How I Became a Runner: My Journey to Loving the Sport Most People Hate

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The Beginning: A Kid Who Loved to Move

I didn’t start off as a child prodigy in running. I never dreamed of going to the Olympics, like many young kids in sports. My sister and I were always active, playing games like Red Rover and hitting a ball in the yard with our dad. But track was just one of many sports that I took part in, along with basketball, swimming, tennis, gymnastics, and cross country.

I did all the sports my older sister did when we were kids.

CYO, or the Catholic Youth Organization, gives students starting in third grade the opportunity to compete in sports in a faith-based environment while representing their school or parish community. I started off running the 100, 200, 4x100 relay, and doing standing long jump. Eventually, I added in high jump and 200 hurdles.

My best event when I started track was standing long jump — an event that used to be in the Olympics, but is now mostly just for little kids.

I also tried the 400 once. It seemed entirely too long — like you were transported to another world throughout the course of the race. I wasn’t sure how to pace it and missed the feeling of totally releasing and sprinting as fast as I could in the 100 or 200. I decided I’d be sticking to short sprints.

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The first time that I ran the 400, I decided it wasn’t for me.

My first coach, a longtime runner himself, helped me embrace nerves as a sign that I cared about what I was doing.

 “There are two types of runners,” he told me, “those who run with their heads and those who run with their hearts. Your sister runs with her heart. But you run with your head.”

Bits of advice like this carried me through my first few years running track, because I was too shy to take advantage of my coaches’ expertise. One of my coaches pronounced my name wrong for years, and I never got up the courage to correct him.

In those early years, my dad used to run with me at every cross country practice. Then, I got too fast for him and he couldn’t keep up. He would take me to tracks so I could workout, even while we were on vacation. In fact, both of my parents have done a lot for me in my track career. When I told my mom I wanted to get recruited to run in college, we signed up for a webinar on the process and learned about it together. My parents attended almost every single one of my meets before college. This support helped shape my commitment to track from the beginning.

In fourth grade, I won a race for the first time. I always tried my hardest in races, but I had never been close to winning before — I had gotten used to following the runners in front of me. When I passed my opponents in this fateful 200 meter race in 2016, I remember feeling more confused than excited at first. In a hilarious account of that day that I wrote as a kid, I said, “I ran straight, not really understanding why people were cheering in the stands, and wondering why the crowd had thinned. I wondered if maybe this wasn’t my real race.” 

I couldn’t believe that I was the one to cross the finish line first. I had no idea what my future would hold.

The personal narrative I wrote about my first time winning a track race is equal parts hilarious and auspicious.

At the end of sixth grade, I developed my first serious injury, a part of being an athlete I’ve become all too familiar with. I went to see a doctor who diagnosed me with shin splints and told me to stop doing sports until I couldn’t feel pain anymore. But after a year, I realized that the doctor’s advice wasn’t going to work for my body. I cautiously started training again but refused to settle for the “all or nothing” approach the doctor recommended. I had a successful eighth grade basketball season, and I walked into the first track practice of the year with excitement, telling my coaches I was back. But then COVID hit, and the season was canceled.

I still worked out during the COVID pandemic — biking, running, and shooting hoops — but I wasn’t specifically training for track. Going into my first high school track season, I hadn’t raced in two years.

The Race That Changed Everything

Then, my new coach asked if I would run on the 4x400 meter relay at the Indoor State Championship because they needed someone to fill a spot. I was coming off of basketball season and hadn’t run the 400 before, except for that one time in fourth grade. I was shocked by the call up. He told me he had looked up my times online and thought I had the potential. I told him I was up for it.

I had no idea what to expect. But when I stepped onto the track that day, something in me arose. I got the baton in fifth place in my heat, and I chased down two girls to hand off in third. It had been a long time since I’d competed, and even though I had never considered myself a 400 runner before, it felt like coming home.

My relay did okay overall. We placed ninth out of 17 teams, a respectable showing for a relay with multiple first-years. I ran about a 68-second split, which is nothing to write home about, but also not too bad for a freshman coming in without 400 experience. However, something greater happened to me that day. A fire was lit in my chest. I had become a 400 runner. 

On the bus home, I just remember thinking “if track is always this fun, I want to do this forever.”

In middle school, I never thought I’d run a 400 again. In high school, it became a part of every meet.

My confidence grew a lot through my first year of high school track. My older teammates were amazing role models, cheering me on so loudly I knew I was never alone on the track. My coach also started getting on me about fixing my bad posture — a side effect of being tall in middle school and subconsciously trying not to stand out anymore than I already did — because it’s inefficient for good running form.

“You need to walk into every room with your shoulders back and your head held high,” he told me, “like you belong.” 

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I found a sense of community in high school track that I had never had before.

Slowly, the sense of purpose and worth I felt on the track started to filter into other parts of my life. My coach’s unwavering belief in me, his ability to see me as a 400 runner before I saw it myself, his steady reassurance before races, and even his corrections of my posture, helped me feel like I did belong.

A couple months later, my sister told me that I was running times in the 200 that some of her D3 college teammates at Bowdoin were running. From that point on, I knew that I wanted to run in college. If I was good enough, I wanted to take it as far as I could.

Why I Keep Running

Over the next few years, I experienced huge improvements that put me in a place to gain interest from colleges, and I experienced challenging setbacks with injuries and coaching difficulties. I gave up basketball—a sport I had loved since I was a little kid—because when I was at basketball practice, I just wished I was running. 

Nothing compared to the buzz I felt on the track.

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Even while running the 400, arguably the most painful event in track, I just had so much fun.

When I think back to what made me fall in love with track, it wasn’t just the moments I got to spend standing on top of podiums (although I loved those moments too). It was pushing my body even when it felt hard, it was digging deep and realizing I had more in the tank, and it was giving my all for teams and coaches that I cared about and that cared about me. Track looks different now, and that’s a good thing. But I’ll never forget where I came from, and what shaped me. 

There’s still a little kid inside me, who just wants to feel that adrenaline that only running in circles gives her.