Afternoon, friends! ☀️
You may remember a few weeks ago, when I put out a call to share your stories about how you became a runner and where running has taken you. We’ve heard from Ken Morrison, Rosalie Chan and Erinn Connor, and now it’s time to hear from another longtime THM reader, Colleen McBride.
I’m (still!) loving reading each and every one of your stories, and I’ll be sharing more of them soon. Some will be in written format like this, while others will be in audio/video. So, stay tuned!
If you feel inspired after listening to/reading Colleen’s story, please don’t hesitate to reach out — I’d love to hear from you too! All you need to is reply back to me by email or in the comments below, and we’ll go from there. — Terrell
So, let’s hear a little bit about you! Who are you, your age (if you’d like to share), where you’re from, what you do, etc.
I am a diagnostic medical sonographer, which is a really fancy term for ultrasound tech. I'm a traveler, so I do short-term contract work all over the country, usually at three months stints at short-staffed hospitals, and I help provide diagnostic imaging services. So, I look at livers and gallbladders and kidneys and babies sometimes, and hearts and arteries and veins, and it's really fun.
I get to see so many different people, um, and get to meet a lot of really cool folks and get to see all over the country and just the different ways people live and how we are all very similar to each other and also the unique differences of each location. You know, we live in a big, beautiful country and it's, it's really cool to experience that first. And, um, I like to say I'm a nomad by birth and by choice. I grew up with my dad in the navy, so I actually have been moving all my life.
I technically — no, not even technically — I officially have more addresses than the years I've been alive, so I have lived in 35 different addresses and I'm 33 years old.
What does your running routine look like? How many times a week, and how far do you run?
I like to say, I don't run far and I don't run fast — I don't really have goals of running either being the top of my age group. I'm just running to where it feels comfortable for me. My goal is to run three times a week, anywhere between four to six miles a time. My current running is only one time a week at the moment, which is not where I like to be, but it’s due to the very still snowy winter here. [Note: We talked in late March.]
Something I've had to learn to give myself grace with — especially with my mobile lifestyle — is that I don't have a specific routine that is based upon place. So I have these goals, but to give myself grace to say maybe this week didn't go like I wanted it to, but I can always try again next week. And it's not so much the, the habit of day by day or week by week, but month by month and year by year.
Were you an athletic kid growing up? What are your early memories of what fitness and health were about?
I did swim team and soccer — my mom wanted us to be safe around the water and active as much as possible and interacting with kids our age, wherever we moved. We were home schooled growing up, which really worked well for our lifestyle being constantly on the move, from address to address. The YMCA was our sports community, and my mom's always been very active and been conscious about her health and, uh, what we ate and what we did as activities, and so she modeled a really healthy balanced lifestyle for us.
How did you first get into running? Was there something that inspired you — like a performance at the Olympics, for example, or a runner you discovered by watching them on social media or TV? Or was there someone in your own life who inspired you to think, “maybe I can do this?”
Running wasn't really on my radar growing up, even not until my early twenties. I was very neutral about it. I was like, who are these crazy runners? Like, why would you do that? I mean, I grew up very active — I did swim team a lot, [my] mom was very intentional about putting us into the YMCA sports wherever we were, or if YMCA wasn't available, then youth sports was.
So, I was familiar with this idea of an individual sport or a team sport, individual in the sense that you are exerting your own amount of effort to cross the finish line to reach a goal, but it is also somewhat of a team sport and that you're doing it with a lot of other people and depending on your time and your effort — you do relays together and you can create a team atmosphere. I was a swimmer, a lifeguard, and a swim instructor. But back then, running was not of any interest to me. The field days that when we went to do uh field day workouts, running was my least favorite of it all.
Then I came into my early twenties — I think [our] early twenties can be very challenging for a lot of people. They were for me, trying to learn how to be an adult on my own and, what does that mean and trying to figure out who I was and I got to be in a really bad place — mentally, physically, spiritually, relationally. I eventually moved out of the town I had dug myself into a hole into and moved closer to my parents. I decided I needed a hard restart, a hard reset.
And my parents encouraged me to get into CrossFit actually. They had just found CrossFit and they're like, you train your body, they hoped that I would find a community that would be encouraging and supportive that would strengthen my body and at the same time as I strengthen my body, help heal my mind and soul a little bit. And that's what happened.
I started going and I went in with very low self-esteem, very low self-confidence; I was afraid to touch the barbell for fear of hurting myself. And this amazing group of people helped support me and strengthen me through that.
How has your interest in running evolved since then? Do you run farther, or faster now?
Later, I got a puppy who is really high energy and I’m like, what in the world I'm I gonna do with him? Really quickly, I figured out that a tired puppy is a good puppy, so I started going on runs with him.
At first, it was just going down a few streets and going from mailbox to mailbox. Then eventually making it to a mile and eventually making it to two miles.
In the beginning, I was more tired than he was and I'm like, OK, I just need to keep going to eventually get to a point to get this critter tired. And uh then I heard about uh Saint Patty's 5K. And that was my first, uh, race that I had chose as an, uh, independent adult to saying, I'm, I'm gonna set a goal for myself. I'm gonna choose this.
My goal was to run the 5K without slowing down into a walk. So I was run and jog, and it was the hardest thing I had ever done at that point. But I did it, and I crossed the finish line and it's a great atmosphere and, uh, I still remember the, the priest blessing us all before the run and he was wearing these knee-high socks, and he had this sort of priest vestment over his running shirt.
I’m experiencing my first runner's high of like running hard and trying to get through this exhaustion and then somehow pushing through that exhaustion and you're like, ohhh, this is what people are talking about.
After that, I was like, OK, what's next? I moved to Hawaii and continued using running as a way to explore my neighborhood, explore the streets around me. Then I heard about this [race] that I volunteered for called the Ironman had no idea what it was. I had no idea what it was at the time and so I signed up to volunteer and I passed out waters and I was like, what an introduction to the race world that's intense, that's so inspiring.
The athletes that participate in that are just at the top of their game and the community that comes around to support them, their friends and their families. And it was just like, wow, I'm like, no, I, I have no personal inclination of ever doing an Ironman myself, but that's really, really cool.
And so I had this goal of like, let's try for a half marathon. So, that's when I subscribed to The Half Marathoner, to get a goal of how do I do this, set a plan, set a timeline, and I think it was all around the 2018 time frame — my first half marathon is November of 2018 and the rest is history.
What do you balance your running with? Do you have a family to take care of? Kids, parents or other relatives or loved ones? If so, how do you balance all of it and still make time to run/care for yourself?
My only other responsibility is my Airedale terrier, [whose] name is Roman. I don't have any kids, although I hope that in the near future, when I try to find some semblance of permanency somewhere, I would love to get into foster care. But that is a future season that I hope for, that does not exist right now.
So it's just me, and that gives me a little bit of flexibility, especially with the moving, to balance that. The greatest challenge is adjusting to my new environment and learning what is around me… so it's, it's keeping these long term goals and meeting those goals for the month and being giving myself grace from the day to day and the week to week.
Is there anything you’re especially proud of that you can point to your running and say, “this helped me achieve ______”?
Overall, [probably] a generic worldview perspective, but it's given me a self-confidence in setting a goal and achieving that goal. It just takes a little bit, steps at a time — it's perseverance over time and distance.
And, running has given me that idea that … it's a parable perspective. And it's giving you a viewpoint of how to see the world. And running has given that to me, whether it's running the hills around the Santa Barbara and watching your steps, looking down and looking up, keeping your balance, getting up as after you fall, putting one step in front of another.
A lot of people have talked about the physical, mental and spiritual capacities of running, and I find that very true in my life too. So it's that running gives me this perspective on life that, you know, if it gets hard, we'll just put one step in front of another. You fall down, get back up again, and keep going toward your goal, keep going to toward the finish line and enjoy the beauty of the world, enjoy the physicality of the wind or the cold or the snow or the trees as you're going by.
Where would you like to go with your running? Is there anything special you’d like to achieve — like, say, running all six World Marathon Majors, or running an ultra?
My old goal used to be to run one full marathon, and I was very fortunate that the timing for that worked out. I did my full marathon back in January of 2020 at Disney World in Florida, and that was an incredible experience, and I'm very thankful I did it, um, and at the time I was like, those last three miles were were so hard and yet you know you put your foot in front of the other and you spin across the finish line and like “oh, I'm so tired. I don't think I can even realize, how, how I can like celebrate?” After that, I was like, one and done — I think half marathons are my distance.
My current goal actually is to do a half marathon in each of the 50 states. So I have five half marathons and five states underneath my belt. The past few years have been a little bit less running than I would like; last year, I had a serious ankle injury that I was trying to recover and recuperate from with the intent of regaining my strength to not re-injure myself.
Of course, the years after 2020 were [unpredictable] for everybody, but I did a half marathon earlier this year in February and have one signed up for May.
Look back at yourself when you were a kid, maybe say 10 years old. Remember how you felt, what you thought, especially what you thought you were capable of back then. If you could talk to that kid now, what would you say?
My 10-year-old self was a very fortunate kid; I had a happy, safe childhood, a loving family, great friends, and I wasn't overly concerned — no thought crossed my mind of who I was or where I was going or what I was gonna be when I grew up. I was just living my very good childhood.
A few months before I turned 10, I watched from the safety of my parents' bedroom on our TV, the second plane crashed into the Second World Trade Center. We were living outside of D.C. at the time. My uncle at the time was in government. We had a lot of family and friends that were impacted and just that whole thing — how do you tell your 10-year-old this tragedy? It's beyond comprehensible.
About the same time, there was what's known as the D.C. sniper, that went and targeted a lot of people, including some folks from a school just a few miles down the road from where we lived. So, 10 years old was a pivotal point in my development as a person, and it's something I've carried with me ever since, [through] my very mobile life through the ups and downs that life inevitably brings as an adult, uh, and growing up is that life is a gift and this present moment is to be treasured and nurtured and um to be treated as a gift that it is.
And we are supposed to love our family and our friends and not take for granted that none of us are guaranteed tomorrow. We hope for tomorrow and, you know, Lord grant me the days to see my grandchildren's children, but that's not ever a guarantee for any of us. So, live with hope for the tomorrow, but live with a thankfulness and a gratefulness for today, and to never say goodbye to your loved ones and hate or anger — always say, hey, I love you, or even if I'm upset with you, like, I love you and I appreciate you, and I'm glad that you're my, my mom or my dad or my brother or my sister.
And that has really, you know, shaped uh my mind and mentality on life. Not to bring religion into this, but as a Christian, I believe that death is not the end of the story, but that nevertheless we weep with those who weep and grieve with those who grieve and rejoice with those who rejoice. To know that this life is precious and to not take it for granted, so to treat it with Thanksgiving, and to persevere through the hardships that come, hoping for a better day for tomorrow.
So, if I was to circle back around again to my 10-year-old self, I'd say, hey kid, you're doing great… you're in for a big adventure and you have no idea what's coming and that's okay. You'll be just fine. And I’d try to encourage her as best as I could.
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