About

I am a 30 year old Colorado native living in a suburb of Denver called Englewood.  I am married to a wonderful man who gets my quirks and loves me all the more for them.  I count everything from running, to hiking, to hanging out with friends and family, to writing, to drinking beer among my hobbies.

I didn’t start running until September 2013 at the age of 28, and even then it sort of happened by accident.  The weather is gorgeous here that time of year and I just randomly started going out for short, 1-2 mile jogs a few times a week.  Only a couple weeks into this, I was having a conversation with a group of co-workers who are runners and they talked me into signing up for a half marathon they were all going to be running in April 2014 .  I was not a runner then.  I am asthmatic and have exercised regularly for a long time, but had never tried running as a sport.  I struggled to run in gym class as a kid and convinced myself at a pretty young age that it was something I simply couldn’t do.  Convinced of this, I pretended to play sports like softball and tennis for a handful of years in middle and high school, but never really committed and was always extremely self-conscious of the fact that I felt like an impostor.  I’m not an athlete, I told myself.  So I trudged on for many years, thinking exercise was nothing more than mild torture and that sports, any sport, was something forever out of reach for me.

Cliche alert: running has saved my life.  I mean it, but not in the way you’re probably thinking.  In addition to being asthmatic and believing I wasn’t capable of being athletic, I have fought a long battle with depression, anxiety, and an eating disorder since the age of 13.  The physical weakness malnutrition causes and the mental energy it takes to sustain such hatred and mistreatment for oneself doesn’t exactly breed an atmosphere where you believe you can achieve great things.  While I have been on the path of recovery for about 5 years now, running has changed everything.  I am happier, stronger, prouder, and more at peace than I have ever been in my entire life.  Running has saved my life because I realized I was wasting it before.  Wasting it by being so miserable, self-loathing, and doubtful of my actual potential, physically and mentally.

I ran that first half marathon in April 2014 and cried in my family’s hugs when I crossed the finish line.  That event changed everything, and now I am leading a very different life.

I explore the love of life and running, as well as the interrelationship between these things and my mental health challenges in this blog. More details to come in these pages – thanks for stopping by.

Happy running and living!

Becky