I always tell people to run the Austin Marathon. 

There’s nothing better than the hometown race, and especially the hometown marathon. What other opportunity do you have to cover every single inch of a race course, its hills, dips and divots wearing down the rubber of your shoes until race day itself is already muscle memory?

Personally, I never set out to run a marathon. 

I was a miler in college and if you ask me again, I’ll always say that I prefer the lactic burn of short distances to the great unknown of a 26.2 mile race. But, as it turns out, the great unknown is pretty compelling. 

This weekend marks five years since I made my inauspicious debut at the 2020 Austin Marathon, a mere few weeks before the world changed forever (you know what happens next). For me, the pandemic experience is very much intertwined with a rediscovery of running and, later, the community that comes with it. I know I’m far from alone in that regard, but here’s my version of it.

I moved to Austin at the end of 2014 to work for a sports media company, for which I promptly traveled the country (and a few times, the world) to report on track meets and interview the sport’s fastest rising stars. I had some illusions of running competitively again, but any aspirations for actual training were lost as I stacked up frequent flier miles (and mileage on my car).

After a few years, I started freelancing and working in local news — eventually landing at the Austin American-Statesman, where I was surprised to find that our executive editor John was a huge track fan. There’s more of us…! My editor Gabby was an avid marathoner, and while I worked the 5 a.m. shift, I observed in amazement as she arrived at the office early every morning with a fresh glow in her eyes from the post-run high. I had defined running by the elite level for so long that I had almost forgotten what it was like to be driven by a sense of personal fulfillment and satisfaction. I still jogged most days, about five miles, and I liked to get in a nice double digit 10 in on the weekends but I wasn’t training for anything other than to calm my anxiety.

Gabby had already run several marathons at that point, and the longer I spent on the job, I figured (as many do)... if she can do it, why can’t I? Free from my desk by 1 p.m. (sometimes 2 if our former publisher-turned-aspiring yogi decided to host a free yoga class in one of our building’s abandoned conference rooms), I had plenty of time to run in the sun (for better or worse during the summer) and start to build my base again.

I was the opposite of most runners you see on the trail now — no Strava, an old Garmin that shut off in extreme temperatures, one pair of ancient trainers and not a single cute running fit in sight. 

I started spending my Tuesday nights at RAW Running, where I met Jess Ponds — just a few years older than me, she had two kids, a busy career, incredible biceps and a passion for the sport she never had a chance to compete in during high school. We quickly linked up pace-wise for workouts and she took me under her wing once I made the plunge to sign up for the Austin Marathon.

I can’t emphasize enough how insane the concept of a marathon seemed to me at the time. Running a marathon was never a dream or goal of mine. Yet, it was a challenge that kept presenting itself until I couldn’t ignore it. Personally, I was navigating some life changes where I wasn’t sure who I was anymore, and I wondered if maybe embarking on this training journey would enlighten me… 

16 miles, 18 miles, 20 miles, 24 miles. Every weekend was my longest run ever. Jess taught me how to take gels and that it was okay to eat gummies instead. I joined her and the crew at Rogue for Saturday long runs, which we started and finished before the sun came up. I started eating pasta again. I developed an emotional attachment to the Austin Marathon pace team, who encouraged me more than they realized that I’d be able to find the finish line on race day — my greatest fear being a DNF. I ran with people whose faces I never saw and names I will never remember. I was sore all the time. It all felt very exciting.

I remember running the east side of the course with a folded-up piece of paper, the turn-by-turn directions rubbing off on my sweaty hands, and realizing that I was really going to do this marathon thing. 

I fell asleep the night before the race watching the NBA Slam Dunk contest, which gave me a lot to talk about the next morning when I ran the first half of the course with Carlos. The race was delayed for nearly an hour, which gave me enough time to ditch my tank top as the humidity steadily increased, but not quite enough time to duck over and pee one more time in the alleyway. I found Carlos in the corral as the gun went off, and he forced me to go out super conservatively — which I would be grateful for later. We read every sign, high-fived every fan with an outstretched hand and took water at every stop along the way.

The turnoff point in a marathon is always a lonely spot. The crowds of cheering spectators disperse to greet the half marathoners at the finish, leaving you to ponder how much you really want it. I’ve gotten to that 13.1 mark one too many times already in a state of anxious depletion — what exactly have we gotten ourselves into here?

This first marathon was a different story, though. Swayed by Carlos to go out slower than felt acceptable (the goal, always, was firstly to finish!), I said goodbye to my spirit guide with the knowledge that, if I was feeling good, here’s where I could start to pick up the pace. I cruised up Guad into West Campus, ready to meet my maker…

I passed an older woman near 45th Street, promptly stopped at a port-a-potty, then passed her again and didn’t look back. I ran by my newspaper editors John and Gabby near Mile 18 on Dean Keeton, energized up the hills by their cheers that I was in the top ten. 

My favorite section of the course is crossing I-35 onto the east side, cruising down the neighborhood streets where I lived. It’s funny to me now because Tillery, Webberville and the like are in constant rotation as the bi-weekly tempo loop for my track club, but back then I hadn’t really ventured off Ladybird Lake. 

In so many ways, training for the marathon gave me new eyes to the city that I had called home for years.

I circled around my old office building off Pleasant Valley, passing another girl — Cynthia! — who I would later befriend and recruit to join our track club.

Before the race, I had some vastly unserious notions of charging down the last stretch of Cesar Chavez at sub-7 minute mile pace. At this point, though, even a conservative early start couldn’t save me from the unfamiliar dead leg feeling rapidly creeping up my shins and quads and alleviated exactly zero percent by minimal, very non-super shoes. 

There are no proper words for the pain of running up the 11th Street hill in the last quarter mile, but I saw Gilbert cheering for a man just ahead of me and somehow gathered my rapidly deteriorating body to kick past him, immediately hanging left and flying downhill through the finish line when suddenly it was over — I ran 3:15, faster than my ‘A’ goal time, finishing in fifth place for women and, most shockingly, $1,200 richer than just a few hours earlier. 

Pro tip — not a bad idea to go to money races when all the really fast runners are prepping for the Olympic Trials. 

I inhaled a beer, yapped to everyone in sight — old friends, new friends I met on the course, a priest who set a Guinness world record for fastest marathon in his church robes — and eventually made it home, ordered literally everything off the Taco Flats menu, watched High Fidelity, failed to take a nap and reconvened with the crew at the Mean-Eyed Cat for the RAW Running after party… which… is a story for another time.

The post script to this particular story is that while race day itself felt magical, the process of training and getting back in shape made me fall in love with running all over again. Tuesday nights with RAW, Saturday mornings at Rogue, mile repeats, the accomplishment of running my longest ever run every single weekend… The training gave me new friends and something positive to look forward to everyday, something just for me, and I was shocked to discover that, nearing 30 years old, it was possible that my most athletic days were still ahead of me. 

And Austin… I had lived in the city for five years, but now I was connected to its fabric in an entirely new way. I was part of its heartbeat now, a pair of feet in the cacophony of runners’ footsteps sprinting through the streets while most people were asleep. 

These streets are mine. And they can be yours, too. See ya out there.