My running story started long before I was even born, at a high school track in Brooklyn in the early 1960s.

My great-uncle, Bill, discovered his love of and talent for middle distance running while attending James Madison High School, and honed that talent further when he ran track at the University of Maryland, specializing in the 800m.

Bill graduated in 1968, which was also the year that my dad, Mike, was born. Fast forward a decade, to when Bill introduced my dad to the incredible sport of running and served as his first coach.

My dad enjoyed quite a bit of success early on in his running career, winning many local titles throughout greater Phoenix, and even running a 3:33 full marathon (with the flu) at the age of 12 at the 1980 Fiesta Bowl Marathon.

As a young adult, my dad took some time off of running to build his career, marry my mom, and raise my siblings and me. In his early 30s, he picked up where he left off, finishing 14 more marathons and countless other road races.

Then on November 19, 1999, when my dad was 31 and I was 7, he signed me up for my first 5K, the Gilbert Days 5K in my hometown of Gilbert, Arizona. I have not stopped racing since.

Around that same time, my dad changed careers from journalism to teaching, and became a track and cross country coach at a local high school. I continued running 5K road races throughout the rest of elementary school, then graduated to cross country and track in junior high.

In 2006, instead of attending the high school across the street from my house, I decided to attend Gilbert High School, where my dad taught and coached, so that I could run on his team. I ran JV as a freshman, then made it onto the varsity team starting my sophomore year.

After high school, I attended the University of Texas at Austin. In 2012, during my junior year, I decided to run my first half marathon, and who better to coach me through the training process than my dad? I finished that first race on November 11, 2012, and spent the decade that followed focused exclusively on the half marathon distance.

It was not until I was 30 years old with two children that I finally ran my first full marathon. In the 3 years since, I have run many more full marathons, and one ultra.

I’ve been passionate about running since childhood, but it was not until after that first full marathon in 2022 that I began my running page on Instagram. And from there, I truly found my voice - a quirky mix of inspiration, humor, advocacy, product reviews, and my own training struggles, all through the lens of a 30-something, incredibly mediocre runner.