would have said that I’d like to be running 10K on the regular. I never would have said that I’d be a long-distance runner with the goal of running the Boston Marathon by 2020. I guess my point is to never say never.

Friends and colleagues often ask, “How do you do it?” This is often followed by a “I could never do that.” I’ve always been a plucky, resilient sort, and I’ve approached running in the same way. Try, try again. Keep on keeping on. Dogmatic determination with every stride, at every mile. The results have been incredibly rewarding. I often wonder how I do it, as I was never someone you would’ve exactly called “athletic” growing up. If I (the girl who had a permanent note for gym class as a teen) can do it, then anyone can.