Women's Running Stories

Emerging professional runner and new member of Tinman Elite out of Boulder, Colorado, Katie Camarena tells the story of how it all went down from her viewpoint racing in the 2024 USATF Cross-Country National Championships, which took place January 20, 2024, in Richmond, VA. On the line at this race, in addition to a national championship title, cash awards and series points, racers were vying for...

Michelle Sikes's story centers around how her collegiate running career is inextricably linked to her first book, Kenya's Running Women: A History, published in December 2023. This is the first academic monograph to focus on the history of any women's sport in Africa. Back when she was in her collegiate years, Sikes became a Rhodes Scholar and the 2007 NCAA outdoor 5K national champion. The story...

"I don't think I really liked running until maybe two or three years in of actually trying to run. I wouldn't even call myself a runner at that point at all, but just somebody trying to get their life right and trying to have some balance. It really started to open up a new world for me." Sister Liz Sjoberg's running journey started out as an interest and need to improve her health and lose weight...

Anita Cardinal is an ultra trail runner, advocate for the indigenous community, race director, and community builder who lives in Northwestern Canada in the beautiful city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In her story, Anita gets into why running has been a powerful force in her life from a very early age, and how the impact of the sport continues to evolve for her. A First Nations woman, Cardinal ha...

In this episode, part 3 of this series, Cherie shares how a freak non-running injury caused her to take time away from structured workouts and formal training. While the injury was a bummer, in the end, it provided a healthy reset. Cherie shares how the recovery process has gone and why she feels like navigating this period of relative downtime has resulted in her realizing how much she is truly e...

For this episode, I chose a variety of clips from 10 episodes published in 2023 that have stuck with me and made an impact. This isn't a "best of" so much as a celebration of the huge variety of experiences and motivations women have in this sport. I hope you'll find something in here to motivate and inspire you, and perhaps spark a new interest for 2024. It's incredible how much this sport brings...

Natalie Barlatier has a determination when it comes to her running that is truly remarkable. Barlatier discovered a love of track and field in her youth, but took a break from running when she entered college. She returned to the sport after being diagnosed with MS in her late 20s, and began to explore distance running. Barlatier worked her way up to marathons over time, and running has been an im...

Briana Boehmer had dreamed about qualifying for an Olympic trials since she was young. But she'd let go of that dream as she moved into her 40s. In her mind, she had aged out. That all changed in 2020. Boehmer's first competitive sport was running, which she did through college. After college, she became a competitive triathlete, eventually working up to racing the Ironman distance, which involves...

Professional distance and marathon runner Neely Spence Gracey has been a competitive runner since she was in her teens and running has been a part of her life since she was born: both of her parents were competitive runners, and her father was an internationally competitive marathoner. In recent years, however, Neely's running focus and motivation has shifted, in large part because she began to ba...

Elite marathon runner Ari Hendrix did not grow up dreaming of running. Up through college, Hendrix’s athletic heart was firmly focused on the basketball court. But when professional prospects didn’t pan out after her college career ended, Hendrix had to face the harsh fast reality that the sport that had defined her days and shaped her dreams was over.  This is the story of letting go of one dream...

The story behind becoming 2023 USATF Masters Track and Field Athlete of the Year. Masters 60+ track and field athlete Sue McDonald has been a competitive athlete most of her life. And she's been a competitor in a wide variety of events: she'd started out her collegiate career as a heptathlete and has since continued to enjoy working at multiple disciplines, as well as trying new events (like the s...

Top American distance pro runner Molly Huddle tells the story around her 2023 NYC Marathon, her first time racing this distance since having her first child, Josephine, in April 2022. WRS featured Huddle in March of this year, 2023, to tell the story of her postpartum return to racing and how it all went down at the 2023 NYC Half Marathon. Immediately after that, Huddle was diagnosed with a seriou...

Elite runner and Olympian Rachel Smith tells the story of how it all went down from her viewpoint racing in the 2023 USATF 5km National Championships, which took place November 4, 2023, in New York City. This is Smith's first big event back since having her first child, her daughter, Nova, 6 months ago. Smith shares her experiences running through pregnancy, returning to training post-partum, and...

Verna Volker first started running as a way to improve her health. Over time, however, her relationship to the sport has grown and changed, to become a more personal and powerful part of her life. She started out pursuing road marathons and then moved to the trails, stretching her limits in ultra trail running. As her journey has evolved, so have her motivations. This is a story about how Volker h...

In June of this summer, 2023, Women's Running Stories host and producer Cherie Turner closed the chapter on running longer distance races (at least for now), like marathons and ultras, and turned her attention to the 5k. Her goal: break 20 minutes in the 5km. Cherie is currently 54 years old and she has never dipped under 20 minutes at this distance. The closest she's ever gotten was back over a d...

Jennifer Maxwell is best known as the co-founder of PowerBar with her late husband, Brian Maxwell. Not only did the couple found a hugely successful company, they created the energy bar sector. Before PowerBar, which launched in 1986, there were no energy bars. These days, Jennifer continues to reinvent in the energy bar space with the launch of JAMBAR. While Jennifer's passion for running certain...

Elite runner and PhD student Jeralyn Poe tells the story of how it all went down from her viewpoint racing in the 2023 USATF 10km National Championships, which took place September 23, 2023, in Northport, NY, at the Great Cow Harbor 10km.  Poe is in a relatively new phase of her racing journey, having finished her collegiate career just a couple years ago. Specifically, over the past two years, sh...

Sabrina Pace-Humphreys understands what pushing through, putting one foot in front of the other in the face of great pain and on the edge of breaking feels like. She's been doing it her whole life. But it wasn't until she discovered the world of ultra trail running that she truly understood how deeply empowered this had made her. She's now on a quest to discover just how far she can push her bound...

Claire Bartholic shares how she went from being a first-time marathoner trying for, but not quite reaching, a goal to qualify for the Boston Marathon, to running a sub-3-hour marathon: for context, only 1% of women marathoners have achieved this sub-3-hour milestone. It all started when Bartholic was in her mid-30s looking to get in shape for a high school reunion. It was then that she decided to...

Carolyn Su is a runner and the founder of Diverse We Run, a space to build racial diversity and amplify diverse voices and stories in running on Instagram. Until 2020, Su was a road runner. She hadn't run on the trails, let alone race. And when she documented her friend's experiences at the 2019 Trans Rockies, a multi-day trail running stage race, she thought it looked amazing, but it didn't even...

Professional runner for Team ZAP Endurance Tristin Van Ord tells the story of how it all went down from her viewpoint racing in the 2023 USATF 20km National Championships, which just took place September 4 in New Haven, CT.  This 2023 season has been full of success as well as learning experiences for Van Ord. She started the year running her fastest marathon ever—she set a PB by over two minutes—...

At 53 years old, Women's Running Stories host Cherie Turner has found a whole new focus for her running pursuits: she's working toward breaking 20 minutes in the 5km. This is the first phase of the journey, setting a baseline 5k time. In this episode Cherie shares how she got to this point, how the lessons she's learned throughout her many years of running are starting to reap benefits she's never...

Early in her life, Celeste Yvonne had decided she wasn't a runner. She felt like she didn't look like a runner or have a runner's mindset. Furthermore, running didn't feel good. Enter, her first child, who was colicky; Celeste struggled mightily to get him to calm down. In an act of exhausted desperation, she tried jogging. And, it worked. As someone who always enjoyed working out, this also fille...

Ruby Wyles is an elite level runner and athlete who has worked through significant health challenges. She is currently pursuing the exciting new world of multisport, as a triathlete. From an early age, Wyles experienced serious challenges with disordered eating. While her health was stabilized, Wyles' fraught relationship with body image and food wasn't completely healed, especially when it came t...

Women's Running Stories host and producer Cherie Turner tells the story of her return to the 56-mile Comrades Marathon in South Africa. This is Cherie's second running of this, the world's oldest and largest ultra distance race in the world. And this for running, she had the goal of running better, both physically and mentally: she wanted to finish in under 10 hours (in 2022, she ran it in 10:25)...