My First Marathon

Steve Carrier spent decades lifting heavy and hated cardio for a long time. When COVID closed the gyms, he started hiking and kayaking with his wife, and after she mentioned a 5K she wanted to do, he decided to give running a try. That race never happened, but Steve fell in love with running anyway. A few months in, he found the Central Mass Striders through a Facebook group, and their Sunday long runs slowly built him from a 3.5-mile loop to a half marathon, a year full of halves, and eventually the Bay State Marathon in Lowell, Massachusetts.<...

Aimee spent over a decade running half marathons, one a year, showing up and enjoying the distance without chasing a specific time. It started with a charity flyer that landed in her parents' mailbox when she was twenty one, tied to a disease for a cause she cares a lot about, and that was enough to get her to sign up for her first half marathon. She kept coming back to the distance year after year, watching a coworker take on marathon training and deciding early on that the full distance wasn't for her.

Then her husband...

Martin Dugard has been running since the early 1970s, but it all traces back to one moment at eleven years old, watching Frank Shorter win the 1972 Olympic marathon and being so moved he ran straight outside in his jeans for four miles. From there it was 5Ks, 10Ks, and a half marathon at White Rock in Dallas, until a marathon started to feel like the obvious next step. Martin went on to become a longtime running coach and a bestselling author, though for years his book career had nothing to do with running at all. That changed with his...

Jay spent years playing soccer and dabbled in other sports, but running itself was never her thing until she signed up for a local 5K in her off season as another way to move. That race quickly turned into a half marathon in DC, and crossing that finish line left her with one very unexpected thought: she could probably go further. So she set her sights on the New York City Marathon, and started to poke around charities that she could apply for and along the way found an organization that would allow her to run for her uncle...

Hunter didn't set out to become a runner. He joined his high school's cross country team on a whim (mostly because his friends were doing it) and discovered he loved being part of a group more than he loved the actual running. That pull toward community followed him through college, a couple years teaching in Korea, and eventually back to North Carolina, where a local run club led him to Ainsley's Angels. Pushing other runners through races so they could cross the finish line changed how he saw the sport entirely, and it planted the seed for chasing a...

Sierra grew up in a running family and found her own love for the sport through a middle school team in Georgia. She ran through high school and rediscovered it years later during a hard stretch in college, but just as she was building back toward a half marathon, her body threw her a curveball.

A case of long COVID sent her heart rate soaring to 175 just from walking, and running immediately had to take a back seat. It took her two years to feel like herself again, and by no means was that comeback easy. When...

This one's for all my fall marathoners who are deep in training right now!! I'm pulling together my full survival guide for running your first marathon, five things I wish someone had told me before my own first one. We're talking fueling strategy (and why the back half of the race is where it really matters), why respecting your easy pace is about more than just your fitness, and why the bad runs in your training block might actually be the most useful ones you have. If you're in the thick of a block right now and need a...

Barry Scruggs came to running with his wife after some health struggles when they decided to make change happen together. It started with a Spartan race , and that single decision opened the door to a running life neither of them expected, eventually pulling them into Charlotte's trail and ultra running community and setting Barry on the path toward his first marathon.

By the time race day arrived, training wasn't the hard part. Days before the Charlotte Marathon, Barry was diagnosed with bronchitis that had turned into pneumonia, and both his doctor and his wife told him not...

Abia Mallick never planned to run a marathon herself until she volunteered at the finish zone of the New York City Marathon, where a woman stopped by the fence near her to catch her breath and ended up sharing her story, a story that stuck with Abia so much she threw her own name into the marathon lottery, assuming she'd never get in.

But spoiler alert: she did. Her training tested her more than she expected: her body kept finding new things to ache, and she leaned hard on her physical therapist and her community to get...

I get this question all the time from my first-time marathoners: if I don't have a time goal, why do I need to do speed work? In this week's mini episode, I'm breaking down exactly why I still program speed work for athletes who aren't chasing a specific finish time, what it's actually teaching your body and mind, and how something as simple as picking up the pace at a colorful mailbox can prepare you for those brutal last six miles of your marathon.

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Sara played tennis all through high school, but running stayed casual for her, a mile here or there, until 2023, when she signed up for her first 5K and then got sidelined by a health complication for most of the year. By summer 2024 she was back on the trail outside Chicago, and after watching the para-athletes and half marathoners at a local race, she reached out to a charity for a Chicago Marathon bib almost on impulse. She texted her fiancé that she thought she'd just signed up for 26.2 miles. He wrote back, "You think?"

But by no m...

Julie grew up in a sports-obsessed family, her dad a longtime Broad Street runner, her brother a former D1 lacrosse player turned distance runner. She played soccer growing up, but sports also came with real anxiety for her, and by college she thought that part of her life was over. It wasn't until her senior year of college that she started easing back into running, and she found herself thinking if her dad and brother could run a marathon, she could too.

Philly had already sold out by the time she looked into it, so Julie signed...

I took a two month break from running dealing with personal issues we'll get into in this episode. These personal issues forced me to take 2 full months off of running for the first time in my running journey, and today we're breaking down what it's actually looked like to come back from that, not just physically, but mentally too. I'm walking you through the exact plan I built for myself, the mindset shifts that made the biggest difference, and the practical stuff like how I'm structuring my weeks, my long runs, and my strength training as I work my...

Besides the dreaded mile in high school PE class, running was fairly casual for Rachel for a long time until the stress of working front lines at a hospital during COVID turned it into a huge stress reliever for her. A few years later she set her sights on a half marathon, and after three tries and a few injuries, she finally got there. Shortly after, she found BAR Run Club, and being surrounded by people just a little further down the road than her helped her believe a marathon was also for people like her.

Training...

Gina didn't grow up loving running. In fact, she hated it, right up until a spontaneous half marathon at Disneyland in 2017 changed her mind for good. After two kids and a long break from racing, she found her way back through a run club that pushed her further than she expected, and a new goal started forming in the back of her head: a marathon.

She signed up for the Eugene Marathon and built a training block around long runs, speed work, and whatever pockets of time she could carve out as a mom of two. Her...

Jude didn't grow up as an athlete. She spent her childhood with a violin in her hands instead of running shoes, and didn't run her first step until she was 38. From there, the goals kept coming: a 5k, then an 8k, then a half marathon at 40 that she ran through a painful foot injury. After a decade away, she came back to the half at 49, and that race at Melbourne's MCG planted a seed she couldn't shake. Standing at the festival boards scanning for her husband's name among the full marathon runners, one thought wouldn't leave her alone: could...

Mikaela Gomez is a mom of three, a Navy veteran, and somehow, until last July, not a runner at all. She found running through the unlikeliest of doors: a dark romance book rabbit hole on TikTok that led her to an ultra runner known as the Ghost Runner. What started as a way to move her body for her mental health turned into something much bigger once Mikaela started processing the loss of her father to suicide, a loss she was carrying while nine months pregnant and unable to be there for her family in the aftermath.

...

Maggie Lowenthal grew up a gymnast and a sprinter, but spent most of her life convinced that long distance running just wasn't for her. She ran a couple of halves, got into HYROX, built a strength training foundation, but kept watching the Chicago Marathon from the sidelines every fall. She never planned to run it herself, but that changed when she realized the 2025 race would fall on her actual 30th birthday, and her sister was in too.

Maggie trained through a Chicago summer, logged her long runs along the lakefront with her charity training group, and showed...

Alyssa didn't grow up as a runner. After graduating college in 2023, she found herself with free time and a Planet Fitness membership, and slowly worked her way from the weight machines to the treadmill to a half marathon finish line. A run club and a few convincing friends later, she was signed up for her first marathon, telling herself that if she'd already done 13.1, she might as well see what 26.2 felt like.

She put in 25 weeks of training, ran up to 20 miles in the Florida heat, and showed up to Space Coast race morning with her stomach...

Keneshia came to running the way a lot of us do, not because she set out to become a runner, but because she needed somewhere to put everything she was carrying. A former dancer and professional roller skater, she found herself battling depression after adopting two teenagers and needed something that could get her out of her own head. A local Mother's Day 5K with her mom was the answer, and once she crossed that first finish line, there was no going back.

What followed was one of the most packed first years in running you'll hear...

Jon Hwang came to running the way a lot of us do, sideways and by accident. A 5K with coworkers turned into a half marathon, and then a rough year in 2017 where a  relationship ended and his mom was diagnosed with cancer solidified running as the thing that got him through each day.

By the time Jon signed up for the San Francisco Marathon, he had already met his wife through Spartan racing, tackled obstacle courses together, and built years of trail miles between them including a full 50K ultra. So why did 26.2 miles on a road f...

If you've stepped outside for a run lately and thought "why does this feel so much harder than it did two months ago," this one's for you. Summer running is humbling, and if you're in the middle of a training block right now, it can feel like everything is going backwards. It's not. You're just doing the hardest training of your cycle in the hardest time of year to do it.

In this Wednesday mini episode, I'm walking you through three things you can do right now to make summer running way more manageable, from hydrating like...

Ashley never considered herself a runner. As a kid she dabbled in sports, hated cross country, and didn't think twice about it. It wasn't until her early thirties, going through a divorce and looking for somewhere to put all that energy, that she laced up a pair of $10 Walmart shoes and headed out onto the country roads behind her house with nothing but cheap earbuds and an Eminem playlist. She had no plan, no training knowledge, and no idea what was coming.

Fast forward a few years and Ashley, a 911 dispatcher who has spent nearly two decades...

Carly Schrom grew up in a running family and carried the sport all the way through college, where she also quietly battled years of stomach issues that nobody could explain. What eventually got diagnosed as Crohn's disease derailed her senior season, and just when she thought she was finally turning a corner after graduation, a routine scan revealed something scarier waiting on the other side.

What followed was a surgery that changed everything, a long road back, and a decision to mark the one year anniversary in the most Carly way possible: a 4:30am marathon on a...

I just got back from my honeymoon in Portugal, ran a half marathon a week later, and somehow walked away with a two minute PR. In this mini episode, I'm breaking down what this training block actually looked like, why I made the call to drop my sub-two goal weeks before race day, how a heat wave, a wedding, and a week of zero running in Portugal accidentally became the best thing that could have happened to my fitness, and what it taught me about the difference between giving up on a goal and just knowing it's not your...

Jose Martinez has always had a complicated relationship with running. Growing up in Vancouver, it was something he returned to in waves, usually when life got messy and he needed somewhere to put it. When 2021 took his cousin and then his father, Jose found himself somewhere he didn't quite recognize. It wasn't until he and his wife started talking about making a change that he gave himself a reason to start moving again, early morning walks that slowly turned into something more. And when he stumbled across an old race record on his phone from the year 2000, he made...

Hey friends! I'm officially off getting married and soaking up every second of it. I'll be back with brand new episodes on May 4th, but in the meantime I'm bringing back one of your all-time favorite episodes for you to enjoy. Thanks for all the love and support. It means everything. Now let's get into it!

Ariel Greenstein didn’t grow up as an athlete. She didn’t fall in love with running early. And for a long time, movement just wasn’t part of her life. But in her early 30s, something shifted. What started as Broadw...

Hey friends! I'm officially off getting married and soaking up every second of it. I'll be back with brand new episodes on May 4th, but in the meantime I'm bringing back one of your all-time favorite episodes for you to enjoy. Thanks for all the love and support. It means everything. Now let's get into it!

Gabby’s running journey didn’t start with a finish line goal or a desire to be fast. It started after stepping away from Division I college sports, when the structure she’d built her identity around suddenly disappeared and movement no lon...

Ryan Trask has always been a runner at heart, even when life kept pulling him away from it. From getting cut from his middle school basketball team and stumbling into cross country, to running through job loss, a pandemic, and the chaos of raising four kids, running has been the thing he keeps coming back to. So when he decided it was finally time to run a marathon before 40, it felt less like a new chapter and more like finishing something he'd started a long time ago.

But this one was about more than just him. His...

Ilana Dunn didn’t grow up a runner. In fact, she was the person who walked the mile and avoided it whenever she could. But after accidentally getting into treadmill classes, discovering run-walk intervals, and slowly building up, she found herself chasing something she once thought was impossible: the marathon. What followed wasn’t a perfect training block. It was injuries, setbacks, and figuring things out in real time, eventually leading her to the start line of the New York City Marathon feeling as prepared as she could be.

What she didn’t expect was how race day wo...

Cass Robinson’s path to her first marathon was anything but straightforward. Growing up with undiagnosed Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, she spent years dealing with injuries, pain, and being told nothing was wrong. Running came in waves throughout her life, but it eventually became the place where she could process everything she had been through and start taking back control.

In this episode, she shares how she trained with an unpredictable body, what it looked like to run her first marathon without time goals, and how her second marathon forced her to adapt in real time. It’s a conv...

This week’s mini episode brings back coach Nick Savin for a conversation that goes way beyond splits, paces, and perfect training plans. Instead, it’s all about mindset and the role it plays in how we show up for our training, especially when things don’t go the way we expected. From missed runs to tough workouts, Nick breaks down why those moments aren’t failures at all, but actually part of the process, and how reframing them can completely change your experience as a runner. 

Follow along with Nick: 
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Krissy Murphy didn’t grow up as an athlete. She started running in her early 20s with a Couch to 5K plan, thinking it might be a one-time thing. But somewhere between a spontaneous 10K, a Disney half marathon, and a first marathon in Richmond, something shifted and she realized she belonged in this world. What started as a way to move her body turned into a long-term relationship with the marathon.

In this episode, Krissy shares what it looked like to build from the ground up, how she handled the highs and lows of her first ma...

After a hip surgery at 17 ended her competitive dance career, Maya Struhar spent years away from structured movement. Running wasn’t part of the plan until a St. Patrick’s Day 5K with coworkers pulled her back in. One race turned into a 10K, then a half marathon, and before long Maya found herself training for her first marathon at Grandma’s in Duluth. Along the way she discovered a runner’s high, built confidence through a series of half marathons during training, and learned how to make decisions during the race that prioritized enjoyment over chasing a specific time.

Fueling is one of the most common questions that comes up for first-time marathoners, and it can feel overwhelming when you’re not sure where to start. In this mini episode, we break fueling down into three simple steps: choosing a texture you can tolerate, testing it on lower-risk runs, and dialing in a strategy that works for your long runs and race day. We also talk through the differences between gels, chews, and liquid fuel, and why experimenting early in training is key.

If you want a step-by-step structure for how fueling fits into a full tr...

Holly Kabler spent years cheering for her husband at marathons, convinced running just wasn’t for her. But after spectating the London Marathon and asking the question “how hard could it be?”, she decided to find out for herself. What started with Peloton treadmill classes and a spontaneous half marathon turned into a full training cycle and a start line at the Chicago Marathon.

In this episode, Holly shares how she learned to pace herself for the first time, figured out fueling after years of running without water, and approached her first marathon with one goal: have a damn...

Anyone can run a marathon, but running a marathon is not just a race. 

In this episode, I break down how that committing to training for your first marathon builds discipline, resilience, perspective, and a quiet confidence that carries into the rest of your life. You start showing up differently at work. You stop tying your entire identity to your job. You realize it is not selfish to prioritize your health. The finish line is only part of the transformation.

If you are in the thick of training or reflecting on your first finish line, t...

Kristine Owen Wood grew up in the world of elite ballet, where movement was disciplined, aesthetic, and high pressure from a young age. After earning a spot in Alberta Ballet and ultimately stepping away for the sake of her health, she had to rebuild her relationship with her body from the ground up. Running started quietly, as something private and unstructured, before slowly becoming the place where she reclaimed strength, autonomy, and joy in her 40s.

In this episode, Kristine shares how a half marathon breakthrough pulled her into race culture, what two years of injury taught...

In this week’s Wednesday mini episode, I’m walking through Phase Two of the First Marathon Buddy program and breaking down what actually matters during weeks 10 to 15 of a 20 week marathon training plan. This phase isn’t about testing your fitness or grading every long run. It’s about treating those miles like practice, experimenting and refining your fueling, protecting recovery as fatigue builds, and learning how to handle the mental spiral that tends to show up in the middle of a cycle.

This episode is especially helpful if you’re training for your first marathon, but experi...

Annie thought about running a marathon for nearly ten years before finally lining up at the Chicago Marathon in 2025. After withdrawing from the race the year before due to injury, she rebuilt from the ground up, committed to strength training, and found something even bigger than a finish time through Team to End AIDS. What started as a comeback became a summer of long runs on the lakefront, new friendships, and learning how to run smart instead of just hard.

In this episode, Annie shares how Peloton helped her actually learn the fundamentals of running, what it...